Towards Two-tier Universalism? A Discussion of the Welfare Principle
Abstract
In this study the common political discourse on the ‘challenge of immigration’ to the Danish welfare state is turned on its head. Instead of focusing on the costs and difficulties of immigration, the focus is first upon the challenge that recent policies on immigration and integration constitute to the principle of universalism; and second upon the ability of the principle to encompass ethnic diversity. It is argued that a revision of the implicit normativity of the Danish welfare state is necessary in order to secure equality for all groups of society and positive selective measures based on recognition and status equality are proposed as a possible theoretical tool to further this.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/jssp.2007.52.59
Copyright: © 2007 Catharina Juul Kristensen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- The principle of universalism
- the Danish welfare state
- integration and immigration policies
- theoretical alternatives