RESEARCH

Socialized by the Vote?
School Elections and Democratic Citizenship

Across Western democracies, young people show declining commitment to and participation in political life. So, how may societies strengthen young people’s democratic citizenship? In this research project, we examine a particularly promising avenue: School elections. Although school elections have gained prominence in school systems around the world, we know less about whether, how, and for whom they shape young people’s political attachment, ability, and participation. 

We argue that school elections are political socialization events that can influence young citizens in both the short and longer term, with potentially strongest effects among marginalized youth. Through a unique partnership with the Danish Parliament, we focus on the Danish school election: a biannual, three-week program ending in a realistic mock election among eighth- to tenth-grade pupils. 

To examine the consequences of the Danish school election, we'll collect a large-scale four-wave survey that follows pupils before, during, and after the election. To examine how and among whom school elections matter, we'll implement local field experiments varying specific elements of the program and examine their effects for pupils of different backgrounds. By doing so, we can provide key evidence on the potential of school elections to address declining political engagement among young citizens.

The project is funded by a Project I grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark for the period 2027-2030 and I'll be working together with Mathias Kruse and Nanna Dorthea Olsen to realize it. 

The Paradox of Political Marginalisation:
Young People and Political Power

YOPOW  

Politics remains unequal and nonrepresentative. Looking across contemporary Western democracies, wealthy, well-educated, white men – not girls, as Beyonce proclaimed in her similarly titled song – ‘run the world.’ The underrepresentation of women, ethnic minorities, and people with fewer socioeconomic resources in the corridors of power is of serious concern as it biases political decision making and challenges democratic legitimacy. In essence, political marginalisation betrays democracy’s ideals and impoverishes the reality of democratic living.

There has been a tendency to think that underrepresented groups – women, ethnic minorities, and the working class – are missing from photos of political leaders because they don’t have the same ‘appetite’ for power (they lack ‘political ambition’). YOPOW instead turns the logic on its head. To understand the persistence of political marginalization, YOPOW will study the underlying norms that exist in a society and shape, already from a young age, our ideas about who is fit for power. 

The project is funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council for the period 2025-2030, and I am working together with Lisa Herbig, Louise Halberg Nielsen, and Nanna Dorthea Olsen on it. You can visit the project website, watch me give a short pitch or read an interview (in English or Danish) about my excitement to receive the grant.

How and why immigration divides us:
The role of moralization 

In a democracy, citizens and politicians must be able to discuss their disagreements. A topic that challenges this premise more than almost any other in many contemporary societies is immigration. We strongly disagree with each other about the value of immigration, and we cannot stand the people who view the topic differently from us. I argue that this has happened as a result of politicians' moralization of immigration. By using rhetoric that appeals to notions of fundamental right and wrong, politicians have transformed immigration into a moral issue in many citizens' minds. As a result, citizens view their existing attitudes as more critical for their political choices and for their relationships to others. 

The project contributes to our knowledge about the role that politicians play in moralization processes and how moralization may make immigration more politically and socially divisive in the citizenry. Together with Tobias Widmann and Anna van Vree, we used a combination of computational text analysis, original survey experiments, and focus group discussions to uncover the workings of moralization and moral boundary-drawing in immigration debates.

The project was funded by a Sapere Aude Research Leader grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark for the period 2021-2025. You can read an interview (in English or Danish), watch and listen to me talk (in Danish) about the project, or read about how our findings shine line on the moralization of German and Danish politics. You can also visit the project webpage if you want to learn more.

Integration effects of citizenship?

Does naturalization contribute to immigrant integration? Existing research has been unable to conclusively evaluate the integration potential of naturalization because of the practical impossibility of separating selection effects from the causal effect of citizenship, since immigrants with citizenship are likely to differ from those without in important respects such as motivation and ability. These factors are difficult to measure and control for, but through a unique data partnership with the Danish Ministry of Integration, this project overcomes the causal identification problem characteristic of existing research, by using data from Danish citizenship tests in a regression discontinuity design. Combining register data on objective integration outcomes, such as earnings, and original survey data on subjective integration measures, such as feelings of belonging and well-being, this project gives a causally valid and deep understanding of citizenship’s integration potential, with important policy implications.

The project was funded by a Nova grant from Aarhus University Research Fund for the period 2021-2024, and I worked together with Frederik Jørgensen and Dominik Hangartner on it. You can read a short interview (in Danish) about the project.

Conceptions of politics and 'good citizenship'
among minority and majority youths

Voting is seen as one of the key virtues of good citizenship in Western democracies. Through voting, citizens confirm social norms of engagement and they demonstrate their status as central members of the political community. In addition, voting is one of the most important avenues for advancing citizen interests and influencing society.

Given the centrality of voting, it is alarming that voter turnout among second-generation immigrants in Denmark (as in most other Western European democracies) is significantly lower than among the ethnic majority. This gap cannot be explained by standard socio-demographic factors known to influence voter turnout. With funding from Aarhus University Research Fund, this project went beyond traditional resource-based explanations of political participation to examine the conceptions of politics and norms of 'good citizenship' present among minority and majority youths in Denmark.

My research demonstrates that, compared to majority youths, minority youths in Denmark are highly aware of negative political messages about immigrants and this awareness crucially shapes their relationship to politics, resulting in a negative feedback loop: Minority youths dissociate from politics, not because they are politically apathetic or disinterested, but to protect themselves from the hurt and frustration associated with engaging with a type of politics that targets them negatively. I also demonstrate that while minority and majority youths in Denmark share ideas about what it means to be a ‘good citizen’, majority youths – because of their more secure status – feel a stronger sense of entitlement, which, in turn, gives them space to be more politically critical than minority youths.

You can read a summary of my findings (in Danish) at Altinget.

National boundary-drawing and immigrants' belonging

In my PhD research and beyond, I have theorised and provided empirical evidence for the impact of national boundary-drawing on first- and second-generation immigrants’ sense of national and political belonging. Defining boundaries as societal categorisations of ‘us’ and ‘them’, my cross-national work shows that institutionalised boundaries in the form of citizenship policies are less important for immigrants’ sense of belonging than the boundaries drawn through popular conceptions of nationhood. In addition, the boundaries signalled through political rhetoric crucially shape immigrant minorities’ political trust and democratic satisfaction. Finally, my work has contributed to nuancing the concept of belonging by showing how young descendants of immigrants in Denmark distinguish between belonging as a sense of 'home' vs. feeling accepted as a member of the Danish nation. While they feel at home, they do not feel entirely accepted, which complicates their ability to confidently say that they are Danish.

This research has been covered by various news outlets in Denmark, such as DR, Berlingske and TV2 and was awarded the Maria Ioannis Baganha Dissertation Award in 2019 for the best PhD dissertation in the field of migration, integration, and social cohesion in Europe.