Written by George Purdy
As post-war economic and industrial growth brought new waves of foreign nationals to Scandinavia, a region once characterised by migration became one of immigration, with the integration of these new arrivals becoming an important welfare project in the Nordic welfare states. Initially receptive to labour immigration, Denmark pursued a liberal integration policy as long as economic expansion remained reliant on the arrival of foreign workers. As these conditions changed and labour immigration was replaced by humanitarian immigration, progressive programmes were abandoned in favour of a restrictionist immigration policy which sought the assimilation of immigrants to mainstream Danish society. Equating its sense of equality with ‘sameness,’ successive Danish governments rejected the creation of a multicultural state, instead opting to protect the cultural homogeneity which had defined the small nation since the Schleswig Wars in the mid-nineteenth century.
Following the enactment of new legislation from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in 1967 which enshrined the rights of non-European refugees to resettle in Europe, asylum seekers began arriving en masse, replacing the labour migrants who constituted the bulk of immigrants to Denmark in the earlier decades of the post-war era. Among the earliest humanitarian settlers were Cape Verdeans, Vlachs and Pakistanis who catalysed what Grillo has termed a “social anxiety” among the native population who had little previous experience of non-European immigrants. By 1988 Denmark ranked second in a Euro-barometer regarding negative attitudes towards non-European citizens, a trend mutually informative with a changing political landscape in Denmark. Unlike in neighbouring Sweden, humanitarian immigration was propelled into the political spotlight, triggering the rise of new right-wing populist political parties which pressured the Danish government to adopt an increasingly anti-immigration stance. As noted by multiple studies into anti-immigration rhetoric in Western Europe (such as that by Howard in 2009), the existence of an anti-immigration party is the single most important driver of immigration-integration policy. Whilst the Bevara Sverige svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish) party failed to gain political traction after being founded in 1979, in Denmark the Fremskridtsparti (Progress Party), which had long been viewed as too extreme for mainstream politics, was successfully rebranded by its leader Pia Kjærsgaard as the Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party). Immigrants were increasingly cast as disruptive elements in society and as a fundamental threat to ‘Danishness’ by anti-immigration parties, shaping public opinion and influencing electoral outcomes.
Rather than pursuing the establishment of a more multicultural nation, the Danish government prioritised what German political scientist Bassam Tibi termed the leitkultur (‘leading culture’). A host of new programmes aimed at assimilating refugees to Danish society were undertaken, with a particularly radical dispersal programme being launched in 1986 which aimed to prevent the concentration of refugee communities in specific areas. Housing therefore became a central issue for asylum seekers in Denmark, a social hurdle compounded by economic barriers. Most notably, immigrants were often unable to enter the workforce as they were required to attend modular language classes and attain an upper-intermediate ability in the Danish language before they could be formally employed. Many immigrants remained in the language immersion programme for a decade or more, and even those who completed the course often had access only to low-wage jobs as cleaners or caretakers. Poverty among immigrants rose consistently, negatively influencing levels of crime and the perception of immigrants in the media.
In the final years of the twentieth century, the new coalition government elected in 1984, which comprised the Conservatives, the Liberals, the Christian People’s Party and the Centre Democrats, adopted a two-pronged focus on the revival of the economy and the perceived crisis regarding the failed integration of immigrants. In this spirit, a National Council for Integration was established, implementing guidelines for the municipal enforcement of new legislation. Local-level initiatives involving language classes and job training became more prevalent as the arrival of asylum seekers remained high in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the Bosnian War. The Conservative minister of justice proposed the tightening of Denmark’s already restrictive immigration laws, and in 1992 regulation regarding family reunification was amended to prevent those who had been in Denmark for less than five years from bringing their family to join them. In 1999 a new Integration Act was brought forward which extended the duration of the integration programme and strengthened the dispersal policy. Arguably the most radical part of this new act was the limitation of welfare benefits to only those immigrants who had successfully obtained a permanent residency permit. Similarly, obtaining Danish citizenship was made harder in 2001, a reaction by the government to the Danish People’s Party’s record seven point four percent of the vote share in the 1998 election. Immigrants were now required to have advanced Danish language skills and to have passed a citizenship test before they could become legal residents or citizens of Denmark. This strict immigration-integration policy had its desired effect, causing a fifty percent drop in the number of asylum applications by 2002.
Born out of the need to adapt immigrants to the host society, Danish immigration policy has ranked among the most restrictive and assimilationist in Europe. In 2015 a study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development noted that non-western immigrant communities in Denmark experienced high rates of poverty, a notable case of socioeconomic segregation in a welfare state otherwise renowned for its strong sense of social justice and equality. As for the primary catalyst behind Denmark’s embarkation on this assimilationist route, the clearest cause is to be found in the concept of the Nordic welfare state itself. Based on the idea of an imagined national community in the early twentieth century during a period of high cultural homogeneity, this model has subsequently failed to account for those deemed to fall beyond the traditional definition of ‘Danishness.’ Immigrant integration has therefore come to the fore of political debate across the Nordic region, a trend which remains politically lucrative for the right-wing populist parties which campaign on anti-immigration rhetoric, continuing to shape the political landscape in a period of heightened socio-economic insecurity.
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