1. “We all have a responsibility… to save them”: Immigrants, Gays, and Those Caught in Between

Andrew DJ Shield, Immigrants in the Sexual Revolution: Perceptions and Participation in Northwest Europe (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–3, 7fn7–9. Wilders delivered the first quotation to the Danish People’s Party in July 2008, and the latter to the Free Press Society in Sweden in October 2012.

Ibid.

Milla Mølgaard, “Hver tredje nydanske homoseksuelle har overvejet selvmord” [One in Three New Danish Homosexuals Has Contemplated Suicide”], Politiken, 30 September 2015, https://​politiken.​dk/​forbrugogliv/​sundhedogmotion/​art5591593/​Hver-tredje-nydanske-homoseksuelle-har-overvejet-selvmord.

Britta Søndergaard, “Hver tredje homoseksuelle nydansker har overvejet selvmord” [One in Three Homosexual New Danes Has Contemplated Suicide], Kristeligt Dagblad, 30 September 2015, https://​www.​kristeligt-dagblad.​dk/​danmark/​hver-tredje-homoseksuelle-nydansker-har-overvejet-selvmord.

Jan Sjunesson, quoted in Daniel Sallegren [in Swedish], “Arrangören bakom Järva Pride vill se fler förortsparader” [Organizers of Järva Pride Want to See More Suburban Parades], Gaybladet.se (30 July 2015), last accessed Autumn 2019 via http://​gaybladet.​se/​arrangoren-bakom-jarva-pride-vill-se-fler-forortsparader-234987/​.

Bjarke Følner et al., Nydanske LGBT-personers levevilkår [New-Danish LGBT People’s Living Conditions] (Copenhagen: Als Research, 2015).

E.g. Mølgaard; Søndergaard; Mads Bonde Broberg and Simon Roliggaard Andersen, “Undersøgelse: Hver ottende indvandrerhomo er blevet udsat for vold” [Every Eighth Immigrant Homo (or Gay/Lesbian) Has Been Exposed to Violence], Jyllands-Posten, 1 October 2015, https://​jyllands-posten.​dk/​indland/​ECE8072616/​Unders%C3%B8gelse-Hver-ottende-indvandrerhomo-er-blevet-udsat-for-vold/​.

Mølgaard.

Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (September 2002): 785; Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

At the time of writing this, DF’s most recent Facebook posts called for constituents to reject the following: halal meat, special religious considerations for Muslims, and financial support for refugees in the municipalities: Dansk Folkparti on Facebook; accessed November 2017 via https://​www.​facebook.​com/​danskfolkeparti/​.

DF wanted to pass a “Rights of the Child” bill that would have insisted on a child’s right to a father and a mother: [in Danish] “The Danish People’s Party says no to homosexuals’ right to adopt children – a no that we stick firmly to. And we say a resounding no to church weddings for homosexuals. And we do this out of respect for children, for marriage, for the law, for tradition and for the church.”

Pia Kjærsgaard, “Pia Kjærsgaards ugebrev: Homoseksuelle kirke-vielser er ikke en kamp for værdier men en kamp imod ægteskabet” [Pia Kjærsgaard’s Weekly Letter: Homosexual Church-Weddings Are Not a Struggle for Rights, but a Struggle Against Marriage], Press Release of the Danish People’s Party, 22 March 2010, https://​danskfolkeparti.​dk/​pia-kjaersgaards-ugebrev-homoseksuelle-kirke-vielser-er-ikke-en-kamp-for-vaerdier-men-en-kamp-imod-aegteskabet/​.

E.g. the political debate at VerdensKulturCentret in June 2015.

See also: Jesus G. Smith, “‘No Fats, Fems, or Blacks’: The Role of Sexual Racism in Online Stratification and Sexual Health for Gay Men” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 2017).

Sabaah Debat, “Tænder ikke på asiater” [I’m Not Turned on by Asians], 19 February 2013, https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​qvSuHQPFWGw.

“Grindr and Sex Culture,” Panel at Copenhagen Pride with Kristian Møller, Fahad Saeed, Niels Jansen, and Andrew Shield, 16 August 2017, http://​kanal-1.​dk/​14-grindr-sexkultur-lystfulde-politiske-hadefulde-perspektiver/​.

Alexander Dhoest, “Media, Visibility and Sexual Identity Among Gay Men with a Migration Background,” Sexualities 19, no. 4 (2016): 412–431; Alexander Dhoest, and Lukasz Szulc, “Navigating Online Selves: Social, Cultural and Material Contexts of Social Media Use by Diasporic Gay Men,” Social Media + Society 2, no. 4 (2016): 1–10.

