When Denmark got tough on migration
The center-left Labour government in Britain made waves last week when it announced harsh new rules for asylum seekers.
The proposal would make refugee status subject to frequent review and staying long-term much harder: Obtaining permanent residency would take at least 20 years. It also includes policies that some critics have deemed “performative cruelty,” such as confiscating jewelry from asylum seekers to help pay for food and housing costs.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is trying to address a question haunting many centrist governments in this moment of rising populism: How do you respond to the concerns voters have about immigration while remaining true to liberal values?
Labour won big in last year’s election. Since then, however, the far-right party Reform U.K. has built a double-digit lead in polls, arguing that an excess of immigration is destroying British culture and identity, and is straining public services.
But Starmer’s policy isn’t inspired by the right. It’s inspired by Denmark. There, a left-leaning government has held on to power and limited the momentum of Denmark’s own far right by arguing something not entirely dissimilar: that limiting immigration is, in fact, a prerequisite for a sustainable welfare state.
Britain is just the latest country to develop an interest in the “Danish Model.” The Netherlands, Germany and Sweden have all also studied Denmark. The irony is that in Denmark itself, we might currently be witnessing the model’s limitations.
A successful deterrent
The heart of Denmark’s approach to asylum is deterrence. Denmark is trying to make life so difficult for asylum seekers that they prefer not to come in the first place.
For instance, it was Denmark that passed a law in 2016 to confiscate valuables from asylum seekers to cover their living costs. Benefits have also been cut sharply. The asylum process has become longer and more tenuous. Applicants are at risk of being sent back if their home countries are deemed safe. Obtaining permanent residence takes at least eight years.
There is some evidence that it’s working. My colleague Jeanna Smialek, who was just in Denmark, told me that the overall number of asylum seekers in the country was down. In 2015, about 21,000 people sought asylum there. That figure fell to just over 2,000 last year. The decline came as asylum numbers dropped across Europe; Syria is no longer at war, which helps. But Denmark’s decline was steeper. (Watch my conversation with Jeanna above.)
That has paid off politically, at least for a time.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has been able to survive the anti-incumbent wave. Her policies are widely viewed as having denied far-right parties oxygen on one of their most salient issues.
And Frederiksen herself has argued that they have allowed her to preserve Denmark’s vaunted welfare state.
Too many immigrants, she says, undermine the sense of nationhood that underpins people’s willingness to accept the high taxes needed to pay for public services. As such, she argues, a hard line on immigration, far from pandering to the right, is a prerequisite for a progressive agenda.
All that has made Denmark’s approach something of a model for other centrist and even left-leaning governments hoping to survive in a populist era.
A backlash from the left
Last week, however, Frederiksen’s party did badly in municipal elections, losing control of the capital, Copenhagen, for the first time in more than a century. Many voters in the city abandoned the Social Democrats for a more left-wing party. Some told Jeanna that they found the government’s immigration policies cruel and racist.
Critics have raised concerns that, over time, policies aimed at making illegal immigrants feel unwelcome have affected how legal immigrants feel, too.
And benefit cuts to asylum seekers have already led to an increase in refugees living in poverty, according to one Danish immigration expert, which has contributed to an increase in crime and poorer results in education.
These kinds of policies, experts say, introduce tension between two goals: deterring migrants from coming and integrating the ones already in the country. That tension could be even starker in a country like Britain, which has a much more diverse population — and which relies on legal immigrants to staff its ailing health service.
This all raises the question: Can the “Danish Model” really serve as a model for anyone else?
Denmark is a small country. It’s home to about six million people, fewer than those who live in London. It’s relatively ethnically homogenous. So what works there may not cross over to countries that have been home to immigrants and their descendants for generations.
The Danish Social Democrats hope that the losses they suffered in Copenhagen — with its disproportionately wealthy, young and urban population — will be made up for through support from more conservative-leaning voters across the country.
The litmus test will be the national election in 2026. Other European governments will be watching closely.
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