Danish Demarcations

Abstract

This article examines the population of the Danish welfare state as an affluent middle class that demarcates itself in relation to a foreign proletariat within a global, neoliberal division of labor. Drawing on Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytical conceptualizations of nationalism, it traces relations between Danish nationalism and the xenophobic blaming of foreigners for structural threats to continued Danish affluence and the welfare state. The article then shifts to a discussion of the dialectical relationship between the nation-state and capitalism in securing the Danish middle-class status in a global, neoliberal world order, and suggests that the threat to the Danish welfare lies not in multicultural pressures but in the simultaneous desires to open Danish borders for surplus extraction and to close them for foreigners. This article ends with a discussion of new perspectives on cohabitation and equality beyond state borders.