From integration to reorientation: Processes of orientation after refugee resettlement in Denmark

Abstract

This article builds on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022-2024 with families from DR Congo, who have been resettled in Denmark since 2021 through the UNHCR-program. It draws on Sara Ahmed’s concept of “orientation” – including disorientation and reorientation – to develop a new approach to conceptualizing and understanding newly arrived refugees’ experiences with their new surroundings. In contrast to the deeply problematic concept of integration, we argue that the concept of orientation can illuminate power asymmetries and direct attention to how resettlement involves losing a sense of control with one’s body, physical environment, time and space – but also how a new sense of direction and familiarity is gradually reestablished through families’ own work of inhabitance. The concept of orientation thus paves the way for reorienting our analytical gaze towards the embodied, experiential, and messy dimensions of resettlement processes.

Introduction

In recent decades, the notion of integration has dominated public and political discourses and imaginaries across Europe in relation to the presence, everyday lives, and practices of national minorities with immigrant and refugee backgrounds ¹ . According to Adrian Favell, “mainstream approaches to immigration continue to blindly reproduce the language and logic of nationalist politics—especially with the notion of immigrant ‘integration’, a hugely problematic concept that has barely ever been examined critically (2019)”. Researchers in critical migration studies have examined the consequences of the widespread notion of integration (e.g. Olwig and Paerregaard 2011; Dahinden 2015; Schinkel 2013, 2017; Korteweg 2017; Rytter 2010, 2019; Favell 2019, 2022; Kvalvaag 2024; Ghorashi, 2024). Despite adopting different approaches, this body of research has reached a broadly shared conclusion: integration is a highly problematic concept and an analytical dead end in the social sciences and humanities. Yet this conclusion raises a new question: if integration is to be abandoned, what alternative concepts, languages, and imaginaries can we as researchers develop and apply to work and write against the racialization, asymmetries, and processes of othering that, for decades, have been among the consequences of integration?

In this article, we present our current research with and among families from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) who, since 2021, have been selected by UNHCR for resettlement in Danish municipalities. We draw on Sara Ahmed’s concept of “orientation” (2006) – including disorientation and reorientation – to develop a new approach to conceptualizing and understanding newly arrived refugees’ encounters and experiences with municipal frontline workers, neighbours, employers, and members of Christian congregations, as well as the process of establishing themselves in their new homes. Where the notion and imaginary of integration promised – but never realized – a relatively straightforward move from A to B, the concept of orientation highlights resettlement as a fundamentally disorienting experience, in which recently resettled individuals and families are continually reoriented and given direction in and by their new surroundings. An analytical shift towards orientation draws attention to how resettlement involves experiences of losing a sense of control over one’s body, physical environment, time, and space – but also to how a new sense of mastery, direction, and familiarity is gradually re-established through interaction with the new surroundings.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2024, we explore processes and experiences of dis-/reorientation (Ahmed 2006). We focus on how resettled families in the initial period after resettlement are constantly given directions by bureaucratic systems and significant others in the form of frontline workers, neighbours, and volunteers. Overall, we argue that the concept of orientation allows for an emphasis on the embodied, experiential, and messy dimensions of resettlement processes, while also opening critical discussions of the power asymmetries involved as refugees are guided in “the right” direction.

The article begins by outlining Denmark’s engagement with resettled refugees in the UNHCR refugee programme and by presenting how the data that this paper draws on was collected. We briefly elaborate on why integration is so problematic and what can be gained from an analytical shift to orientation (Ahmed 2006) as a lens for addressing and understanding arrivals, resettlement, and the ways in which restrictive migration policies shape processes of inclusion in local Danish contexts.

We then apply the concept of orientation to four thematic cases selected from a much broader empirical material. In this endeavour, we focus on orientation in relation to refugees’ new accommodation, internships in the labour market, their engagement with local Christian congregations, and the ways in which young people are directed and orient themselves towards desired futures.

Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the potential of orientation as a new vocabulary and imaginary moving beyond the problematic concept of integration in future research with refugees.

