Constructing at-risk target groups

Abstract

This article explores the political legitimatization of intervention toward at-risk target groups in Danish preventive policy. Here, the overall intention is to detect social problems before they occur. Part of these preventive policies is the emergence of at-risk target groups identified as potential deviants among ‘the normal population’ of children, families and youth. We explore policy documents and find relations between political categories, social categories, perceptions of normality and risk, policy legitimization and policy tools, which we argue constitute the discursive setting for why, how and who should be objects of preventive intervention. Through a comparative analysis of preventive policy in health care, daycare and primary education, we conclude that social labeling and common sense categories play an important role in the construction of at-risk target groups. These categories function as the designators of at-risk target groups as deterministic interpretations of risk factors. We discuss why we think this might lead to unintended stereotyping and even discrimination of what was recently not part of the state's worrisome gaze.