This dissertation, drawing from an ethnographic study of the experiences of Muslim first and second generation Muslim youth in a Danish Folkeskolen, examines the conflicting narratives of immigration in Danish society and how these discourses influence the schooling and the identification processes of Muslim immigrant youth. Prior to 1960, Denmark was, ethnically, a relatively homogenous country that prided itself on its commitments to social equality, humanitarian aid and openness to refugees. However, since the 1990s Denmark has experienced the emergence of nationalist discourses that construct immigrants as racialized outsiders. This dissertation explores how social stereotypes of Muslim identities are produced, circulated and debated within the media and education policies and how they are taken up within everyday school practices of teaching and learning as well as in interactions between different actors in schools. It considers how Muslim immigrant youth position themselves and are positioned within hierarchies of racial and cultural difference that influence their access to resources in school and society. However, it also explores how immigrant youth and teachers create critical counter-narratives that challenge and reframe negative social stereotypes in ways that forward new conceptions of belonging within Danish society.

In educational spaces long committed to social equality and child-centered education, teachers expressed desires to help immigrants, to extend the benefits of "democratic" society as they enacted assimilative practices that were cloaked in the benevolent language of "concern". School was imagined as a site to enlighten and civilize Muslim students. While teachers conceived of school as being "open" and inclusive of cultural and religious differences, findings suggest that school is implicitly a Danish and Christian space where immigrant students were positioned as racialized outsiders. The data presented here reveal how immigration discourses inform the amplification of everyday events and particular moments in adolescence that are understood to be critical opportunities for cultural and national intervention. This work therefore seeks to reveal the complex dimensions of concern that may mask coercive and assimilative practices. Paradoxically, concern may lead to misrecognition and derail the types of authentic student teacher relations that are associated with educational and civic engagement.