Danish Citizenship Research Articles

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Criminal Charges and Convictions in Mid and Late Adolescence

Childhood exposure to mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is common. Individuals with a childhood history of mTBI experience more frequent criminal justice involvement in mid to late adolescence and adulthood. No study had been conducted to examine whether the link is causal or spurious. To determine whether mTBI in childhood causes criminal justice involvement in mid to late adolescence. This cohort study used population-based data for all children born between 1995 and 2000 in Denmark, with data linked to emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations before age 10 years and all criminal charges and convictions from ages 15 to 20 years. The exposure group contained all individuals diagnosed with mTBI before age 10 years without other intracranial or extracranial injuries; the comparison group was individuals not diagnosed with mTBI or intracranial or extracranial injuries. Sibling and twin fixed-effects models were used to evaluate the association after controlling for family-level confounding. Data were analyzed from May 2021 to July 2024. Mild TBI before age 10 years without other intracranial or extracranial injuries before or at the time of diagnosis. Associations between mTBI before age 10 years and criminal charges and convictions from ages 15 to 20 for the entire study population and separately by sex at birth, controlling for additional covariates. The final analytic sample consisted of 343 027 individuals, 13 514 in the exposure group and 329 513 in the comparison group. Of the total sample, 166 455 (49%) were female and 176 572 were male (51%). A total of 326 191 participants (95%) had at least 1 parent with Danish citizenship, and 79 386 mothers (23%) held a college degree. There was a positive association between mTBI and criminal charges (odds ratio [OR], 1.26; 95% CI, 1.19-1.34) and convictions (OR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.16-1.33). When controlling for family-level confounding, the associations became statistically insignificant and, in most models, greatly reduced. Results were robust across multiple model specifications. This study found that although mTBI in childhood was predictive of adolescent criminal justice involvement, there was no evidence that mTBI caused criminal charges or convictions.

The impact of temporary residence permit on symptom severity and treatment outcome among refugees with PTSD

Despite an increased focus on the impact of post-migratory factors on the health of trauma-affected refugees, research on the influence of residence permit is limited. This influence may manifest on the outcome of psychiatric treatment. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to examine the role of temporary residence permit on symptom severity and treatment outcome among trauma-affected refugees in PTSD treatment. The sample consisted of 897 patients, who were allocated into three groups based on their residence permit: temporary residence permit, permanent residence permit, and Danish citizenship. The outcome measures were symptoms of PTSD (Harvard Trauma Questionnaire), depression and anxiety (Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 and Hamilton Depression and Anxiety Rating Scales), quality of life (WHO-5 Well-being Index), and functioning (The Sheehan Disability Scale), evaluated before and after psychiatric treatment. Temporary residents tended to have less severe symptoms prior to treatment. Overall, no significant differences were observed between the three groups on treatment outcome. However, Danish citizens had a poorer treatment outcome on Hamilton Depression Scale compared with temporary residents. This study is one of the first to investigate treatment implications of residence permit in a clinical setting. The interactions between mental health and individual post-migratory factors are complex. Further research is still needed to understand how residence status affects mental health and treatment outcomes for refugees.

Danish citizenship: A gift you should not take for granted

For the hawks in the Danish debate on naturalization, Danish citizenship is not a human right or something that you can earn by living up to a specific set of criteria. Rather, it is something that members of parliament bestow on foreigners as a benevolent act, if the members are convinced that the foreigners are genuinely committed to Danish values and do not constitute a threat to democracy. In the hawks’ view, the members of parliament are sovereign and should be able to suspend all principles in the defense of democracy and liberal rights. Thereby the hawks repeat the dilemma of militant democracy: Does the defense of democracy turn democracy into its opposite?

