‘You are Danish,or you are not’: How migrants in Denmark experience class and otherness

Abstract

This article examines how highly qualified migrants (HQM) in Denmark experience belonging and not-belonging and argues that these experiences reveal everyday processes of class-making in one of Europe’s least stratified societies. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of distinction and capital, and theories of cultural Othering, microaggressions and symbolic boundaries, the article explores how migration status and perceived proximity to ‘Danishness’ shape social position beyond income or education. The study uses thematic analysis combined with ideal-typical clustering to analyse narrative interviews with 20 university-educated migrants in Denmark. All HQM experienced non-belonging, but in two distinct ways: ‘Brick wall’ migrants are typically racialized individuals of non-EU or Eastern European origin. They reported overt racism, structural barriers, invisibilization and acute isolation. ‘Glass wall’ migrants are typically white Western Europeans. They described subtle exclusion through cultural distinction, ‘almost belonging’ and a double bind in which relative privilege as ‘good migrants’ coexists with marginalization. The article contributes by theorizing class as co-constituted by migration and Otherness, introducing the brick wall/glass wall typology, and especially by refining the concept of national capital as an extension of Bourdieusian theory. Danishness operates as an ‘infinite’ and shifting symbolic boundary that structures inclusion and exclusion.