Reconstituting Imagined Communities of Whiteness Through Racial Banishment: The Proposed Deportation Centre at Lindholm and the “Ghetto Law” in Denmark

Abstract

This article links the proposal to establish a deportation centre on the island of Lindholm off the coast of Zealand, Denmark, and its extensive media coverage, with the implementation and media portrayal of the “Ghetto Law” aimed at neighbourhoods of racialised Danish citizens. These cases connect migration and urban studies to examine how external and internal politics intersect through concepts of possessive whiteness, Othering, evictability, and racial banishment, especially regarding migrants and racialised citizens. The article argues that evictability, racial banishment, and whiteness imaginaries are rooted in racial dispossession, mobile containment, and immobilisation to control proximity to whiteness in terms of ownership and civil rights. It further contends that this dynamic reflects colonial hierarchies that create distinctions between, on the one hand, an imagined whiteness characterised by peaceful, secure homogeneity, civility, and prosperity, and, on the other hand, racialised individuals perceived as unreliable, unproductive, and threatening, associated with chaos and disorder.