Resettlement of refugees through UNHCR

Since 1989, Denmark has accepted approximately 500 refugees each year, selected from UNHCR camps around the world. However, after the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015, the then government decided to stop the annual intake of resettled refugees, arguing that it was necessary to “strike a balance between the number of newly arrived refugees and the ability to integrate, in order to ensure a safe and good society” (Dahlin and Hansen 2017). In 2020, Denmark decided to renew its engagement with UNHCR by accepting an annual quota of 200 refugees. The Danish government requested that people selected for resettlement in Denmark should have a background in the conflict-ridden Kivu provinces of the DR Congo and currently be living in UNHCR refugee camps in Rwanda. ² Furthermore, it was stipulated that Denmark would only receive individuals categorized as “women at risk”, a UN category designating women with specific needs arising from past persecution and violence who are at heightened risk to exploitation and abuse in the absence of family, community, or state protection (UNHCR – Resettlement Handbook) ³ . As a result of this prioritization, the approximately 400 individuals resettled in Denmark until 2024 have been single mothers with children, and in some cases adult sisters or families spanning three generations, consisting of a mother, her children, and their grandmother.

The Congolese families continue to be vulnerable after resettlement due to health problems, PTSD or trauma related to war, flight, and prolonged life in the camps. Many of the women are survivors of sexual violence, and some of the children are the outcome of these assaults. Many, particularly among the mothers and grandmothers, have never attended school and are illiterate. The vast majority speak only Kinyarwanda.

Before arrival, the resettled families are assigned to the 98 municipalities by the Danish state authorities (Udlændingestyrelsen). The families are spread across the country and currently live in more than 50 different municipalities ⁴ . As a result, most families do not live near other recently resettled families.

Data collection and ethics

The empirical material underpinning this article was collected as part of the research project Reorienting Integration ⁵ . Since early 2022, we have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in municipalities across the country. The project also included five anthropology students who conducted fieldwork in different regions and wrote their MA thesis in affiliation with the project (see Balslev 2024; Ebberup 2024; Grønbæk 2024; Jensen 2023; Søgaard 2024). Each of the researchers and the involved students have followed 5-6 families. While MA students’ fieldwork was limited to approximately 5 months, the authors have been able to follow families over the course of approximately two and a half years. When we draw on insights from the students’ fieldwork, their work is referenced.

The fieldwork involved a variety of activities broadly categorized as semi structured interviews and participant observation. We have talked to municipal frontline workers who have supported the resettled families as family guides, mentors, or caseworkers during the first months and years. We have been present when families have arrived at the airport, and during subsequent home visits by family guides. While our initial contact with the resettled families has been mediated by municipal authorities acting as gatekeepers (O’Reilly 2005: 91), we have built relationships with families that enable interaction beyond the realm of the municipality. By regularly visiting families in their new homes and accompanying them at church, in leisure activities, in language school, and at their workplaces, we have gained broad insights into their everyday lives during the months and years after arrival ⁶ . This has also led to conversations with teachers, congregation members, volunteers, and others who interacted with the families on a daily or weekly basis. Each of us has prioritized following a smaller number of families. This is a deliberate choice that has provided the opportunity to build trusting relationships, while also offering a detailed understanding of the challenges the families face in their everyday lives over extended periods of time. Working collaboratively as a research team has further supported us in gaining insights into the variations that exist between individuals, across families as well as municipalities.

Individuals and families who resettle are in a vulnerable position, which requires sensitivity on the part of fieldworkers. While we have obtained a formal approval from our institutional Research Ethics Committee, ethical considerations have been a continuous part of our project. Some families have been so overwhelmed upon resettlement, or have faced such serious personal issues, that we have deemed it unethical to ask them to participate in the project. We have also been careful not to ask anyone to revisit traumatic events or disclose their ethnic or political affiliations, or other aspects known to be highly sensitive due to the region’s recent history (Ramsay 2018: 47ff). If such topics have been raised, we have listened.

To ensure the anonymity of the individuals who have allowed us into their everyday lives, we present the article in a way that enables discussion of dis-/reorientation in everyday life without rendering anyone identifiable. Therefore, names of people and places, as well as details that could identify individuals, have been changed or omitted.

Integration as a dead end

As mentioned, several researchers have begun to problematize the concept of “immigrant integration” when addressing the everyday lives and practices of immigrants and refugees.