Differences in Overall Survival for Non-Western Immigrant Patients Compared to Danish-Born Patients with Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma

Background The overall survival (OS) of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) have increased in the last decades, but non-Western immigrants with DLBCL may be at risk of poorer OS due to a lower socioeconomic position compared to citizens of the host population. While cancer treatment in Denmark is accessible in a tax-based healthcare system, treatment outcomes may still be affected by factors affecting the patient trajectory prior to treatment, possibly resulting in diagnostic delays, worse clinical features at diagnosis, and prolonged time from diagnosis to treatment. Aims The study aimed to compare OS between non-Western immigrant and Danish-born patients with DLBCL and to investigate differences in clinical and socioeconomic variables. Furthermore, mediators of possible OS differences were investigated to disentangle the causal effect of being a non-Western immigrant (immigration status) on OS. Methods In this Danish retrospective cohort study, patients with newly diagnosed DLBCL in 2000-2020 were identified in the Danish National Lymphoma Registry. Danish citizens born outside Denmark were defined as immigrants, while all citizens born in Denmark, and those immigrants with at least one Danish-born parent with a Danish citizenship, were considered Danish-born citizens. The study did not include second generation immigrants. Patients were followed from diagnosis of DLBCL until death or censoring (31 December 2021 or emigration from Denmark), whichever came first. Crude OS was computed using the Kaplan-Meier estimator and differences in crude OS were tested using the log-rank test. An inverse probability weighted (IPW) Cox model considering age, sex, and calendar year as confounders were used to obtain the total causal effect of immigration status on OS. Furthermore, a mediation analysis on the effect of immigration status on survival was performed using a natural effects Cox model considering age-adjusted International Prognostic Index (aaIPI), Income quartile, and cohabitation status as mediators, while controlling for confounders. Results A total of 254 non-Western immigrant and 7,901 Danish-born patients with DLBCL were included. Median age at diagnosis was 58 and 69, and the proportion of low-risk patients (aaIPI 0) was 29.8 % and 24.3%, respectively. No clinically significant differences in time-to-treatment were found, with a median of 21 days (IQR; 10 - 28) for non-Western immigrant patients and 17 days (IQR; 9 - 27) for Danish-born patients (Table 1). Crude 5-year OS was 68% (95% CI; 63 - 74) and 57% (56 - 58) for non-Western immigrant and Danish-born patients, respectively (P < 0.001, Figure 1). The IPW Cox model yielded a hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality for non-Western immigrants compared to Danish-born patients of 1.02 (0.94 - 1.11, P = 0.541), indicating an insignificant causal effect of immigration status on OS. By considering the indirect effect on OS mediated through aaIPI, difference in aaIPI between non-Western immigrant and Danish-born patients did not significantly impact OS with a HR of 0.98 (0.88 - 1.09, P = 0.713). Similarly, the indirect effect mediated through cohabitation was insignificant with a HR of 1.00 (0.90 - 1.12, P = 0.987). Lastly, the indirect effect mediated through income quartile was significant with a HR of 1.19 (1.06 - 1.32, P = 0.002). The direct effect of immigration status, which was not mediated through any of the above mediators, was 0.88 (0.78 - 0.99, P = 0.035). This implies that the income disparity between non-Western immigrant and Danish-born patients (indirect effect) has a significant negative effect on the survival of the non-Western immigrant patients, and that there is an unexplained (direct) positive effect of being a non-Western immigrant patient on OS compared to Danish-born patients. Conclusion We found that non-Western immigrant patients were younger, had similar aaIPI risk scores and time-to-treatment, and superior crude OS compared to Danish-born patients, with differences in crude OS most likely driven by age differences. The indirect effect of immigration status mediated through income was found significantly negative for the non-Western immigrants, while the unexplained (direct) effect was found significantly positive, seemingly cancelling each other out, resulting in an insignificant total causal effect.

Total pain and social suffering: marginalised Greenlanders' end-of-life in Denmark.

With a focus on socially marginalised Greenlanders in Denmark, this study explores the significance of the concept of social suffering for the concept of total pain. Greenland is a former Danish colony and Greenlanders retain the right to Danish citizenship with all the benefits of access to the resources of Denmark as any other Danish citizen. However, Greenlanders are overrepresented amongst the most socially disadvantaged in Denmark. They have a disproportionately high risk of early death, often undiagnosed and untreated. This study reports on research conducted with socially marginalised Greenlanders and some of the professionals who work with them. It interrogates the concept of total pain as developed by Cicely Saunders, the founder of modern palliative care. Saunders noted that pain at the end-of-life was not adequately explained by symptoms of a disease process because it was more like a situation that engulfed every aspect of the patient and those close to them; it included physical, psychological, spiritual, and social dimensions. We agree with other scholars that the social dimension of the total pain experience is underexplored. By drawing on the theoretical and methodological lens of intersectionality, our work with marginalised Greenlanders has enabled us to describe the multiple and intersecting social forces that create social suffering for this group. This leads us to conclude that social suffering is not entirely an individual experience but a product of social harm and disadvantage, poverty, inequality, and the various legacies of colonialism, which combine to place some citizens in a harmed condition. Our findings also draw us into a discussion with the concept of total pain and its neglect of the socially constructed nature of social suffering. We conclude by indicating ways in which the concept of total pain can be informed by a more thoroughgoing concept of social suffering. We conclude, with others, that there is a problem of inequity in the way that end-of-life care is currently distributed. Finally, we point to ways in which an understanding of social suffering can help to address the exclusion of some of the most vulnerable citizens from appropriate end-of-life care.

