Integration from a grassroots-perspective: A study of the social life of the Danish Red Cross´s integration groups

Anna Maria Mårtensson är socialantropolog, utbildad från Universitetet i Oslo, Melbourne och Köpenhamn. Hennes magisteruppsats handlar om Danska Röda Korset och dess integrationsgrupper, integration och den frivilliga sektorn i Danmark samt berör även aspekten av åldrande.

Sammanfattning:
"This thesis focuses on the Danish Red Cross and its integration groups in Denmark. It had as its purpose to examine the social interaction between immigrants and
volunteers within the framework of voluntary integration groups. More specifically it
was my wish to illustrate how integration is interpreted and played out in praxis at a
grassroots level.

In recent years integration has become a “lay-men’s” term, commonly
adopting to the political version of integration and moving away from previous
associations that thought of integration as general mechanisms of inclusion and
exclusion affecting all members of a society. Integration has become a term
associated to the process of integrating immigrants, who are seen as a threatening
element to the otherwise perceived homogeneity of the Danish population. Although
officially the term integration implies a) to learn the Danish language, b) to gain an
education or employment and c) to learn about Danish society, it has been criticized
to use an assimilation approach to integration, where it is expected that immigrants
should adapt to similar or same norms as those of the mainstream population.

There has thus been a tendency to operate with different versions of integration, where the stated does not necessarily correspond to what is practiced.
It is a general assumption that voluntary work can be used advantageously as
an extension to the social welfare work of the government. Including citizens in the
solution of social problems is seen to anticipate a stronger and enhanced cohesion of the local community. Furthermore, the interaction between the volunteers and the
users of the voluntary services is said to foster the establishment of valuable social
networks. This idea is reminiscent to the belief that integration is a process involving social interaction.

Through asking the volunteers about their expectations towards their
participation in the integration groups, it was possible to reveal the volunteers’
conceptions and understandings of integration and how these influenced the premises for the social interaction between the volunteers and immigrants. I found that the fact that the voluntary work targeted immigrants had a negative outcome on the generally regarded positive effect of engaging voluntary work in the help of social problems.

The associations made to the category of immigrants had a major influence on the
types of context the activities were filled with. Most of the interaction was influenced
by an educational aspect related to the volunteers’ perception that immigrants were
lacking the right cultural background that would make it possible for them to become integrated in Denmark. Therefore the volunteers’ felt that it was their role to teach the immigrants how best to behave in a Danish context. The volunteers’ sentiments revealed strong tendencies of a cultural hierarchy, where the Danish culture was regarded as superior to that of the immigrants’ culture.

The life situations of both immigrants and volunteers influenced the parties’
motivations for participating in the integration groups. Unexpectedly, the volunteers’
own position as elderly and retired made them vulnerable to being pushed to the
periphery of the society. Their participation in the integration groups however,
ensured their own continued integration to society as active and valuable members to society."