Denmark versus multiculturalism

As the infamous cartoon case has demonstrated, Denmark and multiculturalism are strange bedfellows. Indeed, in a very real sense ‘Danish multiculturalism’ is an oxymoronic notion. Over the last decade, leading Danish politicians, from all agenda-setting parties, not just the present government, have repeatedly stressed that Denmark is not and does not intend to be a multicultural society; positive discrimination is never contemplated as a solution to integration problems; descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in political life is rejected; and cultural diversity more broadly is officially frowned on as an alien, ‘un-Danish’ notion (Hedetoft 2006a; Hervik 2006; see also note 25). Unsurprisingly, all this is not a reflection of a nation state which has suc-

cessfully stemmed ethnic diversity, kept globalization at bay, and halted migration at the Danish borders. Rather it articulates the principled view that an increasingly (though reluctantly) multi-ethnic society does not have to become politically multicultural, but can insist on (and impose on immigrants and descendants) its cultural and historical identity in the face of global challenges. In that sense, Danish integration policies are necessarily assimilationist, though the word itself is usually eschewed. And though they may appear both contradictory and irrational, they have their own historical logic. This is a logic, however, that is currently under siege and is leading not just to more stridently cultural nationalism, shriller Islamophobia, and nostalgic notions of Denmark for the Danes (Trads 2002), but also to an ongoing, but somewhat covert, re-articulation of integration policies and discourses in order to take account of diversity and cope with unprecedented consequences of globalization. In this sense, Denmark is currently a country characterized by closet, street-level diversity practices, though the closet is only opened temporarily, and multicultural initiatives are introduced as makeshift measures by officials working on integration projects in municipalities, in residential neighbourhoods, or in the corporate world, where diversity management enjoys increased popularity. The main part of this essay will try to unravel the whys and wherefores

of these processes. The last part broadens the vision to contemplate the

interesting comparative case of Denmark’s Scandinavian sibling, Sweden, where, unlike Denmark, multiculturalism has been official integration policy for over 30 years. The point is both to demonstrate that in spite of similar historical paths toward modernity and similar political and social structures, small welfare-states based on culturally homogeneous histories do not necessarily spawn assimilationist integration policies. But it is also to expose the current normative problems of multiculturalism in Sweden (as well as a host of other countries) in the context of the problems ethnic assimilationism is encountering in Denmark. The conclusion is that we are seeing new configurations emerge between diversity and monoculturalism in both countries, and that it is reasonable to interpret these developments as a reflection of increasing convergence between two formerly very different models for handling diversity.

A central passage in a leading article2 in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, appearing on 17 June 2003, argued that ‘this is all about what makes a modern society function. And to that end, not all cultures are equally good.’3

The occasion was a Government White Paper on integration, titled The Government’s Visions and Strategies for Better Integration (June, 2003, henceforth GWP).4 The passage is as revealing as the White Paper itself. ‘Integration’ of immigrants and their descendants is now debated and resolved in terms of ‘culture’ as the pivotal benchmark, not just in the sense of culture as a relative notion, but an absolute and axiomatic yardstick of ‘core values’ (‘fundamentale grundværdier’),5 which newcomers must be measured by and before which ‘their own’ culture must yield. In this political and discursive context, multiculturalism not only does not belong, but is a notion that must be decisively rejected. In addition, the concept of culture conjured up here is not the ‘thin’ con-

cept of cultural relativism or a multi-layered notion of culture (see, e.g., Suárez-Orozco 2002), but a thick, condensed, and politicized bundle of noncontestable values, behavioural practices, and universal orientations imagined to guarantee the functionality of ‘a modern society’. Such explicit demands for cultural transformation represent a novel consensual discourse in Denmark – currently wrapped in the tinsel foil of a much-needed ‘kulturkamp’ (‘cultural battle’), which is not only directed at coping with the external menace of immigration, but is simultaneously targeted at the enemy within, the Old Guard of ‘cultural radicals’, their putative defence of ‘soft values’, their ill-concealed admiration for leftist values, and their wrong-headed Europeanism and cosmopolitanism. What is new, however, is not the assimilationist discourse itself, but, first, its

near-total political hegemony (it has entirely superseded former discourses of humanitarianism, tolerance, and compassion); second, the nexus between ‘culture’, ‘cohesion’, and ‘social functionality’ that underlies both discourses and policies in the integration domain in an ever more intimate fashion; and,

third, the way in which it has nevertheless, on its own terms and within a new kind of logic, started to assimilate what I have here chosen to term ‘pluricultural discourses’ (‘we must leave room for diversity and learn to benefit from it’, as the GWP Resumé has it).6 Before delving further into this new type of ethnic policy regime in Denmark, it is relevant to diagnose a few other representative events in light of the transformative process of immigration/integration discourse and politics over the past decade. The present Liberal-Conservative government came to office in November

