The quiet shift of internationals

As kommuner invest in attracting global talent, Kelly Draper Rasmussen explores where internationals go after they arrive.

Photograph / Graphs: Pexels: Gustavo Fring / Kelly Draper Rasmussen

Text: Kelly Draper Rasmussen

A curious pattern of international migration in Denmark has been hidden beneath the surface. We know the headline figures of net migration and population figures for different kommuner, but what do we know about the internal migration of internationals? This is one data gap - Danmark Statistik does not publish figures for this, so we have to infer it from other data sources.

Big cities attract - but don’t retain

Let’s take Copenhagen to start with. Between 2020 and 2025, there was a net migration of internationals of just over 36 thousand, but the international population grew by only 32 thousand. While some of them might have died or become citizens, the majority of them moved to other kommuner.

The effect is accelerating: 2,000 left for other Danish destinations in 2020, compared to 3.5 thousand the year before. The other big cities have a similar situation, though less pronounced.

Frederiksberg lost an estimated 3,000 internationals in the past five years. So did Odense and Aarhus. Aalborg and Esbjerg lost a thousand.

Internationals are being successfully attracted to the big cities, but they are not staying. We already know many people relocate internationally, but now we can also see that they are not settling in the first place they arrive.

Suburbs and corridors: Where internationals are moving

Where are they going? Remember, there is a data gap, so we cannot comment on how many from Aarhus move to Copenhagen, or how many from Aalborg move to Vejle, or anything like that. Still, we can see which kommuner have a net gain compared to what you would expect given their international net migration figures. Births to foreign women are recorded at the municipal level so that we can untangle birth rates from this effect.

Nine Copenhagen-suburb kommuner have gained a combined 11,000 international internal migrants. That’s about two-thirds of Copenhagen’s loss, so perhaps people are commuting to jobs in the city but need to find somewhere more affordable or with more space. Relative to their size, the gains are not small adjustments. Herlev’s increase in internationals due to internal movement was 29% of its 2020 population. Ballerup’s is 26%. This pattern is reshaping communities. This suburbanisation is spreading.

Looking at Jutland, we can see an interesting, similar effect around the E45 motorway. Cities like Kolding and Billund are losing internationals to other towns while Horsens, Hedensted, Vejle and Fredericia are gaining internal migrants. The effect is more subtle: a few hundred over the five years, but it is something to keep an eye on, since internationals of working age are so important to the economies of these communities (both those that are gaining and those that are losing).

The policy blind spot: Why this movement matters

As we have noted before, Danish kommuner have invested heavily in their budgets to attract an international workforce. People are arriving and finding Denmark to their liking, but they are not always staying in the place that attracted them in the first place. Is it something to do with house prices, or could it be the availability of jobs for partners or schools for their children? Could there be something about students studying in the big cities and then moving out to the suburbs for their first job after graduation?

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, this is something we ought to know and could know, but since the data are not published at a usable level, we can only guess. This is a somewhat unforced error. If Kolding could see what Vejle and Fredericia have, maybe they could keep more of their taxpaying internationals.

Sources: Statbank VAR1AAR, VAR2AAR, FODIE, FOLK1C