Imagining and building the nation through citizenship education: an interculturalist perspective on the case of Denmark

ABSTRACT Citizenship education in Denmark is considered as having a long history, not least as an important part of the folk high school tradition. More recently, it has become an important ingredient in the process for immigrants to obtain Danish citizenship. The focus of this paper is to analyse how the above types of citizenship education build on a particular imagining of the nation by engaging with the tradition and content of citizenship education as linked with the folk high schools and the preparation for the citizenship test. This is analysed within a critical interculturalist perspective and with Denmark as case.

Slipping and Sliding: Wielding Power with Slippery Constructions of Danishness

This article addresses implicit and underlying discrimination in public and private interactions in Denmark. In particular, it examines racial structural discrimination in regard to citizenship and belonging in Danish contexts. Two cases are presented in this analysis, both from the fall of 2015, in which mixed race figures either directly or indirectly. The first case is a public debate concerning Danish citizenship as presented in news coverage and the second is an everyday private interaction at a dinner party in which the author was a participant. The study assesses how (racialized) Danishness, citizenship, and entitlement are constructed in the two cases. Further, it introduces the notion of “slipperiness” as a mechanism in discriminatory interactions (in regard to defining “Danishness”) and discusses how this notion functions to maintain and enforce racial discrimination.

Letter to the Editor

In his review of my book Labor Pioneers: Economy, Labor, and Migration in Filipino-Danish Relations 1950–2015, Frank Caestecker misguides the reader in the first sentence. He states, “Filipino migration to Denmark (and Europe) can be split into two different flows: labor migration and marriage migration” (Labor 18:1). That may be the reviewer's analytical position, but it is not mine. In the book I argue explicitly against this categorization. Those who came in 1960–73 called themselves the Filipino Pioneers, and the majority carried or obtained shortly after arrival work and residence permits tied to their own person—not to an employer or spouse. From 1974, when Danish authorities implemented a so-called immigration stop, it became increasingly difficult for Philippine citizens to migrate in the same way. The easiest way to gain legal access to the Danish labor market became to marry someone with Danish citizenship or permanent residence. Does that make the post-1974 arrivals marriage migrants?In my view, that term obscures realities. Labor Pioneers shows that most post-1974 arrivals, just like the Pioneers, came in the search of a more prosperous and secure life for themselves—and often their (extended) families. Many found work in the same workplaces as the Pioneers. In the 1990s, a new legal opportunity to enter Denmark without having to marry opened to Filipinas/os: the au pair scheme, where young people live and work in a private household doing “chores” in exchange for accommodation and an “allowance.” Many of these migrants continued to move from one temporary permit to another in several European countries, but some married in Denmark, which was one of the few ways they could prolong their legal stay. Does that make them marriage migrants?The reviewer goes on to say that “the marriage migrant is only mentioned when these mostly female partners of Danish citizens become active on the labor market and interact with Filipino labor migrants.” This implies that there are Filipina “marriage migrants” who do not “become active on the labor market.” In my experience—having interviewed dozens of migrants from various arrival periods, having done participant observation and collected vast numbers of empirical materials from individuals and organizations—few, if any, migrants come without a plan to work and earn. What structurally changed over time were not the motivations for migrating (even if every individual has their own story) but the conditions for entering, residing, and working legally in Denmark. The implications of this reconfiguration of labor migration are explored in my book from various perspectives, one of them being life stories—which the reviewer finds much too detailed.The lack of appreciation for details is also reflected in the facts that the reviewer gets wrong. To take but two examples, Caestecker states that forty-nine Filipinas were recruited in 1973 to a Danish hotel “through a state agency.” They were not, for the simple reason that this agency was only established a year later. Most of “the 49ers” had been recommended by Filipina/o workers already residing in Denmark and working at other hotels in town. However, a couple had been referred by Philippine labor officials, and a woman from Department of Labor escorted the group to Copenhagen, leading me to investigate state involvement in labor export prior to the establishment of Overseas Employment Development Board (OEDB; precursor to Philippine Overseas Employment Administration). I unravel this part of the story through both oral history and archival studies using materials in the Philippines and Denmark that to my knowledge have not been explored before. This apparently escaped the reviewer, who claims that my “empirical material is mainly based on oral sources.” The reviewer also states that after 1975, “labor migration from the Philippines did not resume until the late 1990s.” This is of course wrong, and an entire chapter describes specifically how migration continued despite the formal ban (including how the OEDB continued to deploy workers to Denmark).The reviewer ends by regretting that I did not make a comparative European study rather than focusing on “the Danish case,” thus ignoring extensive references to other Nordic countries and the European context more broadly. It is not, however, a comparative study, which I do not disagree might be interesting and useful. What I disagree with is the reviewer's idea that a study paying equal attention to all parts of Europe could be completed with “little additional effort.” In 1975, Europe was the destination of one in every four temporary Filipino migrants, and today it is home to around a million Filipinos. Labor Pioneers is a small contribution to this enormous—and largely unexplored—field. May ample future efforts be put into excavating this rich part of labor and migration history.

