ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we determine that race is not only buried alive in Danish welfare work with refugees; it is the effect of haunted welfare work. Race is not dead, but kept alive as welfare workers invest in burying modern ghosts. This insight is elaborated in three steps. First, it is elaborated how ghosts and hauntings are productive concepts to study the workings of raceless racism. Second, three modern ghosts haunting Danish welfare work with refugees are recognised and conceptualised, i.e., the ghosts of difference, docility and dignity which trouble and irritate. It is described how welfare workers invest in the burying of these ghosts that keep turning up. Third, basic categories presupposed in welfare work with refugees are teased out, i.e., the categories of development, humans, society and professionalism, which are socially and historically produced by postcoloniality and its cultural archives. Hence, it is concluded that the onto-colonial constitution of the social structure is made up of racially coded categories and what they include and exclude. Consequently, it is argued that Danish exceptionalism must be refused, as the global myth of the benevolent universalistic welfare state is dismantled.