Integration is – and always has been – part of the vocabulary of the nation-state (Sayad 2004: 216ff.) and contributes to the “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2003) that presents and reproduces the nation-state as a natural, given entity. Integration became popular in Danish discourse in the 1990s and soon became the primary way to talk about and conceptualize migrants and refugees in wider society (Olwig and Paerregaard 2011). In countries like Denmark, integration has since been an omnipresent emic concept – both a means and an end – in public and political discussions of the everyday lives of immigrant minorities. It has functioned as an encompassing framework for measuring, evaluating, and debating labour market participation, gender roles, marriage practices, parenting, religion, and more. ⁷

Integration has an intellectual trajectory as an etic concept used in theory-building in the social sciences by foundational figures such as Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, Parsons, Barth, and others. Today, it has travelled beyond academic discourse and become part of everyday language and imaginaries in Denmark and other European countries (Rytter 2019). As a reminder of its origins in social theory, the concept of integration has always carried the aura of a scientific concept (see Schierup 1993). However, the public and political obsession with integration has contributed to a particular kind of knowledge production about immigrants and refugees. In a Danish context, scholars have not always kept analytical distance to emic understandings of integration but uncritically reproduced some of the underlying logics. This has blurred distinctions between political and public discourse and academic concepts. In this respect, the concept of integration has a significant role in producing many of the problems (exclusion, otherness, inferiority, discrimination, etc.) it aims to address. The very use of the concept of integration creates exclusion and non-belonging (Korteweg 2017; Rytter 2023b).

The discourse, idea, and demands of integration have always been unidirectional and racialized. Integration is applied only to some citizens and not to others: the white majority are never met with demands of integration, while immigrants and refugees from Africa, The Middle East and South Asia are constantly confronted with its blurry requirements ⁸ . Willem Schinkel coins this asymmetrical, racialized dynamic as a “dispensation of integration” (2017). Adrian Favell argues that this tendency reveals integration as a fundamentally colonial term that sustains an unequal global order based on hierarchies of race and nationality. Integration has become the contemporary civilizing mission of “the West towards the Rest” (Favell 2022: 2-3).

Finally, the concept of integration is persuasive precisely because it naturalizes and disguises its own power. That power lies in its capacity to normalize, and in how integration has become accepted and taken for granted (Ghorashi, 2024). In this respect, it has become almost impossible to speak, think, and write against integration in Denmark. Consequently, integration continues to form and structure relations between majority and minority, self and other, us and them – and, in doing so, it conceals its power and devastating impact.

All in all, the concept of integration should be abandoned. It is an analytical dead end. Despite its widespread use in emic discourses, academics should instead develop alternative etic analytical frameworks to counter the racialized and problematic concept of integration ⁹ . In the rest of this paper, we introduce “orientation” (2006) as a new way of conceptualizing and discussing the processes of arrival and resettlement among refugees selected through the UNHCR programme. This new focus on orientation is based on refugees’ embodied experiences and encounters with various kinds of significant others after resettlement.

The potentiality of orientation

Resettled refugees in the UNHCR programme differ from ordinary asylum seekers. They have not travelled to Europe over land or sea, nor have they spent extended periods of time in an asylum centre. Instead, they are selected from camps in the so-called Global South and prepared for resettlement. When the families finally leave the camp in Rwanda, they fly to Denmark and are transported directly to their new accommodation in a Danish municipality. This marks an abrupt and radical life transition.

Sara Ahmed developed the concept of “orientation” in the book Queer Phenomenology (2006). According to Ahmed, orientation refers not only to people’s spatial movement but also to how structural conditions and social processes shape their perception of the surroundings (Ahmed 2006: 2ff). She suggests that bodies and spaces are always already oriented and mutually orient each other through the ways people inhabit their social environments. Following Ahmed, social reality is already charted with specific lines: our way through life is scripted, and we are expected to follow certain naturalized (heteronormative, Western, white) ways of being and behaving in the world. She also emphasizes how some bodies – for example non-white bodies – are oriented more than others, and how this shapes their ability to “take up” space (ibid.: 24).

Whereas related concepts such as “social navigation” (Vigh 2010) centre on the idea of a navigating subject in moving surroundings, the concept of orientation encourages us to see and include a multiplicity of actors that concurrently push and shape each other, however with an unequal distribution of power to do so. From this perspective, settling in a new place or becoming part of new networks and communities means orienting yourself towards certain collectively performed lines and not diverging (too much) from them. The challenge for refugees upon resettlement can thus be seen as one of reorienting themselves and extend themselves along the lines that already structure the space (Ahmed 2006: 16) – in this case, the physical and social environment of Danish society. Should orientation fail, individuals will experience being out of place and disoriented, or in Ahmed’s words: “If orientation is about making the strange familiar through the extension of bodies into space, then disorientation occurs when that extension fails” (2006: 11).