Deconstructing Straight Citizenship

Abstract ON NOVEMBER 25 2019, DANISH HISTORIAN NIELS NYEGAARD RECEIVED THE NATIONAL KRAKA AWARD FOR AN OUTSTANDING AND INNOVATIVE CONTRIBUTION TO GENDER RESEARCH IN DENMARK FOR HIS PHD DISSERTATION PERVERSE CRIMINALS AND GOOD CITIZENS: HOMOSEXUALITY, HETERONORMATIVITY AND CITIZENSHIP IN COPENHAGEN’S PUBLIC SPHERE, 1906-11. NYEGAARD DEFENDED HIS DISSERTATION AT AARHUS UNIVERSITY IN THE FALL OF 2018. THE DISSERTATION CONDUCTED A GENEALOGICAL STUDY OF MODERN DANISH CITIZENSHIP’S HETERONORMATIVE FOUNDATIONS IN EARLY-TWENTIETH-CENTURY DENMARK. IN HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH, NYEGAARD OUTLINED THE MAJOR CONCLUSIONS FROM HIS DISSERTATION. HE FURTHER PRESENTED ITS FOUCAULDIAN AND QUEER THEORETICAL AXIOMS AND ITS GENEALOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSIONS ABOUT SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP, HETERONORMATIVITY, HOMONORMATIVITY AND HOMONATIONALISM.

Fairness og statsborgerskab

The Danish requirements for citizenship are often grounded on an ideal about rewarding personal effort and responsibility. A similar ideal is known from luck egalitarianism, a widely known and accepted theory of justice. This article unfolds a luck egalitarian argument in defence of the Danish requirements and investigates, in light of this argument, whether the requirements relevantly reflect effort and responsibility. The article concludes dismissively and offers a number of ways of improving Danish citizenship policy in terms of fairness.

Becoming Citizen: Spatial and Expressive Acts when Strangers Move In

This article examines the conditions and expressions of how refugees in Denmark become citizens. Through visual and collaborative ethnographic fieldwork, which took place during 2017, the case study follows the everyday life of an Eritrean community living in a former retirement home in the town of Hørsholm. The article investigates how becoming citizen can be understood as mediatised, spatial and expressive negotiations between the refugees and the local society. We look at the conditions of becoming citizen through the local framing of the Eritrean community—understood as political, social, cultural and material framing conditions. We draw on Engin Isin’s concept of performative citizenship (Isin, 2017), and we suggest how everyday life and becoming potentially hold the capacity to re-formulate and add to the understanding of citizenship. We suggest that becoming citizen is not merely about obtaining Danish citizenship and civic rights nor tantamount with settling down. On the contrary, the analysis shows that becoming citizen is a process of expressed and performed desires connected to global becomings beyond the sedentary citizenship, and therefore holds capacity for transforming and diversifying the notion of citizenship.

