Erasing Communities: an urban ethnography of Denmark’s public housing policies

Abstract

This paper examines Denmark’s 2018 parallel society policies – popularly known as the ghetto policies – as an expression of structural Islamophobia enforced through local governance. It analyses these policies in terms of their ethnonationalist roots, as well as their framing of Muslim communities as threats to Danish social cohesion. These policies discriminate by design, as a mechanism to manage and surveil Muslim communities in public housing estates. The ghetto policies have support across the right/left political divide. This paper argues that when it comes to the Danish ethnonationalist policies, there is in fact ideological unity across the political spectrum in the vilification of Muslim community. Indeed, urban policies directed at Denmark’s Muslim population reflect a coloniality enacted through public housing policies, aiming to banish and erase Muslim communities from their neighbourhoods. Ultimately, I contend that Denmark’s housing policies serve as tools of social control, used to manage its Muslim population, erase their spatial history, and dismantle community life within housing estates. The paper offers insights into how contemporary public housing policies can become an expression of structural Islamophobia in its political aim to manage Muslim social, urban and community life.