CfP: KKF - Racialization and Racism in Denmark

In recent years there has been an increase in calls for critical scholarship on race, racialization, and (anti-)racism in many fields, including those of gender and feminist studies in the Nordics. These calls emerge during a time when intensified attention coalesce around the global Movement for Black Lives, the protests that transpired from the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) claim, and the manifestations of anti-colonial interventions such as the application of red paint to the statue of colonizer Hans Egede in Nuuk, Kalaallit Nunaat (21 June 2020). Concurrent with – and perhaps as a response to – these challenges to “the coloniality of power” (Quijano 2000) Danish governments continue to invest in policies that make migrants and refugees deportable and expose racial and religious minorities to expansive forms of control and surveillance through welfare state institutions. At the same time, research-based understandings of structural racism are delegitimized and specific areas of research, such as critical race theory, gender studies and migration studies, are being attacked in public political debates with claims of being unscientific and activist.

This Special Issue of Women, Gender & Research (Kvinder, Køn & Forskning) aims to engage with these structural challenges, as well as explore the potential of a continued focus on racialization and racism within Danish gender and feminist studies. A significant body of research on racism and racialization in Denmark has already been conducted over the past decades, and much more is underway. To mention a few examples, scholars have identified how racial logics organize media representations, welfare state practices, educational settings, aesthetic and cultural production, the migration system, the labor market, and the everyday lives of minorities. There has, moreover, been critique of the academic structures in and of themselves being racist and exclusionary towards Black scholars and scholars of color, particularly women, and their knowledge(s).

We invite articles that engage with these and many other issues across disciplines, methods, and theories. We are particularly interested in studies that move our fields of research towards new theorizations and empirical analysis of racialization and racism. In acknowledgement of Denmark's colonial complicity in the past and the present, situating this special issue in the Danish context refers also to the territories and areas which are connected with Denmark through (post)colonial ties. Moreover, we acknowledge the interconnectedness between Denmark and the wider Nordic regions regarding historic and contemporary issues of racism and racialization, wherefore it is possible to submit articles that are situated in the broader context of the Nordics.

Read the full call for papers here

Important dates

Deadline for abstracts (max. 500 words + author bio of ca. 100 words): 15th of May 2022

Notifications by: 1^st June 2022

Deadline for articles: 15^th of October 2022

Envisaged publication date: 1^st of September 2023