The concept of dis-/reorientation allows us to explore the gradual and messy processes of families’ reorientation upon resettlement, where frontline workers, neighbours or congregation members often play a central role in defining how dominant ideas of integration are to play out in practice, while they themselves are influenced and oriented by the same political structures. Moreover, Ahmed’s conceptualization enables us to dwell on individuals’ “work of habituation” (ibid.): the effort involved in making space for oneself and feeling at home anew when entering new physical and social spaces already charted with direction (Thorshaug and Brun 2019).

Another source of inspiration is Pierre Bourdieu (1989, 2000), who was also interested in embodied competences and people’s ability to master the fields in which they are embedded. Bourdieu suggests that a person’s habitus is formed by the fields in which he or she acts as a competent agent. People can master a field to such an extent that they develop “a feel for the game” – that is, they see and intuitively understand the contours and dynamics of their social surroundings and can act without thinking too much about it. When this is the case, habitus is aligned with and attuned to the field. In Pascalian Meditations (2000), Bourdieu also briefly reflects on situations where actors find themselves in new locations or social settings, suddenly out of sync and struggling to understand the world around them. He calls this the “Don Qioxote effect”, since “dispositions are out of line with the field and with the collective expectations which are constitutive of its normality” (Bourdieu 2000: 160). The perception, language, and categories on which they previously relied are suddenly inadequate (or not directly applicable) to their new lives – they need to reorient themselves (see Grønseth 2006). Likewise, Ahmed connects the theoretical framework of orientation to migration processes, as she writes: “Reflecting on migration helps us to explore how bodies arrive and how they get directed in this way or that way as a condition of arrival, which in turn is about how the ‘in place’ gets placed” (Ahmed 2006: 10).

Below, we apply the notion of orientation and reorientation not only to explore how, when, and why resettled refugees are given direction in their new lives, but also to understand how they attempt to direct their own present and future. We examine this through four cases focusing on accommodation, internships, religion, and aspirations for the future.

Building a new home

When the families arrive at Copenhagen Airport, the municipality is responsible for ensuring that they are picked up and taken to a residence prepared for them. The state authorities (Udlændingestyrelsen) decide in which of the 98 municipalities in Denmark a given family must live for at least 3 years. Since the annual quota is around 200 individuals, most municipalities only receive one resettled refugee family.

For municipalities, providing suitable accommodation for resettled families is a challenge for several reasons. One of them is the extremely low economic benefit – the so-called “self-sufficiency and repatriation benefit” (selvforsørgelses-og hjemrejseydelse) – which makes it difficult to find housing that the families can afford ¹⁰ . In addition, since Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, more than 40,000 displaced Ukrainians have been in urgent need of temporary accommodation in Denmark. Finally, many considerations must be balanced when “placing” the families, such as proximity to schools, supermarkets, medical care, and public transport. Even so, many of the single mothers still face a daily logistical nightmare (Larsen 2011; Mortensen 2025). While some families are given permanent housing from the outset, others are placed in temporary residences in former welfare institutions such as kindergartens or retirement homes that have been repurposed as refugee accommodation. Conditions in these temporary spaces tend to be substandard (Mortensen and Rytter 2023).

Rikke Trige Jensen (2023) and Clara F. Ebberup (2024) followed the arrival and first 5 months after resettlement of 24 individuals. They observed the preparations made by municipal frontline workers and the arrival of families. A former kindergarten became the temporary home of three families – one of them spanning three generations – but it remained the property of the municipality. This was made clear when frontline workers posted a list of “house rules” on the blackboard in the building. The newly arrived families themselves were not involved in developing the rules, which, among other things, required everyone to keep their room clean and stay quiet after 10 pm. Such rules were considered necessary because several families had to share the limited space: in addition to the three Congolese families, an Eritrean mother and her three children were already living in the building. Several times during the fieldwork, frontline workers referred to the house rules – for example, when a family tried on their own to rearrange the furniture – and emphasized that the families had to comply with them. Otherwise, they risked expulsion (Ebberup 2024; Jensen 2023).

The specific legal arrangement of temporary housing in public buildings owned by the municipality disrupted the boundary between public and private spaces. Already on the day of arrival, frontline workers asked all newcomers over the age of 18 to sign a document granting the authorities access to the building. Frontline workers also routinely set up house meetings (husmøder) and individual case meetings in the new home. This suggests that frontline workers regarded the former kindergarten as an extension of the municipality’s premises.

