Hyper-precarious processes in and beyond the Danish Integration Programme

Based on an ethnographic study in and around a local community organisation engaged in the Danish ‘integration programme’ in 2018-2019, this paper explores the concept of hyper-precarity suggested by Lewis et.al (2015), as relevant in understanding the various forms of ‘precarious inclusion’ shaping the fragile relations between refugees, the welfare state and local communities. While ‘precarity’, stemming from labour market research, can be understood as a central feature of modern welfare states (Standing 2011), refugees enrolled in the ‘integration programme’ authorized by the Danish state, are not only exposed to precarious work, but to precarization of most aspects of everyday life. This expansion of precarious processes might be termed ‘hyper-precarity’, a concept referring to the complex production of multi-layered uncertainties encompassing transnational family life, loss, local isolation, poverty, opaque bureaucratic procedures and legal insecurity, governing everyday attempts to build sustainable lives. Caught in a powerful nexus of immigration and labour market policies, accelerated by the recent shift from ‘integration’ to ‘repatriation’ (adopted in the Act of L 140), many refugees experience severe stress, vulnerability and, in terms of labour market inclusion, exploitation (Jørgensen & Shapiro 2019). Zooming in, not on the question of what precarity is, but rather on what it does, we follow Jørgensen (2015) in his exploration of precarity in practice. By examining how refugees are experiencing and navigating various forms of ‘work integration’ and fragile relations to representatives of the welfare state and local community actors, we argue for an understanding of precarious processes, both including and excluding, sensitive to context-specific variations of everyday life. Thereby, the paper contribute to the discussion of ‘precarious inclusion’ in the Nordic welfare states.