© Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix via REUTERS

Denmark’s Social Democrats are expected to form the next government following Wednesday’s parliamentary elections, after winning 26 percent of the vote. Their leader, Mette Frederiksen, campaigned on a platform of more investment in welfare and healthcare, strong action on climate change—and a much harder line on immigration than previous Social Democrat governments.

The liberal, center-right party of Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Venstre, came second with 23 percent. “We had a really good election, but there will be a change of government,” Løkke said, conceding defeat.

Meanwhile, support for the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), which had supported Løkke’s government, plummeted to 8.7 percent from 21.1 percent in 2015, largely because mainstream parties have adopted much of their harsh “foreigner policy.”

No Hygge In Sight

The harsh approach to immigration can be a bit of a jolt for foreign observers of Danish politics. One could be forgiven for thinking that all that hype about hygge (a unique kind of coziness and togetherness supposedly involving candles and cups of tea) a few years ago was a deliberately orchestrated smoke-screen covering some rather un-cozy truths about the situation in Denmark.

The run-up to the election was quite circus-like, with 13 different parties, some of them extreme or peculiar, vying for seats in parliament. And the debate isn’t that hyggelig at all. Danish politics has become a talent show where candidates compete to outdo one another in dreaming up new anti-immigration policies.

About three years ago, the center-left underwent a sea change. In a Facebook post on July 27, 2016, Frederiksen wrote that the popularity of Donald Trump, who had yet to be elected US president, had led her to change her thinking: “We must admit that the people he is talking to feel for the first time that there is a voice that speaks to their fears and frustrations.”

She seemed to be referring to the white working class, which is allegedly under pressure from globalization and immigration, those “deplorables” who seem to have been courted by Trump and other populists across the Western world. Of course, this came on the heels of the 2015 “refugee crisis,” when about 20,000 of the roughly one million Syrians and other refugees who came to Europe made it to Denmark. Instead of triggering empathy for the actual refugees, images of Arab families walking along a Danish highway seemed to have struck fear in the hearts of many Danes and drove more of them into the arms of the far-right.

Social-Democratic Rethink

Out of this fertile soil grew the Social Democratic re-think. In an article titled “Realistic and fair immigration” published earlier this year in the magazine International Politics and Society, Fredericksen outlined an “immigration policy to unite Denmark,” which comprised three main pillars.

First, severely limit the number the “non-Western immigrants” (meaning Muslim or dark-skinned people) allowed into Denmark. Only a few UN refugees should be let in, if any at all. Second, devote resources to fighting the causes of immigration, meaning more development aid for the countries. Third, prevent what the Danes call “ghettos” from forming—neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants and social problems.

She wrote, “A 10-year plan must be applied to ensure that no residential areas, schools or educational institutions have more than 30 percent non-Western immigrants and descendants in future. And more have to contribute to Danish society. That is why we want to introduce an obligation for all immigrants on integration benefits and cash benefits to contribute 37 hours a week.”

In fact, much of this corresponds more or less with the previous center-right government’s policies. After the arrival of so many refugees in 2015, Denmark instated border checks and stopped even taking the 500 “quota” refugees per year selected by the United Nations that it had been accepting since 1989. The total number of asylum applications accepted dropped from about 12,000 in 2016 to 1,600 in 2018, and most of these aren’t recent arrivals, but people who have been stuck in bureaucratic limbo for years.

“Ghetto Deal”

Then there’s the “ghetto deal” which was reached between Venstre and the Social Democrats. It is meant to tackle the problem of integration with measures specifically targeting areas with a large number of ethnic minorities. Critics say it piles another layer of discrimination upon people already suffering from discrimination and stigmatizes whole segments of the population.

Immigrant rights advocate Michala Clante Bendixen wrote on her website refugees.dk in February 2019: “The deal gives double sentences for crimes committed in the area, residents are excluded from family reunification, and the bilingual children lose their children’s benefit if they are not enrolled in a nursery from the age of one. These rules are especially targeting ethnic minorities.”

