Think twice! Grænser og kategorier i opbrud

Abstract

The Danish research on ethnic minorities have often been based on the "Great Narrative of Worridness". A narrative included with inapropriated and problematic others, as passive objects of marginalization. By "thinking twice" on several levels the article challenges this approach and makes it possible to present new representations of young asylumseekers. The text is based on a researchproject, where the traditional distinction between researcher and researched was blurred. Young asylumseekers cooperated as co-researchers and shot approximately 2500 picturesof their lives in a refugeecamp. Despites institutionalization the pictures and the way of doing coresearch showed new developments in the young asylumseekers lifepossibilities, practices and identities, and demonstrated how these possibilities, practices and identities constitutes and are beeing constituted by gendered ethnicities and ethnic genders. The way of croissing borders and desturing closed categories as "asylumseekers" and "ethnic other" turns our very differently depending on the positions as male or female. The article argues that the development of (self)representations and practices challanging the processes of othering are (political) survivalstrategies for young "ethnic others" living in an extrem position of marginalization.