Domicide in Danish: A critical phenomenological exploration

This paper is a critical phenomenological investigation into how a political de facto death sentence – a “domicide” (Porteous & Smith, 2001) – of a territorially stigmatized neighborhood affects the lived lives of the residents in Mjølnerparken, Copenhagen, Denmark. We examine how Denmark’s Parallelsamfundsloven (the “Parallel Society Act,” also known as the “ghetto law”) permeates experiences and emotions, and the practices it evokes among inhabitants facing eviction and displacement. Building on a theoretical framework of critical phenomenology, bringing together Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Lefebvre, and Fanon, and drawing on the concepts of displacement and domicide, we unfold the destruction of homes through soon-to-be displaced residents’ experiences. The residents present a counternarrative to the dominant image of a hostile and separated “ghetto,” a counternarrative of diversity, togetherness, and a sense of being connected in a shared struggle for a community they care for. They oppose a discriminatory law that enacts a domicide: a banal “murder of homes” in which homes are deliberately dismantled against the will of – and inflicting suffering upon – the residents whose dwelling is undone in the process. Empirically, we extend analyses of domicide to a neighborhood in Copenhagen, showing how racialized neoliberalism and the “ghetto law” exacerbate inequities for othered and racialized minorities and obscure a broader erosion of welfare-state commitments. Theoretically, we adopt a critical phenomenological perspective that centers residents’ experiences, emotions, and practices, while challenging reductive conceptualizations of domicide that overlook agency and resistance in the face of state-led displacement.