The Danish 'Ghetto Initiatives' and the Changing Nature of Social Citizenship (2004-2018)

The Danish citizenship ideal of the 20th century centred on an active population engaged in full-time work. In the 1990s, Denmark not only introduced a range of ‘workfare’ measures with a focus on job training and activation, but also launched a series of "ghetto initiatives" at countering segregation and facilitating high labour market participation among low-income, high-immigrant communities. Despite the widespread attention that Denmark’s ghetto initiatives received, the specific legal mechanisms they employ and their relationship to the Danish welfare state’s underlying ideals have not yet been examined from a scholarly perspective. This research project aims to fill this gap and present an in-depth study of these initiatives from a legal and conceptual perspective. The results were published in the journal Critical Social Policy at the end of 2020.