AFRICAN DIASPORA ASSOCIATIONS IN DENMARK
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written bylaws and an elected board. The high degree of formalization among the associations may not be surprising, as Hjære and Balslev (2001:20) point out, since this is often a prerequisite for receiving financial support from the Danish state. The remaining 18 associations merely function as loosely organized networks, but they are nevertheless all characterized by being, to some degree, “recognized” as associations in the sense that representatives from other associations have referred us to them and that all of them have an “official” name. Most of the associations in the survey were located through various publically available databases and sources found on the Internet. In addition, we used the snowball-sampling technique by asking respondents to give us information on other African migrant associations that they knew of. We learned of 159 associations. However, 36 could either not be located or did not respond to our calls and e-mails, which left us with a response rate of 77.4 percent. All the survey interviews were conducted via telephone with either the chairperson or a representative from the board and lasted from 20 minutes to an hour.4
African Migrants and Diaspora Associations in Denmark Since the 1960s, immigration to Denmark has changed in volume and areas of origin. Until the 1950s, Denmark was a country of net emigration—and the majority of the immigrants came from the neighboring Nordic countries and other Western countries. However, following the economic upturn during the 1960s and the increased demand for labor, immigration shifted toward developing countries as Denmark officially began to invite “guest workers,” as they were then called, to come from Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. With the economic decline and the rising unemployment in the early 1970s, labor immigration was halted, although people from developing countries still came to Denmark as part of family reunification and—particularly in the 1980s and 1990s—as refugees (Pedersen 1999:233ff.). Even though there has been a significant increase in the number of African migrants in Denmark due to the intake of refugees, the total number of African immigrants and descendants was only 45,562 in 2008, equal to 9.1 percent of the total number of immigrants and descendants in Denmark and less than 1 percent of the total population.5 One of the main