ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies welfare work as a social relation enacting sociation processes through dominance and the stating of the supremacy – or superiority of Danish national and modern welfare culture, which is posited as superior and ahead of other cultures, stereotyping both the Dane and the immigrant or refugee. Supremacy as a societal form covers social relations which are depoliticised, leaving the welfare worker neutral and freed of agency. Supremacy is marked as a neutral-normal and the welfare agency is left unnoticed. A variant of unmarked superiority is to mark an outgroup as not human or as less human. According to the dehumanisation research field, dehumanisation is many-sided, multifaceted and flexible and often begins with depersonalisation. One aspect of dehumanisation is mechanisation which applies for incidences where a worker is supposed capable of only standardised actions without demand of mental capacity and intellectual autonomy or feeling.
