Processes of inclusion and exclusion are essential parts of the welfare state. Islands hold a special place in our culture’s imagination: as places of freedom from the oppression of society and also as ideal spaces to – often punitively – isolate individuals deemed dangerous to society, e.g. Napoleon on St. Helena, Alcatraz, Spinalonga (leper colony in Greece), and Robben Island. Similar examples are repeated in the modern Scandinavian welfare state, whereas the island has served as the state’s imagination of exclusion of individuals deemed as unwanted.

This presentation thus explores two different cases of islands being used as a means of extreme exclusion of groups considered a problem, even a threat, to mainstream Danish society: people with disabilities and rejected asylum seekers. The first case concerns the islands of Livø (1911-1961) and Sprogø (1923-1961) where the Danish state established institutions for men and women respectively who were regarded as feebleminded and crime prone for the purpose of protecting society from them and for training them to become “better” citizens. The second case concerns the island of Lindholm which 1938-2019 housed a research centre developing a vaccine against Foot and Mouth Disease. In 2018 the Danish government decided that the island should be turned into a “Departure Centre” for refugees who have been denied asylum in order to isolate them as much as possible from the Danish society.

Our research questions revolve around the use of the island as a symbolic and physical space in Danish society in both an historical and a contemporary perspective and the way the island is mobilized in public argumentation to justify isolation and exclusion of particular groups for the protection of society. Our empirical data is primarily examples drawn from public debate in newspapers and other media. The theoretical approach is informed by Michel Foucault’s understanding of problematization, genealogy and discourse, argumentation theory, and Roxanne Mountford and Richard Marback’s work on the rhetoric of space.

With this project we intendto contribute to Nordic research on the history and critical analysis of social institutions and the political and cultural logics informing policy in the past and in the present, as well as excluding and including processes in the welfare state. We thus contribute to the theoritisation of ‘the island’ as argument in social policy, its role in practices of extreme exclusion, and its implications for human rights infringements.