Sweden and Denmark are both welfare states sharing a unique bond and similarities. However, attitudes in integration policies are a world apart. Whilst Denmark has gained a reputation of having a strict and harsh immigration policy seeking to uphold cultural homogeneousness, Sweden proudly announces its welcoming stance on immigration embracing cultural diversity. This study offers an insight into problem representations in integration policies in Sweden and Denmark. Existing literature in this field is mainly concerned with post-integration policies leaving literature on problem representations that are more recent unexplored. This thesis seeks to fill that gap by describing the similarities, differences, and underlying assumptions in integration policies in the respective countries. By applying a ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ approach based on a Foucauldian discourse analysis, the findings of this study show significant differences in problem representations and underlying assumptions.

This study investigates the gender earnings gap among nurses in Denmark years 2004-2016. The data at hand will be from Luxembourg Income studies which provided 7078 observations. Furthermore, ordinary least squares method with gender as dummy variable will be conducted. The findings are a raw male-female annual wage gap of 13 percent. After adding control variables, the gap decreased to 7.4 percent. The remaining wage gap can be due to unobservable characteristics. However, discrimination cannot be discounted.

This study investigates the political discourse in the Danish government’s ‘Ghetto Plan’ of 2018 in order to reveal a securitization dimension in relation to Danish ghettos and non-Western immigrants. There has not been conducted much academic research concerning the Danish ghetto initiatives, and studies on the ‘Danish Ghetto Plan’ of 2018 remain pretty absent. Most previous studies are primarily concentrated on investigating the role of the Danish ghetto initiatives in relation to broader political discourses. By conducting a critical discourse analysis on the Danish ‘Ghetto Plan’ while adopting Huysmans’ theoretical framework on the securitization of migration, this study reveals a securitizing dimension in which the Danish government has constructed the ghettos and non-Western immigrants as threats to the liberal norms and values of Danish society. Thus, this study attempts to provide an insight into how the Danish government is able to implement and justify discriminatory policies.

The legitimisation of discriminatory policies is the phenomenon under scrutiny in the present study. The thesis is an extreme case study, that inductively analyses The Law on Compulsory Daycare through the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ approach. Deductively, the policy is examined for the presence of othering, orientalism, and cultural racism. The problem representation assumes a binary hierarchy which results in a simplified understanding of ‘non-western’ culture attributed a few negative characteristics. The discriminatory policy is legitimised through the assumption that a lack of ‘Danish culture’ causes social problems of crime, non-participation, isolation, and under-performance in school in so called ‘ghettos’ and ‘deprived neighbourhoods’, which characterises as cultural racism, because it assumes the inferiority of ‘non-western’ culture. The thesis concludes that the ‘non-western’ is created as the ‘other’ in a way that is related to the merits of orientalism, but there is not found clear evidence of orientalism.

The strict family reunification policies in Norway and Denmark have affected many individual’s family life. Individuals currently struggle to be reunited with their non-EU family members because of strict requirements. For some, moving to Sweden can be a solution due to their more liberal reunification policies. This paper analyses how family reunification policy in Norway and Denmark has affected the lives of those who relocate to Sweden. The method that was used for the analysis was the interviewing method. In the theoretical framework transnationalism was applied, and it focuses on the connection transnational migrants have with three countries at the same time. The transnational perspective illustrates the different obstacles transnational migrants face. The analysis showed that the reasons individuals relocated from Denmark and Norway was because of age and income requirements, deportation and suspect of arranged marriage by the migration agencies. The analysis also showed that distance relationship, distant parenthood, social belonging and identity helped shape the individual’s life.

In paleopathology, few other diseases have received more attention than leprosy and studies of skeletal remains from medieval Denmark have primarily focused on urban and leprosarium cemeteries in order to construct diagnostic criteria and disease frequencies of past communities. This project presents data from the rural monastic site of Øm Kloster in the Central Jutland region of Denmark in order to establish disease frequencies between demographic subgroups and general disease prevalence in a regionally representative site. With a sample of 311 adult individuals, cranial and postcranial diagnostic criteria were utilized in order to determine the presence or absence of leprosy on individual skeletons. Each individual was analyzed and categorized by sex, age group, and social status based on burial location and this data was used to yield results on the demographic makeup of the sample and disease frequencies. Lastly, chi-square tests of independence were conducted to determine if there were statistically significant relationships between sex, age, social status, and leprosy. The results indicated that there were no statically strong relationships between these variables; however, it was evident that disease prevalence did increase with age and that there were significantly more males and lay people with leprotic lesions than females and high status individuals. The results suggested that each individual had most likely carried the bacterium, but that there were no significant numbers of individuals affected at any one time. Lastly, the results from the Øm Kloster analysis were compared to those of the rural village cemetery at Tirup and were found to be compatible. Ultimately, this study reflects that disease may have been much more prevalent than was osteologically visible and that this rural community illustrated comparable data with other regional sites. This study shows that lesion frequencies do present evidence to determine general disease prevalence in past populations and to gain data on the overall health of a regionally representative, non-leprosarium cemetery site.

