A MIND OF WINTER 1 A Mind of Winter: The Transformative Experience of Estrangement by a Stateless Kurd in Exile in Denmark Susanne Bregnbæk Abstract This article explores the transformative experience of estrangement by a Kurdish Iranian refugee named Hiwa in exile in Denmark. Through a person-centered approach, I focus on what was at stake for stateless people, such as Hiwa, at a time when right-wing populist asylum politics made achieving permanent citizenship an uphill battle and leaving Denmark impossible due to the Dublin Regulation. Drawing on psychoanalytic the- ories of “the multiple self,” I describe Hiwa’s changing self-states as involving a triple reorientation in the form of an estranged relationship to his past, present, and envisioned future. I analyze this transformative experience as linked to an existential quest to find a space between the struggle for freedom and submission to a sense of powerlessness—experiences that sometimes elude conventional language. Finally, I suggest that reading po- etry and writing about exile constituted a transitional experience enabling an inner world of emotions to be expressed. The article provides a window to the human consequences of the “Paradigm Shift” in Danish asylum politics, which entailed making all residence permits temporary—and more broadly to the growing problem of statelessness in Europe. [transformation, statelessness, refugees, exile, multiple selves, and asylum policies] I am weary of an anguish that is not mine. I inhabit a land that is not mine. I live with a name that is not mine. I weep from a pain that is not mine. My existence stems from a joy that is not mine. I die a death that is not mine. Ahmad Shamlou, “Poverty” In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt (2017) described the problem of statelessness as one of the most signifcant challenges of the twentieth century. Today, statelessness is a reality for millions of people; we are now experiencing the greatest number of refugees globally since World War II (Leibson 2019, 1). Following the refugee crisis in 2015, when a wave of migrants fed to Europe from the Middle East and Africa through the Mediterranean, many European countries experienced a strong right-wing push to control borders. In Denmark—a country once famous for its humanitarian values—the approach to migration has been much more severe compared to that of its immediate neighboring countries in Europe (Bilefsky 2016). ETHOS, Vol. 0, Issue 0, pp. 1–20, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. © 2022 by the American Anthropological Association All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/etho.12315