The ongoing official meetings and house rules made it difficult for the resettled families to “extend themselves” into the space. Instead, frontline workers (along with neighbours and volunteers) continuously instructed the families in how to make their residences and behaviour align with what they considered to be Danish norms and standards. The building was never really appropriated or transformed into a personal and intimate home for the women and children. While these orientations were intended to help families settle in and adhere to common norms and formal structures, they were often carried out in ways that left little room for negotiation or for the families to do their own “work of inhabitance” (Ahmed 2006: 11). Deciding how furniture should be arranged in the room, where one sleeps and eats, or controlling who enters and when, are examples of such work of inhabitance that pave the way for creating a sense of homeliness. It takes work to inhabit a place and transform a building into a new home (Vacher 2010). But the kindergarten remained first and foremost a municipal building, with little privacy and little possibility of shaping either the material or the behavioural aspects of everyday life in the (semi-)public space. Suitcases that were never unpacked testified to this.

Internship and hardship

Upon arrival in Denmark, adult family members are included in a “self-sufficiency and repatriation programme” (selvforsørgelses-og hjemrejseprogram) organized by the municipality. Participation in the programme is mandatory to receive economic support. In collaboration with the municipality, everyone must develop and sign a contract that sets out “the immigrant’s employment or educational goals and decides the contents of the activities that are to ensure that the goals set out in the contract are met” (Danish Integration Act, Section 19: 4, our translation). The programme typically consists of 2 days a week at language school and 3 days a week in internships ¹¹ and has ordinary employment and self-sufficiency as its stated goal. Adult family members are expected to begin the programme as soon as possible and no later than 1 month after arrival. As a starting point, the programme lasts for 1 year. If ordinary employment is not achieved within this time frame, the programme can be extended for up to 5 years in total. During this period, families are subject to the “self-sufficiency and repatriation benefits”, which, as mentioned above, is a particularly low rate of economic support for immigrants and refugees. Overall, Denmark’s reception of refugee families is strongly oriented towards rapid employment (Rytter 2018; Rytter and Ghandchi 2020). The explicit focus on self-sufficiency mirrors global trends across nation states and humanitarian organizations (see UNHCR 2025), underpinning neoliberal logics that tend to cast the single refugee as responsible without critically considering structural or other conditions influencing the individual’s capacities and possibilities (Ramsay 2018).

The programme’s strong orientation towards rapid, ordinary employment is experienced differently among the resettled women we have followed, depending on the kinds of internship and whether it provides openings to ordinary employment. The age, health, educational background, and social position of the individual attending the programme also affect how it is experienced. For some of the women, it is overwhelming to attend the programme immediately after arrival, and it poses huge logistical challenges for mothers with young children. Upon resettlement, they must care for their children and support them as they enter new institutional and educational settings, while simultaneously adjusting to everyday routines of shopping, cooking, cleaning, and so on. Often, they also must deal with their own or family members’ health issues. Some young adults without children can dedicate more time and energy to learning Danish and finding ordinary employment. However, it is important to note that some of them also take on everyday care work for younger siblings and other household tasks (Kusk 2025).

During fieldwork Anna Balslev (2024) followed a group of resettled Congolese women. One of her interlocutors described the programme of language classes and internships as ”prison-like”: while she was grateful for the resettlement and for receiving economic support from the municipality, she felt monitored and under surveillance, as her caseworkers kept track of how she spent her money. Several frontline workers emphasize that orienting families towards managing their tight budgets is a major task upon resettlement. In their efforts to help families get by, municipal frontline workers may ask about intimate details of the families’ everyday spending. One family guide, for example, explained that she had strongly advised against spending money on a television, as it would exceed the monthly budget.

Some of the resettled women in Balslev’s study described their relationship with the municipality as “a marriage”: they were legally and morally tied to the municipality, which acted as their main provider, like a husband would traditionally do. To receive the support that enabled them to secure necessities for themselves and their children – such as food, shelter, and electricity – they had to attend internships and language classes and accept a degree of guidance and surveillance regarding how they managed their limited budgets (Balslev 2024; Mortensen 2025).

Many adults in the families expressed a strong desire to be able to “carry their own lives”, in the sense of becoming financially independent from the municipalities’ support (Kusk 2025). However, the internships that are supposed to move women and adult children closer to ordinary employment are often experienced as lacking progress. Some of the women attend one internship after another, but they do not lead to real employment opportunities. This left the women with a feeling of being stuck in loops without progress (Balslev 2024), and of being exploited as underpaid labour (see Rytter and Ghandchi 2020).

