Should the UK follow Denmark on migration?
- The International
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
Maja Christiansen Cawthra guides us through Europe’s toughest migration policies - and asks what the UK risks inheriting by following Denmark’s lead.
Photographs: Various
Text: Maja Christiansen
Denmark’s migration laws are considered to be one of the strictest in the world, being dubbed “a pioneer in restrictive migration policies,” as Marie Sandberg of AMIS describes. Over the past decade, its parliament has passed more than 100 laws aimed at limiting arrivals. Additionally, Denmark has openly pushed for a near-zero asylum system and joined other European leaders in calling for reinterpretations of the European Convention on Human Rights to make it easier to expel foreign nationals with criminal records.
This position has gained even more political momentum beyond Denmark. In a recent joint statement, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer argue that protecting borders is essential to defending democratic trust: “controlling who comes here is an essential task of government and is what the public rightly demands.” Their stance suggests that Danish policies are increasingly shaping mainstream European debate. These developments raise interesting questions about the direction of British migration policies and how people with experience of these systems might feel such shifts.
To explore this, I was lucky enough to sit down with Danish-born Henriette to gain insights from her many years living in the UK.
A story about privilege and double standards
Henriette moved to London in 2008, living there for 14 years before returning to Denmark in 2022, with both Brexit and the Covid19 outbreak weighing on her decision. Yet even now, she describes herself as straddling two identities.
“I have two homes.” “I felt like I was moving home to my family…but I’d also moved away from my home and network in London…I’ve changed a lot. And I think when you live in a city like London, it’s difficult not to change.”
London is often described as one of the most multicultural cities in the world — a place where people from all over converge. But even a city like this is not free from double standards. For Henriette, she was welcomed.
“People were curious more than anything,” she says. “They wanted to know about Denmark, about my background.” Her background even helped her in job interviews: “I had several people say to me, ‘Oh, you're Danish! They're good workers.”
But that curiosity was not evenly distributed: “I had people complain to me about Polish workers ‘taking jobs,’ but then they’d say, ‘Oh, but you’re Danish, that’s different.” Henriette recognises that her whiteness, fluent English, and minimal accent shielded her from such scrutiny.
“No one ever called me a migrant,” she tells me. “People assumed I was British. Or they said I was basically British because I’d been there so long.”
When I ask her why she thought that was, she explains the role language plays. In Denmark, the emphasis on English education and a cultural familiarity with Anglo-American media make it easier for Danes to integrate into English-speaking countries. For someone else, adapting to Danish society may require some ‘cultural translation’.
“You might need someone to explain what Danish society is,” she says. “What the norms are. It’s not as culturally adjacent.”
This is where she sees a gap in empathy: an expectation that integration is a one-way process: “It’s interesting how people are so afraid of cultures that are different,” she says. “Yet they spend money travelling, on eating out and trying restaurants and foods… People want the culture, but not always the people.”
Henriette found that Danish culture in particular was admired.
“It was maybe in 2016 that the concept of hygge became a thing, and books were written about it… All the Danish crime shows, Forbrydelsen, Broen, they were all shown on the BBC, and everyone was really into the Scandic noir. I think that's where the idea of Danish culture as enviable or cool came from.”
Brexit and the UK’s strategic turn
But even the perceived status and being an ‘exception’ did not mean Henriette was unaffected by the shift in the atmosphere around immigration following Brexit.
“I felt it, even though no one was saying, ‘Get the Danes out.’ It was still like — if you don’t want me here, why am I paying taxes to fix the roads of a country that doesn’t want me?”
This feeling of being tolerated rather than welcomed shaped her decision to leave.
“It must be amplified for people who didn’t choose the country they ended up in,” she adds. “If you’re in a detention centre…waiting for a decision from people who are angry that you’re there…it must be so isolating.” She stresses how privileged her decision was: “I’m not a forced migrant. I chose to move. That’s a huge difference.”
When discussing the UK’s new admiration for Danish-style immigration policies, Henriette says, “Strategically, it’s smart. But that doesn’t make it morally right.”
She argues that Sir Keir Starmer’s approach mirrors the Danish Social Democrats’ shift toward stricter policies in order to win over centrist and conservative voters. She notes how the recent Danish elections showcase a growing divide similar to the UK’s post-Brexit landscape: multicultural cities leaning left, rural areas voting for parties promising stricter controls.
“In big cities like Copenhagen, people live with multiculturalism. They benefit from it,” she tells me. “But often the people making the strictest decisions are the ones with the least exposure to diversity.” “It’s not just migrants voting. It’s everyone who lives around them.”
“Migration policy is not just about managing numbers - it is about the lives shaped by those policies.”
Consequences for Denmark and the UK
While Denmark’s strict migration strategy has been effective, with asylum applications in Denmark at their lowest level in over forty years (since May 2025), this hard line has not been without domestic unrest and consequences. This can be seen in ongoing debates targeting “parallel societies”, allowing states to demolish or sell housing in areas where at least half the residents have a “non-Western” background. This hostile environment could have dimmed any sort of attraction that Denmark has, similarly to how Brexit lessened the appeal in the UK.
“It feels different now,” she says. “I don’t think people look at the UK the same way. The appeal isn’t what it used to be - I feel like it's put a dark mark on them.”
This begs the question: Should the UK be copying Denmark?
Michelle Pace, immigration scholar and professor in Global Studies, says the UK “should think twice” before doing so. In her book Un-welcome in Denmark, she highlights how a major shift occurred when changes to the Aliens Act allowed authorities to revoke refugee status if conditions in someone’s home country were deemed to have improved. In 2019, parliament introduced what has been widely called a “paradigm shift” in asylum policy, leading to reassessments of Syrians with temporary protection. Many Syrians have had their residency revoked, but could not be deported, instead being placed in restrictive departure centres. Pace describes how this is a “non-life — seemingly designed to push them to leave voluntarily.” Not only does this illustrate the brewing social unrest within Denmark, but the country has also faced criticism and backlash outside of Denmark.
As the UK increasingly looks to Denmark as a model, it risks importing not only policies but their consequences. Denmark’s system has succeeded in driving asylum applications to historic lows, yet at the cost of fostering a climate of fear and uncertainty for those living under it. As Pace writes, “Denmark’s story is a reminder that migration policy is not just about managing numbers — it is also about the lives shaped by those policies.”
