sepavone / Depositphotos
Denmark is breaking down neighborhoods where most immigrants live to encourage assimilation into Danish culture. The policy is controversial and is being challenged in court.
History is replete with examples of governments resorting to forced segregation against ethnic minorities.
From the colonizers who coerced indigenous peoples into reservations, the Nazis who forced Jews into ghettos, or the United States that segregated Black Americans through redlining and zoning policies, displacement and housing have long been on the agenda. center of institutional racism.
But in today’s Europe, a reverse trend of coercive assimilation is emerging in Northern nations struggling with high levels of immigration.
As part of what has been described as “ethnic engineering” and as one of the “toughest immigration policies” in the world, the Denmark is withdrawing by force people from neighborhoods it calls “ghettos” and redirecting them to alternative housing.
In neighboring Sweden, politicians have expressed a desire to adopt similar plans. The uprooting of entire communities is controversial. This winter, Europe’s highest court, the European Court of Justice, is expected to determine whether Denmark is violating the civil and human rights of those being resettled.
Denmark’s “ghetto package”
Denmark’s radical housing policy has been years in the making. In 2010, the country’s authorities began to compile lists of “non-western” neighborhoodswith a majority of immigrants, who were not complying with established standards in terms of legality, employment, income and education levels.
Areas that did not meet two of the four criteria were officially designated “ghettos” or “difficult ghettos” if they did not meet more than two criteria.
Although these neighborhoods are home to people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, they are marked by the fact that more than half of the residents come from non-Western countries, including Syria, Iraq and Somalia.
Areas with “Western” majorities that did not meet the same criteria were labeled “Western” majorities.vulnerable areas”, in contrast to “non-Western” ghettos.
In 2018, the Danish Social Democratic government launched the “Ghetto Package”, a legislative program aimed at dismantle “ghetto” neighborhoods – and the social fabrics that sustain them. The package did not foresee the same measures for “vulnerable areas”.
The proposals for this purpose consisted of reduce public housing to a maximum of 40% of total housing in neighborhoods and measures to encourage white and wealthier residents to move in.
As a result of this initiative, thousands of people were displaced and removed from their family homes through sales, demolitions and evictions.
Some of the houses were renovated while awaiting new tenants, while others were sold to private investors who planned to increase rents by more than 50%.
Evicted residents are typically offered alternative accommodation in public housing in other areas of the city or region, but without any control over location or cost.
Denmark’s assimilation program is not limited to dismantling low-income, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods. Children born into “non-Western” families in state-designated ghettos must attend special programs for a minimum of 25 hours per week from age 1 onwards, designed to immerse them in “Danish values”, including Christian holidays and teaching the Danish language. Parents are not allowed to accompany them.
Furthermore, the program aims to transform “ghettos” into “harsh penalty areas”, where crimes can be penalized twice as severely.
Residents and other critics of the package of measures argue that the “non-Western” designation means, in practice, “non-white” or “Muslim”pointing out the fact that non-Europeans such as Australians and New Zealanders were excluded from the criteria, and that Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion in 2022 were allowed to move into social housing than “non-Westerners” they had been forced to abandon.
Furthermore, being a naturalized Danish citizen or born in Denmark does not count as being Western for people of color; non-white second-generation immigrants are formally considered non-Western under the program, which implies a race-based membership criterion.
In response to the law, a dozen residents facing eviction from Mjølnerparken, a residential area classified as a “hard ghetto” in Copenhagen, presented a case against the Ministry of Social Affairs of Denmark in 2020.
In September 2024, the European Court of Justice held an initial hearing to determine whether the government’s Ghetto Package is discriminatory under Danish law, European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights. Deliberations are ongoing.
Pending the verdict, the United Nations urged Denmark to suspend the sale of houses in the affected areas, but to no avail.
Ghettos, ethnic enclaves and parallel societies
The fact that immigrants congregate in the same residential neighborhoods is nothing new.
In American social science, the term “ethnic enclave” is a relatively neutral concept that refers to a community dominated by a particular ethnic group or population. Prominent examples include Little Havana in Miami, Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco, or Little Italy in Boston and New York.
Historically, these communities have formed their own social support systems, networks, and economies in lieu of government support and have become important cultural centers.
However, due to high levels of immigration in recent years, many European countries have become less receptive to the idea of predominantly immigrant neighborhoods.
In these cases, the integration is increasingly seen as the cornerstone of a sustainable immigration policy, even though state policies can be drivers of segregation between ethnic Europeans and immigrant communities.
In fact, accusations of failed integration are a common political response to rising rates of crime and gang violence in Scandinavia and Europe generally, and are the reasons cited for a more restrictive immigration policy.
This notion underlies the assumption that immigrants of non-Western origin are a bad influence on each other – and, in turn, on Europe.
In many European countries, the expression “parallel societies”. It is used to mark an evolution in which immigrant communities – predominantly Muslim or from the Middle East and North Africa – are considered not only a threat to local European culture and values, but also to public security.
For some politicians – initially only those on the right, but increasingly in mainstream politics – parallel societies, such as those on Denmark’s list, are potential hotbeds of anti-democratic valuesdelinquency and violence.
Target the community
Defenders of Denmark’s current immigration policy say they intend prevent an increase in violence verified in some areas of Sweden and promote a more integrated society.
But opponents of the “ghetto” policy say there is little evidence linking the culture of immigrant communities to public safety problems.
Instead, they point to the seduction techniques of predatory gangs, often online and with leadership based abroad, who target young, disillusioned or impressionable people.
Others say the Danish program is a excuse to gentrify urban areas on the rise. Mjølnerparken is part of Nørrebro, selected as “the coolest neighborhood in the world” by Time Out for 2021, thanks to its multiculturalism and vitality.
Although the “ghetto package” aims to promote integration, runs the risk of alienation.
For immigrant communities and critics of current Danish politics, the program raises the question of who is considered part of a national community and identity and who is considered an outsider or an inherent threat to that community.
“I felt Danish until recently,” a resident Danish immigrant told Al Jazeera in 2020. “Politicians have created their ‘parallel society’, with the bad reputation they have given Mjølnerparken, so that ethnic Danes don’t want to live here.”
This is a feeling increasingly shared by immigrant groups across the continent.
In recent years, European leaders have proposed and implemented anti-immigration policies that would be inconceivable in many political currents just a few years ago – even as border crossings into Europe decreased dramatically.
The Danish experience shows that this new wave of radical anti-immigration sentiment is not just targeting arriving immigrants, but also those settling.
