What Is in a Word? An Exploration of Concept of ‘the Ghetto’ in Danish Media and Politics 1850–2018

Since the early 2000s, the concept of ‘the ghetto’ has been used excessively in Danish public debate and national policies targeting the integration of non-Western immigrants. This study, theoretically inspired by historian Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history approach (Begriffsgeschichte), explores what can be learned from historicising the meanings and political implications of the ghetto concept to understand its present-day influence and implications. Empirically, the article builds on an investigation of how the concept of the ghetto has been used in Denmark over the last 170 years. The analysis underlines the multiple meanings of the ghetto, providing an opening for understanding its concurrent political implications. Why and how did a concept – one that less than one hundred years ago was affiliated with the mass atrocities of the Third Reich – become a tool in Danish integration policies?