- Immigrant Times
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Denmark’s immigration model: What Britain should use and what it should not
Denmark has crafted a system built on three pillars: temporary protection, tight family-reunification rules, and an emphasis on encouraging return rather than long-term settlement
By The Immigrant Times
While British cities celebrate their ethnic neighbourhoods (London’s Brick Lane), Danish politicians want to break up communities with a high proportion of immigrants
November 2025: As Britain’s government prepares a sweeping overhaul of its immigration rules, ministers have made little secret of their inspiration: Denmark. Copenhagen’s system, often described as one of the toughest in Western Europe, has sharply reduced asylum arrivals and become a touchstone for governments seeking stronger control over migration.
But borrowing another country’s model is never just a technical exercise. It’s a political, cultural, and moral challenge. Britain and Denmark approach migration from very different starting points, and those differences matter.
The Danish model
Over the last decade, Denmark has crafted a system built on three pillars: temporary protection, tight family-reunification rules, and an emphasis on encouraging return rather than long-term settlement.
Temporary protection is central. Refugees are granted a short-term status that must be renewed, and the state can revoke it if it judges that conditions in their home country have improved. This creates a climate in which protection is seen as a temporary safety measure rather than a new beginning.
Family reunification is deliberately hard. Age requirements, language tests, strict financial conditions, and housing-area restrictions aim to limit who can bring a spouse or partner into the country. Officials openly describe these rules as deterrence tools.
And while Denmark has not yet outsourced asylum processing to a third country, the legal framework allowing it has already passed, signalling just how far Copenhagen is willing to go.
For Danish policymakers, these measures have a single logic: reduce the ‘pull factors’ that make Denmark a desirable destination. And, on paper, the numbers have fallen.
The attractions of the Danish model
For a UK government under pressure over small-boat arrivals, asylum backlogs, and public frustration about immigration more broadly, Denmark’s outcome looks tempting. A system that reduces irregular arrivals, quickens returns, and tightens family migration seems to promise order.
Politically, the Danish model also offers something else: consistency. Denmark’s hardline policies enjoy broad cross-party support, giving them stability. British governments, by contrast, tend to oscillate on migration, swinging with political cycles and public mood.
In that sense, Denmark offers not only policy ideas but also a blueprint for political seriousness.
Britain is not Denmark
This is the essential caveat most headlines miss. The UK is a multicultural society with a deeply diverse population, one that has been shaped by decades of migration from the Commonwealth, the EU, and beyond. Britain’s identity, especially in cities, is inseparable from that diversity.
Denmark, by contrast, remains far more homogenous. Its immigration debate is rooted less in post-imperial movement and more in the rapid arrival of refugees in the early 2000s and 2010s. The political and social guardrails are simply different.
Britain receives far more asylum seekers than Denmark, especially via irregular routes. A system designed for a country of six million, mainly Europeans, will not suit a nation of some 70 million, many of whom have family ties to Commonwealth countries and Hong Kong.
And Britain’s legal environment, while flexible, still places limits on how far deterrence can go. Any attempt to introduce Danish-style revocation of protection or external processing would meet a strong challenge from UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights.
Denmark’s ‘parallel societies’
Finally, there is the question of social cohesion. Denmark’s controversial ‘parallel societies’ policy, which restricts rights in neighbourhoods defined by high ‘non-Western’ populations, would likely be politically explosive in Britain. A policy many Danes accept as pragmatic might be viewed in Britain as profoundly discriminatory.
Denmark’s ‘parallel societies’ policy is part of a broader effort to break up neighbourhoods where a high share of residents come from what the state labels ‘non-Western’ backgrounds. Areas that meet certain criteria, including higher unemployment, lower educational attainment, higher crime rates, and a demographic threshold for ‘non-Western’ origin, can be designated for special intervention. Once an area is classified, the government can impose measures such as limits on new social-housing tenants, compulsory preschool for children to ensure early Danish-language exposure, and, in some cases, requirements for residents to meet specific employment or education conditions. The stated intention is to prevent social isolation and create stronger integration outcomes by dispersing immigrant communities more widely across the country.
But the policy is controversial, both inside Denmark and internationally. Critics argue that using ‘non-Western background as a core classification criterion effectively turns ethnicity and migration origin into proxies for social risk, which can entrench stereotypes rather than solve underlying issues. Human-rights advocates warn that tying rights and opportunities to the ethnic makeup of a neighbourhood crosses into discriminatory territory, especially when it affects access to housing, family reunification, or schooling.
Others question whether forced dispersal genuinely improves integration or simply shifts people around without addressing the structural drivers of inequality. Supporters see the policy as pragmatic; opponents see it as stigmatising. Either way, few doubt that the approach reflects Denmark’s unusually firm stance on social cohesion, and its willingness to use demographic engineering in ways that would be politically explosive in more multicultural societies like the UK.
What Britain could borrow — and what it should not
A balanced view acknowledges that there are elements of the Danish system worth studying, especially if the goal is to create a more consistent, long-term approach to migration.
What could work:
• Clearer pathways to integration, including stronger language and employment expectations.
• More predictable family-reunification rules, provided they avoid discriminatory criteria.
• Better tracking of temporary vs. permanent protection, with transparent, evidence-based reviews.
• A broader political consensus that reduces the policy whiplash Britain has suffered since the mid-2010s.
What likely would not work:
• External processing of asylum seekers, a process which remains legally and ethically fraught and echoes colonialism.
• Revoking refugee status based on shifting diplomatic judgments risks breaching international obligations.
• Residency restrictions tied to ethnic composition of neighbourhoods would undermine trust in a multicultural country.
• A long-term strategy built primarily on deterrence, rather than on effective processing and humane management.
Fazit
Britain stands at a crossroads. It can certainly learn from Denmark: the value of clarity, the importance of predictable rules, and the political advantage of long-term consensus. But copying Denmark wholesale is neither realistic nor desirable.
A British system that works must reflect British realities, its diversity, its legal obligations, its history, and its values. The UK can aim for fairness and firmness, but it must not forget that its strength has long come from integrating newcomers rather than marginalising them.
Further reading: Europe’s Nordic nations still view immigration positively, but with some reservations || British Party leaders debate immigration || Britain's harsh asylum reforms ||
FOLLOW