Being Foreign in a Country That Doesn't Know How to Deal With Foreigners

The Danish relationship with Everything Not Danish can at times be strained, to say the least. We all blame the weirdo right-wingers for saying absurd and maybe even racist things, but somehow seem to miss that it's not just the weirdo politicians. It's all of us, and a lot (too much) of the time. The latest thing around Aarhus appears to be that Eastern Europeans aren't let into nightclubs, solely on the basis of being Lithuanian, Bulgarian or whatever. Some of the people affected are furious, while others pull the ”it's private property so who cares and I'll just go somewhere else” argument, (even though there are some convincing arguments that it might be illegal. I don't know the giurispudence, but I'm fairly sure this particular way of discriminating guests won't hold in court.) But this is just the latest example of often tiny things that make people feel not welcome. How does it feel to be foreign in a country that does not know how to deal with foreigners and would rather have them go away so as not to think about them?

Language as exclusionary practice

The language you speak defines who will understand you. So you speak the language you think serves better to make yourself understood in any given context. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But sometimes you probably also choose a language in order to not be understood, by whoever is the excluded one in the group. It's the dynamics of this that I would like to dig into today.

Escenas españolas

Antes que todo, perdonadme por tardar tanto en actualizar el blog. Mi pc personal ha decidido dejar el mundo de ordenadores funcionantes, y no he podido acceder a algo tan simple como blogspot.com. (En efecto, esto se publica desde un ordenador que apenas se le ve la pantalla.. espero volver pronto con mejores condiciones de trabajo!)

De todas formas, esta vez trataré un tema que superficialmente puede parecer más puntual, pero aún así pienso que tiene una influencia más alargada y por eso también una cierta importancia.

Empecemos con algunos escenarios que he visto e vivido durante mi año en Barcelona y viajando por España.