Of Refugees and Narratives: An Explanation and Analysis of Integration and Refugee Narratives in Comtemporary Denmark

Sammanfattning: This bachelor thesis in social anthropology researches the subject of integration and refugee narratives in contemporary Danish society. It is firstly a study of what integration means in Danish culture and how integration is debated in the Danish public debate. Secondly it is a study of how the Danish public discourse reflects itself in the refugee narratives. Moreover, this thesis investigates the nature of refugee narratives and how they can be interpreted in context with the Danish asylum process. The fieldwork for this thesis was done with the Netnography method, meaning that all fieldwork done for the study was done online at specific internet pages. Then the information harvested from these internet pages has been used in the analysis alongside the relevant theory. The theory in this study has been focused around Marita Eastmond’s (2007) theoretical insights about refugee narratives . It has also relied heavily on other anthropologists who are on the forefront of this research field, namely Mikkel Rytter (2019), Zachary Whyte (2011), Liisa Malkki (1992) and the collaborative work of Mathilde Skov Danstrøm & Zachary Whyte (2019). I argue throughout this thesis that the Danish public debate regarding integration does affect the refugees’ way of telling their narratives. But I also argue that refugees’ narratives are something that can be ‘acted out’ in a certain way depending on the intended audience. Hereby meant that a refugee will explain their narrative differently to an asylum committee than they would to a close personal friend. I moreover find that there is a form of cultural capital to be found in these refugee narratives, that I explain as ‘refugee capital’.