2001, ousting the old Social Democratic/Radical (i.e. social-liberal) Party coalition after a general election largely fought on the issue of immigration. The then opposition parties, including the Danish People’s Party (DPP), which now provides parliamentary backing for the government, accused the governing coalition of inconsequential, ambivalent, and far too lenient policies and practices in the domain of asylum-seekers and refugees (integration, family reunification, residence permits and citizenship, and much more), ultimately prevailing in an election fought – in a post-9/11 atmosphere dominated by widespread Islamophobia – on a rather populist agenda promising stricter controls (fewer immigrants, more severe conditions for residence, reunification, and naturalization) and tougher policies such as increased demands on those who make it into the country or are already in Denmark. The general tone of the debate was acrimonious, bordering on vengeful, immigration being projected as the most imminent and most serious threat to the history, culture, identity, and homogeneity of ‘little Denmark’. The governing coalition, somewhat to its surprise, found itself on the

defensive, in spite of having pushed through an array of proposals, policies, and practices over the previous five to six years which all contributed toward a tighter Danish immigration and integration regime.7 While the opposition, astutely capitalizing on a debating climate pervaded by diffuse fears, moral panics, and unspecified enemy images, created expectations that not only could they put a virtual stop to any further inflows of undesirable aliens, but would also be able to reinstate Denmark to its imagined former status as a peaceful, stable, ethnically homogeneous, and politically sovereign welfare state – in other words to roll back or at least counterbalance the adverse effects of globalization and Europeanization. The opposition, thus, successfully projected itself as the authentic and legitimate spokespersons for the people against their elites, who had let them down and allowed their true identity to be compromised. In an important sense, therefore, the present government owes its life to the

question of immigration and depends for its continued popular backing largely on restrictive policies and successes in this field. However, the picture has recently become somewhat muddied by the need to import foreign labour into an economy where labour shortages are an urgent problem. Consequently, one of the government’s first initiatives was to create a new

and separate ministry for these matters (The Ministry for Refugees, Immigrants, and Integration), which had previously been handled by the Ministry

of the Interior. Second, the tone set in the election campaign was continued by not just a barrage of tougher policy proposals, but, equally importantly, by a matching no-nonsense discourse of responsible behaviour, demands, values, obligations, and self-reliance – a heavily ideologized, value-ridden discourse mixing particularistic demands for national acculturation and expressions of gratitude for being allowed to live in the country, with a laissez-faire, self-help message of market-oriented individualism: ‘prove that you can fend for yourselves’, in the process relieving the state of financial burdens. Accordingly, the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in his New

Year’s Speech to the Danish people, aired 1 January 2003, emphasized that ‘Danish society rests on certain fundamental values which must be accepted by people wanting to live here’, that these values are currently being ‘challenged’, and that Danes differ from many immigrants in having a freedomloving and rights-respecting culture which will not allow gender discrimination, the politicization of religion, or genital mutilation. The toleration of such practices hitherto was characterized as ‘gullible’ (tossegode) attitudes: ‘we have not dared to say out loud that certain things are better than others. But that is what we have to do now’, as the prime minister put it, continuing to assert – in defence of the well-behaved immigrants – that he would not permit ‘those who fled the darkness of the Mullahs to experience that … medieval forces find fertile soil in Danish society’ (text of the speech can be seen in Politiken, 2 January 2003). This discourse and the policy initiatives that have continuously flowed from

the new ministry, first under the leadership of Bertel Haarder, later Rikke Hvilshøj, and now Birthe Rønn Hornbech – particularly the 24-year age threshold for transnational marriages allegedly intended to curb family reunification8 – inspired a leading article in another national Danish daily, Politiken (18 January 2002), to characterize the new government’s policies as focussed on ‘ethnic purity’ and on ‘protecting the Danish tribe’ (Gundelach 2002; Mellon 1992), which supposedly ‘cannot abide being mixed with other inhabitants of the globe’. Hence, Denmark is to be ‘protected against immigration’, a project which in the view of the columnist is as depressing as it is illusory. ‘Denmark for the Danes’ may have been the state of affairs in the past, but is supposedly impossible in the present and future of globalization. The counter-argument commonly heard is twofold: One is pragmatically

functional – effective integration cannot be had without severe limitations on immigration.9 However, on the background of the programmatic culturalism of the prime minister’s speech (and a host of similar discourses), the functional argument comes across as unconvincing pragmatism packaging a real motive of protecting the Danish ethnie and the benefits of its cultural cohesiveness. The functionality lies here – not in any necessary limitation/integration nexus and the sophisticated statistical ‘numbers game’ that routinely accompanies it10 – but in the political, institutional, and social realities of the Danish welfare state, which are thoroughly geared to and rooted in what Benedict Anderson (1983/1991) has termed the ‘horizontal comradeship’ of

this political community and the tacit cultural normativities that underpin and partly constitute it. This essentialist undergirding of the functional position also appears as an

independent argument in its own right. Ideological spokespersons for the preservation of historical Danishness (especially – but far from exclusively – belonging to or sympathizing with the DPP) hardly ever justify their attack on immigration in functional, but preferably in existential, often apocalyptic terms. In April 2002, for instance, a central representative of the DPP, MP and vicar in the Church of Denmark, Søren Krarup, during the First Reading in Parliament of a proposal for the ‘naturalization’ of a number of named foreign citizens, argued that ‘Danes are increasingly becoming foreigners in their own country … Parliament is permitting the slow extermination of the Danish people.’ He continued by predicting that ‘our descendants’ will ‘curse’ those politicians who are responsible for the increasing ‘alienation of Danes in Denmark’. By admitting immigrants, Parliamentarians allegedly fail to ‘take care of Denmark’ and to ‘safeguard the future of the Danes’. On this reading, the consensual compact of homogeneous Danishness is in danger of breaking down, due to politicians’ betrayal of the national cause. The external menace – globalization as represented by hordes of cultural aliens – has entered into an unholy alliance with ‘our own’ elites, people elected to defend our interests and our collective historical destiny. It is this collusion, whether intended or not, which is supposedly putting the very future of Danishness in jeopardy.11