Who are the people? Refugees and access to Danish citizenship

Denmark has some of the most restrictive citizenship rules in Europe, with requirements for long residence, language, knowledge, self-support and crime. Citizenship implies voting rights and the right to stand for election in national elections. As such it determines full democratic inclusion. Today, approximately 376,000 adult residents lack Danish citizenship. Using public registry data we investigate whether refugees who arrived as adults in 2001-09 have been able to fulfil the language, self-support and criminal record requirements. We investigate which requirements are most exclusionary, and what difference it makes if they were made less demanding. We further examine how many residents with Danish citizenship are able to meet these requirements. On this basis, we discuss their implications for Danish democracy, and whether they are consistent with normative conceptions of fairness.

Heteronormative Foundations of Modern Citizenship in Early-twentieth-century Denmark

During 1906–1907 the Great Morality Scandal shocked Copenhagen’s general public by disclosing a handful of respectable bourgeois men as secret homosexuals. This article examines how the city’s working-class newspapers attempted to politicize the scandal by questioning the bourgeoisie’s privileged citizen status on the grounds of their supposed homosexuality, and by claiming that the partly disenfranchised working classes were worthy of full citizen status since they were heterosexual members of society. The article draws upon a theoretical framework that includes queer theoretical critiques of heterosexual norms and ideas of citizenship as a series of performative acts. It argues that working-class writings about the Great Morality Scandal constructed access to full Danish citizenship around the embodiment and enactment of heterosexual desire. They thus contributed to the foundations of modern Danish citizenship as distinctly heteronormative.

A nation at risk? – Danish citizenship policy under austerity

Abstract Thanks to the features of the Scandinavian welfare system, Denmark may offer a special case in Europe as far as the relationship between austerity and citizenship is concerned. Yet, two interlinked tendencies in the new millennium may explain an experience of austerity in Denmark. One is related to changes in economic governance and welfare distribution while the other is related to perceived threats to Danish culture and security. In the article, we first briefly outline the development of the Danish welfare model and its recent transformations in relation to changes in legislation on youth unemployment, youth education and the cash benefits system. Second, we turn to the issue of Danish citizenship policy focusing on citizenship education, anti-radicalization measures and ‘terror packages’. We argue that while these political initiatives can only in part be explained as austerity measures, they are linked to general effects of transnational processes and accompanying changes in Danish welfare policies and Danish national identity images – with important (educative) citizenship implications.

From strict refusal to full recognition: why did Denmark change its mind on dual citizenship?

From September 1, 2015 onwards amendments to the Danish citizenship law are in force allowing people to have another citizenship in addition to the Danish one. Denmark awarded recognition of dual citizenship rights both to Danish emigrants and naturalized immigrants in Denmark. But even with dual citizenship having thus been recognized, Danish citizenship continues to be based on a clear ethno-cultural identity, one oriented more towards a strongly constrained rather than a broad-minded approach to citizenship. The bestowal of universal dual citizenship both to emigrants and immigrants was encouraged by tendencies of global migration; aspirations to immigrant integration; defending the interests of Danish-born persons who lost their Danish citizenship; and the search for additional opportunities for regulating the behavior of immigrant populations. Dual citizenship was favored by the prevailing political situation with its mixture of liberal and nationalist considerations now dominant in Danish citizenship politics. The country’s shift from a strict rejection of dual citizenship to its universal recognition was conditioned by extended and lengthy political debates marked by the collection and analysis of information about the situation in other lands and the problems and risks associated with dual citizenship. Over a longer period of time these debates diminished the ranks of those who opposed dual citizenship on principle. Denmark’s case is significant because it shows that dual citizenship can achieve recognition in an environment of strictly observed traditions of ethno-cultural (if not exactly ethno-linguistic) identity and severely restricted citizenship. This recognition of dual citizenship could not have been accomplished without the maintenance of a strictly limited policy of naturalization.

