A Hostile Environment for Asylum Seekers in Denmark: Any Lessons for British Policymakers?
Denmark, the land of hygge (a sense of well-being Danish style) and one of the happiest nations on Earth according to various surveys, has, over the last three decades, become increasingly unhappy with the high levels of immigration within its borders. To put matters into perspective, as of the beginning of 2025 Denmark’s population of just under six million included 753,000 immigrants. Recent Danish success at discouraging new arrivals has attracted the attention of the UK Government, inspiring newly-appointed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to send her officials on a mission to the Scandinavian nation in October 2025 to learn more about their winning formula, in the possible hope of implementation back home.
Public attitudes in Denmark, once renowned for its liberal immigration policies, have hardened across the political spectrum since the late 1990s. The Eurosceptic and anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) first came to the fore by winning 22 seats in the November 2001 general election, making it the third largest parliamentary party at the time. The publication on 30 September 2005 of twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the conservative daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten was a defining moment in modern Danish history. The cartoons were deemed blasphemous by Muslims, triggering mass protests across the Islamic world in February 2006. Within Denmark, tensions between immigrant Muslim communities and patriotic Danes reached new heights. Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist responsible, faced several death threats and an assassination attempt, forcing him to live out his last days in hiding until his death in 2021.
Anti-immigrant sentiments continued to grow thereafter and became widely accepted in Denmark. Controls on the porous borders with Germany and Sweden were thus reimposed in July 2011, reversing free movement under the 1995 Schengen Agreement, with the purpose of combating illegal immigration and ‘trans-border crime.’ Denmark, if you leave out Greenland, is just a sixth of size of the UK, and its 42-mile land border with Germany and Øresund Bridge, which provides a road link to Sweden, are much easier to patrol in comparison.
The once pro-immigrant, centre-left, Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiet) had a moment of reckoning when it lost the 2015 general election. Its new leader, Mette Frederiksen, moved her party further to the right and adopted an anti-immigration agenda to improve its electoral prospects. Around the same time, Denmark became even less welcoming. The 2015-2016 European refugee crisis called for tough actions. In 2015, a distinction was made between political refugees and those merely fleeing a general state of war in their home countries, facilitating the removal of the latter. A law was also passed that year whereby asylum applications could be processed outside Denmark, in non-European third countries. From January 2016, the “jewellery law” allowed the border police to confiscate cash or valuables worth over 10,000 Danish kroner from asylum seekers upon arrival, to offset their food and housing costs. Despite these measures, a total of 18,342 people were granted asylum over 2015-2016.
An “anti-ghetto law” was introduced in 2018, targeting so-called “parallel society” areas, where social housing was to be either vacated, sold, or demolished. Such areas, with at least 1,000 inhabitants and more than 50% “non-Western residents”, require at least two out of four criteria to be designated as such: education levels, levels of income, unemployment levels, and crime conviction rates. From 2021 onwards, landlords in designated “prevention areas” can refuse to rent their properties to non-Europeans.
Mette Fredriksen took over as Denmark’s youngest-ever and second female prime minister in June 2019, and has pursued an ambitious “zero refugee” policy ever since. She was returned to power in November 2021 to continue her mandate.
Currently, intending asylum seekers have to meet stringent criteria before they can be accepted as refugees. As a result, only 860 asylum requests were granted in 2024, down from around 1,300 in 2023. Only 2020 has seen less arrivals, but that was during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initial grants of asylum provide temporary protection for refugees, for up to a year in the first instance. Discretionary yearly extensions can be applied for, ideally until their respective home countries become safe to return to. Family reunion rules for refugees have also tightened. Both partners must be aged 24 years and above, the sponsoring partner must not have claimed benefits for three years and has to provide a financial guarantee, and both must have passed a Danish language test. A permanent residence permit can only be applied for after eight consecutive years of living in Denmark under a temporary residence permit, or at least four years if certain language and citizenship requirements are met.
Denmark’s restrictive immigration policies appear to have arisen in response to a clash of cultures between certain categories of immigrants and indigenous Danes. A perceived slowness of integration into host communities, segregated urban neighbourhoods, the gradual loss of Danish national identity, seemingly irreconcilable religious differences, and differing worldviews have created a toxic environment within an otherwise easy- going country. Liberal Danish values, which include freedom of speech and religion, gender equality, LGBTQ + rights, and animal welfare, are seen as being under threat. Limited acceptance of asylum seekers (Denmark opted out of the Common European Asylum System as far back as 1992), temporary residence permits, reduced access to welfare benefits, restrictive naturalisation rules, repatriation of failed asylum seekers, and financial incentives for voluntary return to home countries have created an environment that is not seen as welcoming to new entrants seeking to relocate to Denmark.
Immigration appears to be a major concern for many Western Europeans. It thus seems more than likely that Denmark’s immigration policies will be adopted in some form elsewhere in the region by countries seeking to reduce their migrant numbers. It is now up to the UK Government to decide what policies are applicable to its domestic situation, while recognising that the steady arrival of asylum seekers in England by small boats has no parallel in Denmark, despite the latter’s 5,440-mile-long coastline. For the time being, we remain in the planning stage.
Ashis Banerjee