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The Subject and Governmental Action: A Foucauldian Analysis of Subjectification and the 24 Year-Old Rule in Denmark

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Abstract

This article discusses the effects of the 24 year-old rule in Denmark utilising Foucault’s understanding of the ‘subject’ within a governmentality framework. The 24 year-old rule is a good example of how a gendered knowledge about immigration becomes a reality that steers biopolitics, enables practices of normalisation and subjectifies immigrants in various ways. The article foregrounds the subjectivity of immigrant women through a narrative analysis of the constitution of the subject within discourses and in an asymmetrical relationship to power in governance. This analysis reveals the complexity of empirical interactions between the ideational structure of legislative measures and personal meanings expressed by immigrant subjectivities. While I illustrate certain modes of subjectification in relation to the 24 year-old rule, I emphasise the ways subjects employ certain identity strategies by resisting, reworking or contributing to the practices of normalisation.

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Notes

  1. Some of the noteworthy measures of the Act of 2002 are: (1) Permanent residence permits will be granted after seven years of residence, instead of three; (2) Residents are no longer permitted to bring in a foreign spouse under the age of 24 (raised from 18); (3) Spouses will not be allowed to join their partners in Denmark unless the couple has a sufficiently large income; (4) Applicants for Danish nationality must demonstrate the linguistic ability of a 14-year-old native; (5) Reunification with parents over 60 years of age is abolished.

  2. I use immigration interchangeably with third-country immigration and likewise immigrants with third-country immigrants.

  3. These studies also focus on the development of specific political rationalities, formulation of different governmental programmes, strategies etc. For example: Mitchell (2006), Larner and Walters (2004), Sending and Neumann (2006).

  4. In the Danish context the distinction between forced and arranged marriages is somewhat blurred. While there is lack of clarity of differences or similarities between the two across Europe in general (Dustin 2006, 5), the Danish case is more extreme especially due to Denmark’s explicit aim to reduce family immigration and immigration in general (Eggebø 2010, 308).

  5. Since the 1990s the responses of European governments towards forced marriages varied from immigration restrictions, to education to service provision for potential victims. For example, the UK implemented a more multi-faceted approach compared to Denmark. Together with restrictive policies it also emphasised services on a community level for potential victims, even though it has also started to direct its efforts on more immigration restriction recently (Dauvergne and Millbank 2010, 66). The Danish response to forced marriages can be regarded as one extreme, with its emphasis on border controls and an approach that is more restrictive than other Scandinavian counterparts, Norway and Sweden.

  6. Ong talks about the transfer of racial otherness among Southeast Asian Refugees arriving in the United States of America by showing how different minority groups such as Vietnamese or Cambodians differentiate themselves in a similar fashion as in the historical example of blacks and whites after Emancipation. She explains this as the blackening of less desirable immigrants, who are seen at the bottom of cultural and economic ranking.

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    Mujde Erdinc

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Erdinc, M. The Subject and Governmental Action: A Foucauldian Analysis of Subjectification and the 24 Year-Old Rule in Denmark. Fem Leg Stud 20, 21–38 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-012-9192-y

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