“It has been amazing living here,” he says, looking around the Mjolnerparken project, a series of rent-controlled red brick blocks arranged around neat, green courtyards.
Aslam has lived happily here for 30 years, raising four children, three of whom have since moved, to pursue careers in law, civil engineering, and psychology. But now the Danish government wants to sell her house and that of her neighbors.
“The cornerstone of democracy is that we are all equal before the law, but that is the stone that they are pushing [away] with this legislation, “said Aslam, whose apartment is in one of two blocks to be sold. He and 11 other tenants are bringing the government to court over the matter.
Eddie Omar Rosenberg Khawaja, the lawyer representing the tenants, told CNN that the subpoena in the case compares Mjolnerparken to a similar area, Byparken, in the city of Svendborg, west of Copenhagen. He argues that Byparken has roughly the same socioeconomic challenges as Mjolnerparken – there is only one difference: Most of its residents are white.
“When you make the decisive criterion for ethnicity, then you have a problem,” Khawaja said. “Why aren’t they targeting Svendborg? Why are there more White Danes living there? And that’s problematic. It’s separate from solving the problem, and you’re linking the problems to ethnicity.”
The difficult approach is part of the plan “A Denmark without parallel societies: no ghettos in 2030”, which was proposed by the previous center-right government but is now being promoted by the current left coalition.
“I support the parallel partnership agreement because the initiatives ensure that we have mixed cities in Denmark,” Kaare Dybvad Bek, the country’s housing minister, told CNN.
“Having mixed cities and residential areas strengthens the cohesion of our welfare society and provides a more equal opportunity for all children and adults,” added Dybvad Bek.
Denmark has a generous welfare state and a reputation for progressive politics, but critics say its liberalism seems to run out when it comes to immigration and integration.
The integration debate.
The thorny issue of integration has dominated the Danish political debate for the past 20 years as the country considers its demographic changes.
This once homogeneous nation accelerated the recruitment of guest workers in the country in the 1960s and 1970s to help meet the demands of its growing economy.
But some argue that Denmark’s identity is essentially tied to its white heritage, somewhat reflected in official statistics, which are divided into “people of Danish origin” and “descendants of immigrants.”
Controversial ‘ghetto’ label
But in 2010, the Danish government made the “ghetto” a political-administrative category, according to Kristina Bakkær Simonsen, an associate professor at Aarhus University, who specializes in immigrant integration, discrimination and stigmatization.
“The criteria behind the ghetto legislation are discriminatory and based on race,” Khawaja, the lawyer representing the lawsuit for Mjolnerparken residents, told CNN.
The lawsuit, of which Aslam is a party, states that approval of the development plan is discrimination based on race and ethnicity, and is in dispute with Danish law on the equal treatment of ethnic minorities, according to Khawaja.
Housing Minister Dybvad Bek declined to comment on the impending court case to CNN, but said: “The government continues to believe that this is important legislation that contributes to a profound transformation of the most vulnerable residential areas and with the important objective that everyone – regardless of where they live, should have the same conditions and opportunities in Denmark. ”
Some residents of Mjolnerparken CNN spoke with not denying that there are problems of unemployment and crime. But, as Simonsen said: “So you can ask, ‘Is it the most sensible tool to deal with those problems that replace the inhabitants and make them live elsewhere?'”
She said there is evidence that people of immigrant origin can benefit from living in ethnic enclaves, which can expose them to economic opportunities and information networks.
Anti-immigrant legislation
A number of stunts and pieces of anti-immigrant legislation have made international headlines in recent years.
The following year, a decade-long proposal by the popular right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (DPP) came into effect to ban face covers in public, essentially criminalizing Muslim women who wear the niqab or burqa. DPP politician Martin Henriksen described it as an essential step for the country and its values.
And in late 2018, the then-center-right Danish government struck a deal to move “unwanted” immigrants to a remote uninhabited island that once used to harbor contagious animals. Those plans have been scrapped by the current center-left administration.
While the Danish political discourse on immigrants “is extremely negative” compared to other European countries, the Danes are “no more or less” anti-immigrant compared to Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway or the United Kingdom, according to the analysis from Simonsen.
But Aslam said the relocation legislation puts a target on the backs of Danish non-white children. He says his children could inadvertently tip the scales in any area they choose to live in, “despite being Danish and born in Denmark,” because they are classified as descendants of immigrants.
“[It] everyone would count against [them]”He said, adding that the real problem is that” as long as we continue to marginalize citizens, we will continue to widen the gap between us. “
Susanne Gargiulo reported from Copenhagen, Tara John wrote from London.
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