All interviewees provided informed consent about their participation in a research project that would be disseminated in international publications and presentations. Interviewees were told that pseudonyms would be used, and most agreed. In two cases, interviewees enthusiastically offered their real names; but I chose to pseudonymize them, partly so that I would not seek their approval before publication. Having completed ethnographic research in the United States, I have undergone training in research ethics by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The interviews involved no risk to the interviewees with one exception: the possible sharing of sensitive information including “outing” an informant. Some constellations of information are more personally identifiable than others; thus, I redacted neighborhoods of residence, occupations, areas of study, and references to extended families in Scandinavia. Chapter 3 discusses my avoidance of “personally identifiable information” and other considerations about anonymity; see also Sven Brinkmann and Steinar Kvale, InterViews. Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing (London: Sage, 2015), 68–69.

Scandinavian words or phrases scattered the conversation, such as technical terms related to immigration. Arabic was not used beyond rapport-building.

This phrasing is consistent with their 2015 Press Kit, which proclaimed that Grindr was a “lifestyle brand” that “connect[ed] gay men to the world that brings them happiness,” and which had “supplanted the gay bar and online dating sites as the best way for gay men to meet the right person.” “Fact Sheet [2015],” Press and News, Grindr; downloaded Summer 2015 via Grindr.​com.

“Fact Sheet [2017],” Press and News, Grindr; downloaded March 2017 via Grindr.​com. Emphasis added.

Grindr, “About,” last accessed Fall 2017 via https://​www.​grindr.​com/​. Emphasis added.

Robert V. Kozinets, Netnography: Redefined (Los Angeles: Sage, 2015). When Kozinets wrote the 2009 edition of Netnography, he estimated that there were “at least 100 million,” though perhaps more, who participated in online communities as part of their regular social experience (22fn1). In the 2015 edition, he noted that there were 1.3 billion active monthly users of Facebook, as well as 6.9 billion mobile-phone subscriptions (including individuals with multiple phone subscriptions) (2 and 22fn1).

Note: This section is one of several about race in Denmark; see also Chapters 2 (race online, literature), 3 (self-reflections on race), 5 (racism), and 6 (racial drop-down menus).

The former Soviet Union also had a unique history of race reporting on censuses. 

Andreassen and Ahmed-Andresen, 28. Rikke Andreassen noted in 2014, “Despite the different etymological meanings of these terms, they are often used interchangeably” in Denmark.

Myong.

Andreassen and Uzma Ahmed-Andresen, 28.

Anna Adeniji, “Searching for Words: Becoming Mixed Race, Black and Swedish,” in Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe, ed. Michael McEachrane (London: Routledge, 2014), 156.

Nordic scholarship increasingly examines racialized (and postcolonial) positions, including critical reflections on whiteness, inspired by theorists such as Stuart Hall, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. See Suvi Keskinen and Rikke Andreassen, “Developing Theoretical Perspectives on Racialisation and Migration,” The Journal of Nordic Migration Research 7, no. 2 (June 2017): 64–69 (Special issue: “Developing Theoretical Perspectives on Racialisation and Migration.”). On whiteness and the myth of “colorblindness” in a Danish context, see discussion of Myong in Chapter 6.

See, for example, the following selection in English: Peter Hervik, “Limits of Tolerance and Limited Tolerance: How Tolerant Are the Danes?” in Racism in Metropolitan Areas, ed. Rik Pinxten and Ellen Preckler (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005); Peter Hervik, The Annoying Difference: The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism and Populism in the Post-1989 World (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011); Susi Meret and Birte Siim, “Gender, Populism and Politics of Belonging: Discourses of Right-Wing Populist Parties in Denmark, Norway and Austria,” in Negotiating Gender and Diversity in an Emergent European Public Sphere, ed. Birte Siim and Monika Mokre (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Adeniji.

The 36-kilometer radius used in quantitative data collection (see Chapter 3) includes a bit of Roskilde (Denmark), but stops short of other cities in the region, such as Helsingør (Denmark), Lund (Sweden), and Helsingborg (Sweden). The radius does not include the parts of northern and eastern Sealand that are sometimes included in the greater metropolitan area of Copenhagen.

The acceptance rate dropped from 85% in 2015, to 72% in 2016. Denmark had 3479 applications in 2017 (with Syrians as the largest group), of whom 36% were accepted. Michala Clante Bendixen, “How Many Are Coming, and from Where?” Refugees.dk (information on refugees in Denmark), last accessed Fall 2019 via http://​refugees.​dk/​en/​facts/​numbers-and-statistics/​how-many-are-coming-and-from-where/​. Note: this website has been updated consistently for several years.

Though the number of applicants dropped in Sweden since 2016, the number of people granted asylum still remained (disproportionately) higher in Sweden than Denmark: 27,205 applications were accepted in 2017, and 11,217 in 2018. Swedish Migration Agency, “Asylum Decisions [Year]”, last accessed Fall 2019 via https://​www.​migrationsverket​.​se/​English/​About-the-Migration-Agency/​Statistics.​html.