Denmark may be the world’s second-happiest country, according to a recent survey, but its happiness feels fragile especially with immigration woes
This is one of a number of ways in which Denmark is trying to control where and how immigrants live. On December 1st its Social Democratic government enacted a law to prevent the formation of parallel societies by obliging local authorities to give preference in “prevention areas” to well-educated people with jobs when assigning housing. It is even keener to deter migrants from arriving in the first place.
The Danish difference has deep roots. After the Danish crown lost the largely German-speaking duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia in 1864 it drew the lesson that the country must “stick together [and] be homogeneous”, says Ulf Hedetoft, a scholar of nationalism at the University of Copenhagen. A law two years later stipulated that only people who spoke Danish and wore Danish clothes could become Danes. It is still difficult.
Denmark’s defence of its welfare state is ruthless and, say critics, racist. In October the finance ministry, in its annual report on the issue, estimated that in 2018 immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants drained from public finances a net 31bn kroner , some 1.4% of. Immigrants from Western countries, by contrast, contributed a net 7bn kroner .
Like its Scandinavian neighbours, Denmark enrols new migrants in programmes that include language and civics classes. But its benefits system is, characteristically, a bit tougher. Payments are lower for people who have not lived in the country for seven out of eight years. This serves both to deter immigrants and to encourage those who do settle to work. Denmark can boast that the gap in unemployment between natives and non-European immigrants is smaller than Sweden’s.
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