Hvis du vil vide noget om integration, så er det ikke her

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article draws on an anthropological study of the everyday neighborly relationship between asylum centre and local community in the small Danish town of Jelling (population 3,600) located in southern Jutland. While asylum centres in Denmark typically open and close on a regular basis due to fluctuating yearly numbers of arriving refugees, in Jelling one finds a centre for asylum seekers that has operated continuously for three decades, a unique circumstance within the country. This affords an exceptional insight into how neighbourliness between asylum centres and local town communities can evolve and develop when allowed to exist over an extended period. The article shows how, over time, in Jelling the asylum centre and the town’s own institutions have become intertwined spatially and socially. It explores the local pragmatic practices and understandings that underpin the development of this institutional interconnectivity on a day-to-day basis, and in this regard the analysis fleshes out the central role played by specific aspects of the town’s local cultural history. Consequently, the article concludes that the local encounter in Jelling between asylum centre and local community fundamentally does not commence with the presence of the asylum centre itself, but rather, this encounter is already embedded within existing local social self-understandings and collective memories.