In my first post I talked about how the people in a place being “happy” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not f#$%ed up. The Danish government has been “cracking down” on its foreign population in a variety of ways. Restricting our access to services, which makes some sense as we pay lower taxes for the first few years. Charging for previously funded mandatory language lessons, which, as long as it’s affordable I don’t necessarily have a problem with.
This one, this one, bothers me. The Government here in Denmark plans to double the penalties for crimes committed in deprived “ghetto” areas. An area is listed as a ghetto if its population matches at least three of five social criteria, which are:
The population is more than 50% non-Western immigrant
More than 2.7% have criminal convictions
Unemployment is above 40%
More than 50% have only a basic education
Average gross income is less than 55% of the average for the region.
My sources, linked below, on this have been mostly foreign and all in English.
Perhaps if they had left off the “non-Western immigrant” part it wouldn’t bother me so much. According to Birgitte Arent Eiriksson, legal adviser with thinktank Justitia, in this the the right wing nationalist Danish People’s Party has been gambling with rule of law in the Scandinavian country. “Where there is rule of law, it is very, very important that everyone is equal before the law. But I find it difficult to see how that could be the case with this proposal,” she said.
This is hardly the first time the Danish government has attempted to tackle the problem of the ghettos. The current strategy focuses on four areas: physical redevelopment, control over who is allowed to live in these neighborhoods, crime abatement and education. The claimed goal is to attract ethnic Danes to the ghettos while diffusing non-Western immigrants into other, more mixed neighborhoods.
According to non-Western immigrant Said the government refuses to focus on the native population. Gesturing toward the high rises all around, “Twenty-five years ago, the people living here, they were all Danish people, white Danish people,” he says. When foreigners move in, Danes move out. This all sounds achingly familiar.
“If they do it again, and they move Somalis to another place where there are only Danish people living, they’re going to do the same, the Danish,” Said says. “They’re going to leave.” If integration is actually the goal, he says, it has to be a two-way street. Something that is as relevant here as in my home country of the USA.
Sources
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43214596
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/30/593979013/in-denmark-s-plan-to-rid-country-of-ghettos-some-immigrants-hear-go-home
https://www.thelocal.dk/20180226/danish-government-wants-double-punishments-for-crimes-in-underprivileged-areas