Returning to Ahmed’s (2006) concept of orientation, there are clear lines that refugees are expected to follow, and most interactions with the municipality orient them towards employment. However, while the women and young adults may be eager to work and earn their own money, participation in the Danish labour market often requires specific skills and some degree of language proficiency.

The strong external orientation towards employment that most of the women are not realistically able to follow resembles what Lauren Berlant (2011) calls “cruel optimism”. According to Berlant, a relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire becomes an obstacle to your flourishing (2011:1). When the welfare state positions refugees as active citizens (aktive borgere) and orients them towards language school, internships, and ordinary employment as quickly as possible, it incites hope and optimism. However, when most of the women face language barriers, logistical challenges, or health issues, but are still required to attend internships directed towards employment, this turns into a form of cruel optimism. The promise of a real job, a higher income, improved language skills, and a stronger social network can seem out of reach.

Religion and participation in christian congregations

Most of the resettled families identify as Christians. Some are Catholic, Baptist, or Pentecostal, but the vast majority belong to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Upon resettlement, most families are put in contact with a local congregation in their area, which often comes to play an important role in welcoming and supporting the resettled families as they restart their lives in Denmark (Jensen 2023; Jensen and Rytter 2024).

The Seventh-day Adventists rely on the Bible – especially the Old Testament – and on the rules, rituals, and taboos presented in Leviticus (see Douglas 2002 [1960]). Marriage is regarded as a sacred institution, and premarital sex is frowned upon. According to their own website, they have a total of 2500 members in Denmark across 44 congregations ¹² . In these relatively small congregations, the arrival of one or several new families has an immediate impact.

Many local congregations have made efforts to adapt to their new members. For example, part of the sermons is regularly presented in Kinyarwanda by members of the Congolese diaspora who have been in Denmark for several years. In many churches, psalms are also sung in unison in Danish and Kinyarwanda: the melody is the same, but the lyrics are in both languages. In this sense, the churches offer a space in which the families can extend themselves and their voices, and participating in choirs can be considered a kind of “homing device” (Ahmed 2006: 9); that is, material or physical elements that make it possible to extend one’s body into new surroundings.

In conversations with recently arrived families and Danish church members, the congregation was described as an important place where one can learn, maintain, or reaffirm values and ways of organizing life as a good Christian. Such conversations often take their starting point in the upbringing of children. Several mothers explained that it is important to bring their children to church regularly because they believe that adherence to Christian principles will give them the best conditions for becoming morally “good people” in the future (Jensen 2023; Jensen and Rytter 2024). This was emphasized by Iragena, a mother of four children:

It is important that my children go to church, because there they can learn many things. If they go to church, they get a good upbringing, and they learn how to be human beings – about patience and how to relate to others. […] For example, when they [the children] learn that it is not good to fight or maybe to be drunk. […] When they grow up and learn such things, they get a good upbringing. (Iragena, single mother)

Congregation members generally agree that the church can provide the guidance that children – and especially young people – may need after resettlement, when they are confronted with many new opportunities and potential temptations, such as alcohol, drugs, parties, or premarital sexual relations (Mortensen et al., 2024). The fact that the Congolese women hold the status of single mothers and providers in a new country may strengthen their wish for help and guidance. In the congregations, they can find male role models in the form of the local pastor, men from the Congolese church community, or Danish members of the congregation who regard it as a special task to help and guide the young.

In general, members of the congregation emphasized the religious community as an obvious site for resettled refugees to learn “Danish” norms and values, and help them “fit in” (passe ind) and be included in society. Congregation members often emphasized the importance of learning Danish, taking responsibility for one’s own learning, and striving for independence and financial self-sufficiency. In this way, congregation members largely orient the families towards the same dominant lines of self-sufficiency and language proficiency as municipal frontline workers (see Rytter 2018).