Pandemics of plague have reemerged multiple times throughout human history with tremendous mortality and extensive geographic spread. The First Pandemic (6th - 8th century) devastated the Mediterranean world, the Second Pandemic (14th - 19th century) swept across much of Afro-Eurasia, and the Third Pandemic (19th - 20th century) reached every continent except for Antarctica, and continues to persist in various endemic foci around the world. Despite centuries of historical research, the epidemiology of these pandemics remains enigmatic. However, recent technological advancements have yielded a novel form of evidence: ancient DNA of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. In this thesis, I explore how genomic data can be used to unravel the mysteries of when and where this disease appeared in the past. In particular, I focus on phylogenetic approaches to studying this 'small microbe' with 'big data' (i.e. 100s - 1000s of genomes). I begin by describing novel software I developed that supports the acquisition and curation of large amounts of DNA sequences in public databases. I then use this tool to create an updated global phylogeny of Y. pestis, which includes ~600 genomes with standardized metadata. I devise and validate a new approach for temporal modeling (i.e. molecular clock) that produces robust divergence dates in pandemic lineages of Y. pestis. In addition, I critically examine the questions that genomic evidence can and cannot address in isolation, such as whether the timing and spread of short-term epidemics can be confidently reconstructed. Finally, I apply this theoretical and methodological insight to a case study in which I reconstruct the appearance, persistence, and disappearance of plague in Denmark during the Second Pandemic. The three papers enclosed in this sandwich-thesis contribute to a larger body of work on the anthropology of plague, which seeks to understand how disease exposure and experience change over time and between human populations. Furthermore, this dissertation more broadly impacts both prospective studies of infectious disease, such as environmental surveillance and outbreak monitoring, and retrospective studies, which seek to date the emergence and spread of past pandemics. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The Plague is a disease that has profoundly impacted human history and is responsible for some of the most fatal pandemics ever recorded. It may surprise many to know that this disease is not a bygone of a past era, but in fact is still present in many regions of the world. Although researchers have been studying plague for hundreds of years, there are many aspects of its epidemiology that are enigmatic. In this thesis, I focus on how DNA from the plague bacterium can be used to estimate where and when this disease appeared in the past. To do so, I reconstruct the evolutionary relationships between modern and ancient strains of plague, using publicly available data and new DNA sequences retrieved from the skeletal remains of plague victims in Denmark. This work offers a new methodological framework for large-scale genetic analysis, provides a critique on what questions DNA evidence can and cannot answer, and expands our knowledge of the global diversity of plague.

This study explores how the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ relate to the visual representation of these individuals and groups in five Danish newspapers. This study is particularly concerned with how the visual representation constructs an ‘us’ and ‘them’ between Danish society and these individuals. This study draws on a conceptual outline of ‘racialization’ that understands the concept as a ‘lens’ that ‘race’-thinking operates through in the process of constructing group boundaries. This study will draw on Gillian Rose’s visual discourse analysis in the study of Danish newspaper images. It is argued that the ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ are represented as a racialized ‘Other’ to the Dane, in particular the Muslim identity. It is shown that a Muslim identity is a main racialized identity. Moreover, it is pointed out that the use of the term ‘refugee’ is dominant which indicates that this term is in danger of becoming a catch-all category.

No / This study compares associations between demographic profiles, long bone lengths, bone mineral content, and frequencies of stress indicators in the preadult populations of two medieval skeletal assemblages from Denmark. One is from a leprosarium, and thus probably represents a disadvantaged group (Næstved). The other comes from a normal, and in comparison rather privileged, medieval community (Æbelholt). Previous studies of the adult population indicated differences between the two skeletal collections with regard to mortality, dental size, and metabolic and specific infectious disease. The two samples were analyzed against the view known as the osteological paradox (Wood et al. [1992] Curr. Anthropol. 33:343-370), according to which skeletons displaying pathological modification are likely to represent the healthier individuals of a population, whereas those without lesions would have died without acquiring modifications as a result of a depressed immune response. Results reveal that older age groups among the preadults from Næstved are shorter and have less bone mineral content than their peers from Æbelholt. On average, the Næstved children have a higher prevalence of stress indicators, and in some cases display skeletal signs of leprosy. This is likely a result of the combination of compromised health and social disadvantage, thus supporting a more traditional interpretation. The study provides insights into the health of children from two different biocultural settings of medieval Danish society and illustrates the importance of comparing samples of single age groups.

The first months of 2000 marked an important step in the process of European integration as twelve of the fifteen members of the European Union (EU) adopted the euro, the new European single currency. As the common monetary unit of this supranational institution the euro is intended to achieve stability in exchange rates in Europe. However, Great Britain, Denmark, and Sweden have not adopted the euro thus far although all three countries meet the essential economic prerequisites for membership in the European Monetary Union (EMU). This study explores the main issues of the debate in support of and in opposition to EMU membership in each country. The main arguments of euro 's critics are about loss of sovereignty as national governments surrender a large part of their decision-making on monetary and fiscal policy, while euro supporters point to economic benefits deriving from membership such as exchange rate stability and a strong single European currency. The conclusion of this study is that the main issues of the debate are along similar lines in all three countries, however, in the case of Great Britain there is an emphasis on issues related to monetary policy while in Denmark and Sweden there is an emphasis on issues related to fiscal policy. This may be due to the specific historical context relevant to each member state's relation to the EU and to different institutional procedures in each country for deciding EMU membership.