Who gets to be Danish? 

Brazilian-born Luis Felipe Domingues Teixeira has lived in Copenhagen since 2019. He has a Danish partner, a two-year-old daughter, a house and a stable career as a café manager. Ask him whether all of that means he feels integrated into Danish society, and his answer is simply no. There is still, he said, “a big gap” between establishing a life in Denmark and feeling integrated.  

Luis is far from the only international Copenhageners' hopes will stay. Nearly one in five Copenhageners now holds a foreign passport, and the number of international residents settling in the city has doubled over the past decade. But keeping them is proving harder. More than half of international workers have left Denmark again after five years, according to an analysis cited by Copenhagen Municipality.   

In June, the city approved the development of a consolidated action plan for international labour that looks at how Copenhagen can attract more international workers and then persuade them to stay. But that can raise a question beyond employment and housing: what makes a person feel they belong?  

Luis knows how much work that can take. He spent almost five years taking Danish classes, eventually moving from evenings to mornings so he could concentrate better. Last summer he completed the course. “I have a certificate showing that I speak Danish. I don’t really feel that way,” he said.  

He can read and follow television or radio but still lacks confidence holding a full conversation, and part of that difficulty is that he rarely has to. “The first time they don’t understand you, they switch to English, and for those still learning the language," he explains, "that can take their chance to practise.'"   

“We are rooted here,” he said. “That’s why I’m still in the process of doing what it takes to, you know, integrate myself." Part of that effort is for his daughter. He wants to understand the Danish stories she brings home from daycare, but when he speaks to her, he uses Portuguese, a gift of his own he wants her to keep.  

Noémi Marzell moved to Denmark with her children in 2020. An ethnic Hungarian from Slovakia, she now volunteers as a journalist and activist for Community House Copenhagen, an organisation supporting the city’s immigrants.   

 For her, belonging came through joining a dance group. “I’m in a dancing group, and there are a ton of Danish people there. And that’s where I felt I belonged.”  

 Her advice to other immigrants is surprisingly ordinary: “Have your hobbies, have your favourite places to go, so you know the barista over there. You know the people that usually go to the same place."   

“You have to work on that,” she explains. “It’s not going to come. No one’s going to give it to you."   

But Noémi does not place that responsibility entirely on those arriving in Denmark. She believes the country lacks a good integration plan, although she recognises that policy cannot replace the time needed to build a good life. 

And despite Denmark offering much of what she came from, she is not convinced that translates into happiness. “They say it’s the happiest country, but the immigrants are not happy,” she said. 

Professor Klarissa Leug at the University of Southern Denmark says that what Luis and Noémi are describing has a name, and it is not "integration". In her research, she avoids this word altogether, preferring “deimigrantised” to describe the way even highly qualified and financially settled migrants can still be made to feel like outsiders. 

Her interviewees recalled lines like “I almost forgot you were a foreigner” or “if you don’t like it, you can go back home, right?” To them, this is exactly where the line falls between looking integrated and actually feeling it.   

She pushes back on the idea that the responsibility of belonging is on the newcomer. Dr Lueg offers something close to a warning for cities like Copenhagen chasing international talent, as “the less recognisable social exclusion, the heavier is the burden on the individual,” as they are left to mistake a structural failure for a personal one.   

Erin De Paauw seems to have arrived at the same conclusion herself. From Australia, she settled in Denmark a decade ago, and unlike Luis or Noémi, she said she has stopped taking her struggle to integrate so personally.   

“At first I felt bad about it. I wanted to learn the language, I wanted to integrate, I wanted to do it,” she said. “But I quickly realised that I am completely different to them. They look at me like I have two heads when I open my mouth."  

That gap is why she keeps her friendships close to other outsiders.

“I can connect with foreigners… they understand it is not as easy," she said, “the way you are spoken to or the encounters you have on the street, we are all having the same experience. 

Erin has made peace with staying outside of it. “I know that I never will be [Danish], because I am not going to give up my identity… I love being Australian.” Yet she doesn’t hold that against the country: “It is a wonderful place... I am grateful for this country." 

Still, gratitude and belonging are not the same thing.