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Welcome to a migration seminar titled (In)visible Lives: policy, law and practice in responding to substance use-related needs among undocumented migrants in Denmark.

Speaker

Arash Setoodeh, PhD Fellow, Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Campus Emdrup, Copenhagen, Aarhus University.

Abstract

This presentation draws on a forthcoming book chapter in the SpringerNature volume Substance Use Among Refugees in Europe (to be published at the end of 2025) to explore how undocumented migrants who use drugs in Denmark experience conditional and uneven access to healthcare and social services. While Denmark is bound by international human rights obligations to provide basic healthcare to all individuals, in practice, access is tightly tied to legal residence and registration in the Central Person Register (CPR). Migrants without legal status, including rejected asylum seekers, overstayed EU citizens, and expelled migrants living on tolerated stay, are generally excluded from essential services such as substance use treatment, harm reduction, and social care.

However, exclusion is not absolute. While current policy formally guarantees access to acute healthcare, the interpretation of what is defined as acute is narrow, inconsistent, and often shaped by institutional discretion. Based on legal and policy analysis, as well as interviews with healthcare-social professionals and legal experts, the chapter examines how undocumented drug users navigate highly constrained environments, circulating between deportation centers, prisons, and urban drug scenes, where survival is shaped by legal ambiguity and shifting interpretations of need.

The chapter argues that exclusion is structurally embedded yet contextually enacted, and calls for a human rights-informed rethinking of entitlement that addresses the intersecting vulnerabilities of undocumented migrants who use drugs.

Attendance

This is a hybrid seminar, you are welcome to connect via Zoom or join us at MIM seminar room, floor 9, Niagara, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1. To attend on campus, please gather by the reception area at 13.05. If you have any questions, send an email to mim@mau.se.

Zoom

Link will be available closer to the seminar date.

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