Mentoring Migrants: A Qualitative Study of Needs, Employment & Integration in Denmark

Sammanfattning: In the wake of the so-called Refugee Crisis in 2015, Danish Government reformed the policy framework for immigrant integration. To support and promote the new changes, the Danish Government offered project funding to set up volunteer-based mentoring programmes aimed at improving newcomers’ chances of accessing the labour market. Through qualitative interviews this thesis explores how needs of the newcomers are constructed and targeted within eight specific projects. Drawing on theoretical perspectives offered by Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu, the study shows how a variety of actors – volunteer and professional, state and non-state – engage in promoting employment as the locus of immigrant integration, and how the needs of the migrant mentees are constructed and negotiated in relation to needs and requirements of key actors in the field of immigration. The study highlights the tensions involved when utilising volunteers as mentors to perform predefined activities.