Pakistani migrant families in Denmark find themselves in a specific ethno-national, post-9/11 environment where Muslim immigrants are subjected to processes of non-recognition, exclusion and securitization. This ethnographic study explores how, why, and at what costs notions of relatedness, identity, and belonging are being renegotiated within local families and transnational kinship networks. Each entry point concerns the destructive-productive constitution of family life, where neglected responsibilities, obligations, and trust lead not only to broken relationships, but also, and inevitably, to the innovative creation of new ones. By connecting the micro-politics of the migrant family with the macro-politics of the nation state and global conjunctures in general, the book argues that securitization and suspicion-launched in the name of "integration"-escalate internal community dynamics and processes of family upheaval in unpredicted ways.

Migration, Family and the Welfare State explores understandings and practices of integration in the Scandinavian welfare societies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden through a comprehensive range of detailed ethnographic studies. Chapters examine discourses, policies and programs of integration in the three receiving societies, studying how these are experienced by migrant and refugee families as they seek to realize the hopes and ambitions for a better life that led them to leave their country of origin. The three Scandinavian countries have had parallel histories as welfare societies receiving increasing numbers of migrants and refugees after World War II, and yet they have reacted in dissimilar ways to the presence of foreigners, with Denmark developing tough immigration policies and nationalist integration requirements, Sweden asserting itself as a relatively open country with an official multicultural policy, and Norway taking a middle position. The book analyses the impact of these differences and similarities on immigrants, refugees and their descendants across three intersecting themes: integration as a welfare state project; integration as political discourse and practice; and integration as immigrants and refugees quest for improvement and belonging.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Migration, Family and the Welfare State explores understandings and practices of integration in the Scandinavian welfare societies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden through a comprehensive range of detailed ethnographic studies. Chapters examine discourses, policies and programs of integration in the three receiving societies, studying how these are experienced by migrant and refugee families as they seek to realize the hopes and ambitions for a better life that led them to leave their country of origin. The three Scandinavian countries have had parallel histories as welfare societies receiving increasing numbers of migrants and refugees after World War II, and yet they have reacted in dissimilar ways to the presence of foreigners, with Denmark developing tough immigration policies and nationalist integration requirements, Sweden asserting itself as a relatively open country with an official multicultural policy, and Norway taking a middle position. The book analyses the impact of these differences and similarities on immigrants, refugees and their descendants across three intersecting themes: integration as a welfare state project; integration as political discourse and practice; and integration as immigrants and refugees quest for improvement and belonging.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Fieldworkers’ notebooks are full of sensations and observations in which the subjectivity of the ethnographer seeps through. Not really science. Much closer to life. Yet in classical anthropology they are invisible to the reader. In this book the focus is reversed, turning Anthropology Inside Out as it explores the vibrant backstage life of field notes. What happens when we put them centre stage? Aimed at both curious novice and experienced practitioner, the chapters read as a catalogue of experimental practices teetering on the edge of the tradition: intuitively observational drawings; notes pervaded with paranoia; collective notetaking;crisis-ridden personal confessions; layers of notes in photographs and archives; old flip-flops that trigger memories in mind and body. This exploration of what field notes are, can do and could be, concludes with a constellation of shimmering notes on notes from Michael Taussig, a meta-commentary on anthropologists’ fetishistic relationship with the most personal of professional tools.