A Dialogue With the (il)Legitimate Other: An Action‐Oriented and Dialogical Account of Social Representations in Urban‐Integration Policy

ABSTRACT Using semi‐structured interviews, we investigate how professionals involved in implementing or communicating a controversial Danish integration policy articulated their perspectives on the policy. This policy—the ‘the parallel society agreement’ (also known as the ‘ghetto‐laws’)—aims to draw a ‘Danish’ middle class into marginalized public housing areas to promote assimilation of ethnic minority residents. Adopting a dialogical and action‐oriented approach to social representations theory (SRT), we identify two focal dimensions—‘freedom‐equality’ and ‘private‐public’—around which conflicting perspectives on this policy were articulated. Results suggest that by engaging with different policy‐related meanings—foregrounding certain values, assumptions or justifications while rejecting others—professionals also expressed different explicit and implicit reactions to the others who are implicated in the policy. Most central were implicit reactions to politicians, reflected through echoes of political discourse appearing in representations. By positioning themselves in relation to these meanings, professionals actively participated in shaping the social representation of the policy. This analysis contributes to SRT by advancing a dialogical and action‐oriented approach that foregrounds how social representations shape—and are shaped by—institutional practices.