The Danish Welfare State analyzes a broad range of areas, such as globalization, labor marked, family life, health and social exclusion, the book demonstrates that life in a modern welfare state is changing rapidly, creating both challenges and possibilities for future management.

Analysing two major surveys of 14 different migrant groups connected to Danish register data, this insightful book explores what migrants think of the welfare state. It investigates the question of whether migrants assimilate to the ideas of extensive state intervention in markets and families or if they retain the attitudes and values that are prevalent in their countries of origin.

Denmark and Switzerland are small and successful countries with exceptionally content populations. However, they have very different political institutions and economic models. They have followed the general tendency in the West toward economic convergence, but both countries have managed to stay on top. They both have a strong liberal tradition, but otherwise their economic strategies are a welfare state model for Denmark and a safe haven model for Switzerland. The Danish welfare state is tax-based, while the expenditures for social welfare are insurance-based in Switzerland. The political institutions are a multiparty unicameral system in Denmark, and a permanent coalition system with many referenda and strong local government in Switzerland. Both approaches have managed to ensure smoothly working political power-sharing and economic systems that allocate resources in a fairly efficient way. To date, they have also managed to adapt the economies to changes in the external environment with a combination of stability and flexibility.

In discussions of economics, governance, and society in the Nordic countries, “the welfare state” is a well-worn analytical concept. However, there has been much less scholarly energy devoted to historicizing this idea beyond its postwar emergence. In this volume, specialists from Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland chronicle the historical trajectory of “the welfare state,” tracing the variable ways in which it has been interpreted, valued, and challenged over time. Each case study generates valuable historical insights into not only the history of Northern Europe, but also the welfare state itself as both a phenomenon and a concept.

This book conveys analyses, perspectives and interpretations of the normative foundation of the unique 'Nordic welfare state model' which are relevant across the globe.

Danish Architecture and Society offers a fascinating architectural history of the institutions and public buildings that have helped shape the everyday lives of Danes since the eighteenth century. The book charts the emergence and development as well as the grandeur and ultimate demise of these institutions, tracing the underlying--and changing--architectural and societal ideals that have been influential in terms of design, organization, and furnishing. The individual contributions detail the often dramatic historical developments of buildings from industrialism's heyday, such as train stations, post offices and customs houses. Although some of these still exist, a great many have today either been adapted to other functions or demolished. The contributing authors examine the significance of the buildings at the time they were constructed and attending understandings of sustainable building, contrasting these with present-day notions of architecture and construction as a more makeshift phenomenon. Through more than two hundred illustrations--drawings, sketches, plans and photos, much of it never before published--the authors provide a vivid and compelling account of Danish architectural history and its influence in framing the Danish welfare state as we know it today.

Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State provides an ambiguous yet disturbing portrait of the inner workings of the Danish welfare state and its implications in a context of globalisation and migration. Through a sociological interview-study with welfare workers, this book describes how processes of othering are undercurrents of welfare work. The processes construct immigrants and refugees as a kind of people who are not only culturally different but also behind, deficient and weak, and thus assigned the potential to benefit from welfare work. These processes are designated to advance a racial welfare dynamic of remedial circularity which keeps the immigrant and refugee on the threshold of modern living and democracy. It is thus depicted how welfare work is intertwined not with a biological framework but with a cultural framework naturalising and ontologising cultural differences. The book examines how welfare work tends to appreciate immigrants and refugees as dislocated people with a cultural lack and how it abides by the dictums of civilising expansions and humanitarian imperialism within the modern state. This book will be useful for every scholar who wants to reconsider and think differently about how the welfare state is going to proceed in a global society.