[lg policy] Danish dilemmas: South Schleswig after World War II and "unassimilated" immigrants today.

[Harold Schiffman]

Danish dilemmas: South Schleswig after World War II and "unassimilated"
immigrants today.

September 22, 2004 | Berdichevsky, Norman | Copyright



Denmark faces a dilemma today of the first order. It is a victim of its own
self-image as a proud, distinctive nation, boasting a thousand-year-old
kingdom with the oldest flag in Europe, yet many Danes like to see
themselves as ultraliberal and multicultural in all matters pertaining to
new immigrants who are racially, culturally, and religiously distinct from
them. In referenda, Denmark has already rejected the European Union and
then approved it by the narrowest of margins and, most recently, refused to
be part of the common Euro currency. On the other hand, many Danes like to
assert that their country is an open, tolerant, multiethnic society. There
undoubtedly will be an even sharper political debate in the future between
the contrasting visions of what the nation is and what the majority and
minority expect and demand from each other in the way of equal rights and
obligations.

THE NATION-STATE IS DEAD

The classic ideal that the nation-state, with its political boundaries,
should have a homogeneous ethnic-cultural identity is no longer a reality
that can be resurrected. It is dead and buried. The kind of hybrid identity
that has been common in the United States for more than a century--Danish
American, Italian American, Polish American, and so on--is now visible in
Western Europe, along with a sense of a common European heritage.

The age-old ethnic-folk nationalism of "us against them," occasionally
still seen in Europe, most recently in Yugoslavia and in the terrorist
activity of the Basque ETA organization, is a throwback to a more primitive
time. At the same time, many Danes feel that Americanization, in the form
of McDonalds or Coca-Cola consumerism, threatens their self-image. The
recent success of the patriotic (Denmark for the Danes), aggressively
anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti) in national
elections is, therefore, all the more ironic because only a generation ago,
right after World War II, the most dramatic offer to reassert Danish
identity by a majority of the native-born population of German South
Schleswig was rejected by Denmark. A national election in 1947 returned a
Social Democratic government firmly against any policy of "adventurism" and
refused to even countenance a plebiscite.

Most Danes were war-weary and uneasy at the prospect of absorbing a
substantial German minority, along with that segment of the Danish people
who had lived under German occupation since 1864 and had reacquired a sense
of Danish identity, seeking a "return to their original Homeland."

"THE NEW DANES" NOW: MAJORITY-MINORITY RELATIONS

Today's supporters of asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants from the
third world who want to reside permanently in Denmark often are unsure of
whether this entails any commitment to Danish culture, language, and
knowledge of Danish history, society, and government. Many self-proclaimed
liberals are fond of recalling the words of the great Danish philosopher
and theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig: "All belong to a people who so regard
themselves," but tend to forget that they are followed by a conditional
clause stating "... and who have an eye for its history and an ear for its
language." (1)

In 1945-47, Denmark refused to annex the former Danish territory of South
Schleswig with a large German-minded population. The debate has been
partially reopened as a result of modern-day Denmark's social problems in
integrating the "New Danes," that is, the quite visibly recognizable
immigrants of distinctive races, religions, and cultures--many from
Morocco, Somalia, sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, the Arab world, and the Far
East. Their social values, customs, languages, sexual mores, and religious
practices often marginalize them with respect to Danish traditions and
values, especially notions of representative democracy, respect for
minority rights, nonviolence, and sexual equality.

More than fifty years ago, Denmark was perhaps the most homogenous society
in Europe after Portugal and Iceland. Only a small minority of Jews and
Greenlanders were distinctive in some visible way, although both groups
spoke fluent Danish. The only other "exotic" elements were Danes with
distinctive French Huguenot and Dutch names. These are the descendants,
respectively, of Protestant refugees from religious persecution and the
invitation of King Christian IV and Dutch settlers able and willing to
clear marshland east of Copenhagen on the island of Amager (today the site
of Copenhagen's airport).

Today's foreign-born immigrants constitute approximately 4.5 percent of the
total population. They came to find jobs in the booming 1960s and then
remained. Later, they brought their wives and began families, and today
they present Denmark with a new challenge that most authorities realize in
hindsight demanded more preparation and public debate. Although the
immigrant population is smaller in size compared to the larger countries of
Western Europe, Denmark has found it particularly difficult to face the
dilemma of integrating people of such different backgrounds into the local
culture, society, and value systems.

Despite all efforts to the contrary, ghettos have begun to emerge, such as
in Norrebro and Vesterbro in Copenhagen. This dilemma makes many Danes
aware that their decision in the crucial election of 1947, which defeated
the government attempting to reclaim South Schleswig (Slesvig in Danish)
from Germany, was based on the illusion that Denmark would remain a totally
homogeneous society for the indefinite future. Would they have been less
afraid to meet the challenge of absorbing the population of South
Schleswig, including a new German minority, if they had realized that no
society in Europe would remain ethnically homogeneous? My guess is yes. The
Danish-minded population in South Schleswig was unable to convince the
Danish government of the authenticity of its desire to reconnect and
reintegrate.

More at: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-121878083.html

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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