‘The tipping point’––interrogating racialized nationalist affects in Danish high schools

Abstract

In this article, we explore the fear and anxiety reflected within and generated by educational dispersal policies related to racialized minoritized students in Danish high schools. The article examines the production of high schools as sites of integration within policy and discourse and how racialized minoritized students are represented as ‘perpetually arriving’ and challenging the social cohesiveness of the Danish high school. Our conception of racialized nationalist affect captures how ideas of education and integration are bound up with racialized notions reinforcing fear, anxiety, and concern in response to a perceived threat of diversity that needs to be managed through dispersal policies. Drawing on existing policy documents related to student dispersal plans and interviews with high-school leaders and teachers, we critically analyze how the high school, the nation, and racialized minoritized students are affectively and discursively produced, perceived, and disciplined.