In general, the welcoming local church communities are greatly appreciated by resettled families. They provide a safe space that grants ontological security and continuity between the families’ previous religious life in the camps in Rwanda and their new lives in Denmark (Jensen and Rytter 2024: 16). Many congregation members portray the religious communities as “smart spaces of inclusion” because they fulfil several purposes at once, but they also bear firsthand witness to some of the challenges facing resettled families. Attending church can be logistically difficult for families placed far away, just as the families’ limited budgets (described above) may limit their participation. Often, congregation members feel obliged to provide transport to and from church for the families, as well as to adjust church activities and develop additional activities outside the church to include the resettled families (Jensen et al., 2024: 29-31). For some, the workload becomes heavy:

The task is huge now. It will become less so over time, if they can sort out transportation on their own. But it has been a bit like… because we really do want to do more for them, help them a bit more, for example teach them to ride a bicycle or something. Do some nice things with them, so there is something happening around them. But the thing is, we also must survive ourselves. (Niels, congregation member)

Niels expresses a common dilemma: the congregation member’s sense of obligation and the urge to help the newly arrived families and fellow Christians, versus the limits of how much resources, time and energy one can devote.

Young people’s orientations towards the future

In this final section, we turn our attention to orientations towards the future, and how teenagers and young adults in the families imagine their futures. Being resettled in a new place inevitably raises concerns about what one’s future in a new country will look like, regardless of age. However, young people experience a dual transition: they must find their way in a new country while also finding their way through the transitional stage of adolescence. This social transition between childhood and adulthood makes the future impose itself on them in relation to their current social position, rendering questions and concerns about the future especially salient (Frederiksen and Dalsgård 2014: 3).

Further, in the Danish school system, all young people are inclined to make educational plans and choices that can provide access to the labour market later in life (Kristensen 2023). Several studies show that immigrants and refugees are often directed towards short-term programmes, especially training as care workers (SOSU-assistenter) for the elderly in the public sector (Kjeldsen 2023; Sparre and Nielsen 2023, 2024). This tendency is related to the severe shortage of qualified personnel in the sector in Denmark. Since the municipalities are responsible for providing elderly care, they also have a strong interest in recruiting students for that specific programme (Sparre and Nielsen 2023: 281). ¹³ Several of our young interlocutors have been presented with the possibility of working in elderly care. In this way, the educational guidance that young people receive is closely interwoven with structural logics and societal demands that orient them in certain directions and not others. Teachers, caseworkers, educational counsellors, and sometimes congregation members as well as parents and other relatives may all take part in this orientation towards the future. However, while the voices of teachers and other external adults carry great weight, our young interlocutors also insist – in subtle ways – on orienting themselves towards futures they themselves find desirable.

As Ahmed (2006) shows, reorientation involves the gradual acquisition of a new place in both spatial and temporal terms. Feeling at home in the world anew and gaining the capacity to imagine and move towards a desirable future – rather than merely being directed by external forces – takes time and requires work. Ahmed highlights the materiality of reorientation through the concept of “homing devices”. Homing devices are material objects – such as a picture, a scent, or a sofa – that make it possible to extend one’s body into a new space and make it one’s “second skin” (Ahmed 2006: 9). Building on this concept, we propose the idea of “futuring devices” to describe material objects that enable extension into new spaces, but also possibly conjure new future horizon. A futuring device can be both a materialization of already achieved progression and a “temporal anchor” (Frederiksen and Dalsgård 2014: 1) symbolizing what may lie ahead and representing the life one hopes for.

Eduoard is 17-year-old. He received such an anchor by post from his maternal uncle in the United States: inside a cardboard box was a pair of brand-new basketball trainers in the right brand and size. While many of the people around Eduoard – his teacher in the reception class, the municipal educational counsellor, and his mother’s mentor – focus on orienting him towards an immediate educational future with realistic job aspirations, Edouard is oriented towards a different, more distant horizon as he dreams of becoming a professional basketball player. Although this dream may be somewhat disconnected from his current everyday life at school, where he struggles with Danish, maths, and other subjects, the basketball trainers function as a futuring device that brings the dream a little closer to realization.

During fieldwork, Trine Grønbæk (2024) collaborated with Jean, a 22-year-old man who has, in his own words, “surprised everyone”. Shortly after resettlement, he managed to find work in a fast-food restaurant and to learn Danish. He also saved up enough money to get a driving licence and buy a car. “Sometimes I tell people that I have been in Denmark for 4 years instead of two,” Jean says with a laugh, explaining how people are often surprised that he speaks Danish so well after such a short time in the country. When asked who he discusses his personal ambitions and aspirations for the future with, Jean explains that he prefers to keep them to himself: “It’s my secret (…) because it may or may not happen; it’s something I cannot be certain about.” He goes on to say that he worries other people’s opinions and advice would confuse him. If he had asked his teachers or members of the congregation for advice when he wanted to get a driving licence, he is certain they would have advised him against it:

They would tell me: ‘No, you will waste your money. You don’t speak Danish well enough yet, there are a lot of difficult words. You haven’t been in Denmark that long; how will you be able to figure it out? How will you manage to get a Danish driving licence?’.