“Ich zweifle nicht, dass man hier für die Bauforschung sorgen könnte.” Nyt lys på H.O. Langes kamp for et dansk videnskabeligt institut i Egypten 1938-39

Lars Schreiber Pedersen: “Ich zweifle nicht, dass man hier für die Bauforschung sorgen könnte.” [“I do not doubt that one could take care of construction research here.”] New light shed on H. O. Lange’s struggle for a Danish scientific institute in Egypt 1938–39
 Fund og Forskning 46 from 2007 contained an article about the Egyptologist and head librarian at The Royal Library from 1901–1924, H. O. Lange’s attempt to help his long-time friend, the German-Jewish Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt and his wife Emilie to acquire Danish citizenship and at the same time ensure Denmark and Copenhagen University a scientific institute in Cairo in Egypt. As early as 2007, it was clear that parts of the initial correspondence were missing between Ludwig Borchardt and later, after Ludwig Borchardt’s death on 12 August 1938, his wife Emilie Borchardt and H. O. Lange. Lange quoted diligently from these letters when he promoted Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt’s case in the summer and autumn of 1938 to several Danish ministries and at Copenhagen University. Part of the supposedly lost correspondence, including 14 letters from Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt to H. O. Lange, as well as three response drafts from H. O. Lange showed up a few years ago at Copenhagen University and constitute the focal point of this article. The letters provide new and detailed insight into H. O. Lange’s efforts to ensure the Danish state and Copenhagen University the scientific institute in Egypt. An institute, which could help highlight the leadership of Danish Egyptology in the Nordic countries. The rediscovered letters also document how tight a grip Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt had on the institute, and how unwilling the couple really were to entrust the institute and its corresponding assets to the Danish State. The letters leave the impression of a married couple, who did not hesitate to play close friends and peers (George Reisner, Allan H. Gardiner and H. O. Lange) against one another based on a supposed risk that the institution and its assets could be seized by National Socialist Germany. However, the foundation created by the couple using private funds in the district of Zamalek in Cairo, was never close to ending up in Danish, English or American hands. Since the alleged risk of seizing the institute and its corresponding assets in the late summer of 1938 had blown over, Emilie Borchardt gradually retracted the feelers she had put out. In the three countries, which participated in the battle to take over the institute, namely USA, England and Denmark, civil servants and politicians were in the end not willing to pay the price presented by the Borchardts for the scientific institute, plus the granting of citizenship. Today, the institute bears the name Schweizerisches Institut für Ägyptische Bauforschung und Altertumskunde (Swiss Institute for Architectural and Archaeological Research on Ancient Egypt) and continues to be financed by the foundation created by Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt.

Duration of residence and disease occurrence among refugees and family reunited immigrants: test of the ‘healthy migrant effect’ hypothesis

The 'healthy migrant effect' (HME) hypothesis postulates that health selection has a positive effect on migrants' health outcomes, especially in the first years after migration. We examined the potential role of the HME by assessing the association between residence duration and disease occurrence. We performed a historical prospective cohort study. We included migrants who obtained residence permits in Denmark between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2010 (n = 114,331). Occurrence of severe conditions was identified through linkage to the Danish National Patient Register. Hazard Ratios (HRs) were modelled for disease incidence by residence duration since arrival (0-5 years; 0-10 years; 0-18 years) adjusting for age and sex. Compared with Danish-born individuals, refugees and family reunited immigrants had lower HRs of stroke and breast cancer within 5 years after arrival; however, HRs increased at longer follow-up. For example, HRs of stroke among refugees increased from 0.77 (95% CI: 0.66; 0.91) to 0.96 (95% CI: 0.88; 1.05). For ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and diabetes, refugees and family reunited migrants had higher HRs within 5 years after arrival, and most HRs had increased by end of follow-up. For example, HRs of IHD among family reunited migrants increased from 1.29 (95% CI: 1.17; 1.42) to 1.43 (95% CI: 1.39; 1.52). In contrast, HRs for TB and HIV/AIDS showed a consistent decrease over time. Our analyses of the effect of duration of residence on disease occurrence among migrants imply that, when explaining migrants' advantageous health outcomes, the ruling theory of the HME should be used with caution, and other explanatory models should be included.

