The problematisation of refugees in Danish Asylum Policies

Schødt, Maria

4. term

Development and International Relations, Master

2020

2020-12-21

39 pages

The Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiet) has gone through a paradigm shift in their asylum policies. This shift was evident in the party’s political discourse, when concerning the problematisation of refugee. In this thesis those discourses will be analysed using Carol Lee Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach, in order to explore the problematisation of refugees within the political discourse as well as using the questions approach uses to get a critical understanding of the consequences of the problematisation. A further understand into the problematisation will be found using the social constructed approach to understanding target populations within policy designs by Schneider and Ingram (1997), where they make use of categorisations of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. These categories will be explored and analysed in order to understand how refugees are being framed in the Danish asylum policies and political discourse. Additionally, there will be a look at how the refugees’ rights are being represented, which will be done using Hannah Arendt critique of The Human Rights ‘the right to have rights’. The scepticism towards the international agreements in the context of both nation-states as well as supranational institutions, will further an understanding of how the problematisation of refugees is bring reproduced.

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