Jean is aware that sharing one’s dreams and hopes can lead those around him to orient him in a different direction. For him, the driving licence and the car are “futuring devices”, which proof that he can trust himself and choose paths that do not necessarily correspond to the dominant lines in society. Choosing not to speak openly about his future dreams can thus be seen as a subtle way of shielding himself from external orientations that might create confusion, sow doubt, and pull him in another direction.

Conclusion: Reorientation as a new way forward

We began by discussing integration as a colonial term and as part of the vocabulary of the nation-state. Rather than being a fruitful analytical or theoretical concept, it is a deeply politicized idea with an implicit majority perspective that works to racialize and problematize (non-white, non-Western) minorities. Instead, by engaging with the notion of orientation – as well as disorientation and reorientation – we have sought to dwell on the interactions and encounters between recently resettled refugees and representatives of the majority population, including frontline workers, congregation members, teachers, and others. We have explored how resettled families are oriented and directed by the people around them, but also how their initial disorientation when beginning everyday life in new places is gradually replaced by a sense of orientation and direction. However, such processes are never linear, unidirectional, or frictionless. Rather, reorientation always takes place within physical environments and social scripts that shape how resettled families can inhabit new places.

We have discussed processes of orientation across four cases. First, the temporary residences offered to resettled families shape how they can extend themselves and achieve a new sense of homeliness. Second, the mandatory internships strongly orient families towards employment and self-sufficiency soon after their arrival. Here, we suggest that the official integration programmes promote a form of “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011), given that a rapid entry into the job market is only possible for a few adults in resettled families. Third, many seek out religious spaces for solace. The Christian congregations serve as spaces of ontological security, where moral values shared between the Danish congregation members and the resettled families resonate, and where single mothers can find guidance and support in becoming what they regard as morally “good persons” and “good citizens”. Finally, resettlement entails not only familiarizing oneself with a new place but also of crafting new future horizons in relation to education, work, material goods, or family formation. We have proposed the term “futuring devices” to highlight how young people propel themselves into the future. At the same time, they are aware that their dreams may not be considered realistic by those around them who seek to orient and direct them towards other futures.

The four cases are drawn from a broader archive of ethnographic data. They have been chosen because they illustrate, in different ways, how frontline workers and significant others orient and reorient resettled families – while themselves being oriented by current political structures and dominant norms. The four cases are also used to discuss how families pursue their own ambitions and plans for building a new everyday life in Denmark.

The central theoretical ambition of this article has been to abandon the concept of integration and to offer a new vocabulary – a necessary starting point for talking, writing, and thinking about refugee resettlement in new ways. In this respect, the shift in analytical vocabulary is a humanizing move: integration has promoted exceptionalism (Dahinden 2015) and dispensation (Schinkel 2017) because the concept is only invoked when speaking about certain groups of refugees and immigrants. It has also always worked to consolidate and enlarge the divide between majority and minority, “us” and “them”. By contrast, an analytical focus on orientation addresses a universal human condition: we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, oriented and reoriented by our surroundings, and we are all directed towards specific lives and futures.

Secondly, integration has been part of the perspective and vocabulary of the nation-state (Sayad 2004), which often relies on numbers and statistics. In Danish society the achievements (or lack thereof) of refugees and immigrants are constantly monitored in national surveys and statistics – covering income, family size, education, religious affiliation, childbirth, health issues, and so forth. Everything can (and will) be used to measure newcomers’ level of integration. In this regard numbers and statistics have a dual effect: on the one hand, they establish the majority as the norm and natural standard, while simultaneously casting newcomers as deviant and lacking normality (Rytter 2023b; Schinkel 2013). In contrast, a framework of orientation focuses on individuals, families, and complex life-worlds that can never be fully grasped or represented in national statistics. It highlights resettled refugees’ own perspectives and aspirations, their social relations, everyday interactions, and encounters with different kinds of significant others.

In this article, we have only followed Congolese families during the first period after their resettlement in Denmark – which is probably also the period when disorientation and vertigo are most salient. Eventually, they will find their ways and follow paths – or perhaps create new ones – into Danish worlds.