Translating Policy Into Practice: Local Stakeholders’ Interpretations of Refugee Integration in the Danish Multilevel State

In Denmark, as in Europe, the concept of immigrant integration is highly contested, undergoing continuous policy changes and potentially being interpreted differently at various levels of governance in the multilevel state. To understand the complexity of integration policy, an understanding of how local stakeholders working with integration on the municipal frontline of the welfare state interpret government policies is needed. Based on 19 qualitative interviews with local stakeholders in 11 Danish municipalities, we explored how they interpret what integration is and should be in working with newly arrived young refugees. Drawing on post-structural policy analysis (Bacchi 2009; Yanow 2015), our analysis shows that local stakeholders articulate five interpretive ‘translations’ of integration, elucidating different local assumptions about the problems of and solutions to integration. Across the five ‘translations,’ we analytically identify two overarching ‘translation regimes,’ a national policy regime and a social justice regime, which we connect to competing understandings of the relationship between refugees and the Danish state, human rights, and citizenship. The analysis provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of local frontline work and the inherent fundamental dilemmas and ambiguities within integration policy implementation, reflecting paradoxical tensions within the Danish welfare state and Western liberal democracies between national border management and global–local solidarity.