“Sagen har den største Betydning for vort Land”. H.O. Langes kamp for et dansk arkæologisk institut i Ægypten

In early 1938, the Danish Egyptologist H.O. Lange received a letter from his colleague and friend of many years, the German-Jewish Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt. Ludwig Borchardt was the former Director of the German Archaeological Institute in Egypt, but following his retirement had set up his own institute in Cairo, financed by a Swiss foundation established for the purpose. In his letter Borchardt wrote about the latest clampdowns on Jewish citizens in Nazi Germany, which meant that all Jewish German citizens in Germany and abroad had to have their property registered. Ludwig Borchardt feared that his property would be confiscated and did not intend to comply with the decree. He was worried that his decision, when it became known, would result in him and his wife losing their German citizenship. In order to protect the institute in Cairo, as well as himself and his wife, Mimi, Ludwig Borchardt offered to transfer the institute to an academic institution in Denmark in return for Danish citizenship for himself and his wife. H.O. Lange understood the importance of his friend’s letter and put the matter personally to Foreign Minister P. Munch. H.O. Lange wanted to help his old friend – he had known Ludwig Borchardt for more than half a century – out of his difficult situation, but he also saw an opportunity to acquire for Denmark a valuable institute in Egypt that would put the University of Copenhagen at the centre of Egyptology in Scandinavia. During the summer and autumn of 1938, ministers and officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Education discussed the possibility of acceding to the German-Jewish couple’s wishes and securing the academically important institute for Denmark. In the end it all came to nothing because of the Ministry of the Interior’s unwillingness to dispense with current regulations and grant Mimi Borchardt Danish citizenship in the next Nationality Act in March 1939 (in the meantime Ludwig Borchardt had died on 12 August 1938). But there was also reluctance of the part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education. Acquisition of the institute by Denmark might be perceived in Germany as a deliberate evasion of German law. The University of Copenhagen, which the institute would have come under, recognised the institute’s academic value, but feared that the matter might damage the relationship between Danish and German academia. No one wanted a confrontation with Denmark’s Nazi neighbour in the autumn of 1938. Denmark was not the only country to be approached by Ludwig and Mimi Borchardt. The couple had also put out feelers in the USA (Harvard) and Britain (Oxford), but these countries were not willing to relax their citizenship rules in return for being made a gift of the institute in Cairo either. Nazi Germany never did lay claim to the institute in Cairo, which Mimi Borchardt secretly made over to the Swiss foundation a few weeks after Ludwig Borchardt’s death for safety’s sake. After the end of World War II the institute reopened its doors in 1949/50 as the Swiss Archaeological Institute in Egypt. Neither H.O. Lange nor Mimi Borchardt lived to see the opening, however. H.O. Lange died in 1943, Mimi Borchardt in 1948.

The co-construction of understanding in Danish naturalization interviews

This article explores excerpts from Danish naturalization interviews. A naturalization interview is a conversation between a Danish police officer and an applicant for Danish citizenship. During the naturalization interview, the police officer decides whether the applicant fulfils a requirement by law. According to the police officers, the language requirement is fulfilled if applicants are able to understand what is said and make themselves understood. The onus is on the applicant to prove that he or she can do just that. However, this article argues that understanding is something that is co-constructed – the police officer is just as involved in the establishment of understanding as is the applicant. By analysing and comparing how different police officers respond to applicants’ answers – how police officers respond in a sequential third position – it is shown that police officers do in fact play a decisive role in the joint understanding established during the naturalization interviews. The naïve notion that it is possible to test applicants’ abilities to understand by involving applicants in so-called natural conversations with police officers is thus disclosed as – naïve.

Risk Factors of Entry in Out-of-Home Care: An Empirical Study of Danish Birth Cohorts, 1981–2003

This paper presents the results of research on children’s risk of being placed in out-of-home care. The purpose is: firstly, to compare children placed in out-of-home care with non-placed children, secondly, to estimate the children’s risk of entry into care and finally, to compare the results of this study with the results from similar studies. The study is based on register data from the Statistics Denmark. The sample includes all children with Danish citizenship who were born 1981–2003. In order to estimate the risk of being placed in out-of-home care, we use information about the child, the mother and the father. We discovered that especially children who had a mother on disability pension, children who came from broken homes but also children whose mothers were unemployed or receiving social assistance and children whose mothers had a conviction had a high risk of being placed in care. The mother’s characteristics are more important risk factors than the corresponding risk factors of the father. The results, the applied method and the epidemiological inspired analysis make an opportunity to discuss the central concepts and methods of calculation of statistical association, risk, prediction and causal inference in applied sociology and social work.