The idea is that the little Mohammads and Aishahs growing up in these places should be turned into proper Danes with proper Danish values. This means more than just decorating birthday cakes with Danish flags—it also means things like valuing gender equality and so on. But critics say a lot of this is merely “symbolic politics,” pointing to the fact that the vast majority of immigrant children in those neighborhoods already visit daycare from an early age.

Broad Support

This harder line on immigration is supported by 75 percent of the population, says Arne Hardis, a political writer for the weekly broadsheet Weekendavisen. “If you want to be in government in Denmark you have to have a strong immigration policy and you have to have a strong welfare state. And these two things go very well together. The fewer foreigners, the more for us. It’s very simple. We have very high costs for welfare for foreigners—30-35 billion kroner (€4-4.7 billion) a year.”

Despite the already harsh line on immigrants, two populist forces to the right of the Danish People’s Party with more extreme ideas about foreigners emerged before the election: Nye Borgerlige (New Right) and Stram Kurs (Hard Line). The latter is led by Rasmus Paludan, a lawyer who incited riots this spring by publicly burning the Quran and who advocates the deportation of all Muslims from Denmark.

Both of these groups have siphoned support away from the original anti-immigration camp, the Danish People’s Party, who suffered a huge loss of support already in this year’s European elections on May 26. Paludan’s appearance out of nowhere serves as a memo to the center left and right that they’d better stay tough on immigration or else Denmark’s ugly, racist underbelly will rise to the surface and cause havoc. Nye Borgerlige scraped by with 2 percent of the vote and will occupy 4 seats in the new parliament. Rabble-rouser Paludan didn’t make it past the 2 percent hurdle.

Minority Government

Now the Social Democrats leader Frederiksen is expected to form a minority government that would allow her to work with the four smaller socialist and progressive parties in parliament on issues like welfare and the environment, while securing the right’s support on immigration issues.

She will have to perform a delicate balancing act. To placate the left, she might have to throw them a bone or two such as scrapping the previous government’s controversial plans (originally cooked up by the Danish People’s Party) to send asylum seekers convicted of crimes to a remote island or perhaps devoting more resources to improving the lives of traumatized refugee children growing up in depressing refugee centers (this has been a point of fierce debate on Danish TV). Or perhaps these potential allies will be pacified by a stronger climate policy or investments in social programs.

If the smaller left-wing parties don’t cooperate, she might threaten to form a centrist coalition with Venstre, possibly with the support of the Radikale, a liberal center-left party who were able to grow their share of the vote to 8 percent and have been known to flirt with the center-right.

Whatever the constellation, it seems clear that 41-year-old Frederiksen will be prime minister and stick to a policy that has worked for her party. On election night, as she celebrated the party’s results she said: “Voters who have deserted us over recent years, who thought our immigration policy was wrong, have come back this time, that is what many have told me.”

The post Denmark: More Fearful Than Cozy appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

European migration policy has been roundly criticized lately 
for being too illiberal. While this is unfair, there is room for improve-
ment in the EUʼs dealing with refugees and migrants.

© picture alliance/empics/Steve Parsons

This March, the EU agreed to a deal with Turkey under which Ankara takes back refugees from the Greek islands and better regulates their onward movement to Europe. Commentators wrote it off as pointless, saying Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans would simply be pushed to a far more dangerous path to the EU via Libya. There has indeed been a rise in the numbers coming through Libya, but the reality is more complex. Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans are just a trace element there, while the biggest numbers come from across Africa.

The sheer range of nationalities passing though Libya is just the latest sign that something systemic is wrong in the world. Only half of all asylum seekers to the EU last year came from Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Nigeria was the number one source country for Italy; Sudan for France; Eritrea for the UK; and Russia for Poland. One analyst counted more than a hundred nationalities registered in Lesbos last year.

This exodus constitutes a souring of globalization and poses a challenge to the liberal Western order. In 1991, when barriers and buffers collapsed, mass migration threatened to overwhelm fragile state-building processes from Eastern Europe to Africa. Western states took a gamble, using trade and capital flows to give people reasons to stay home. This promise of equitable global development has now seemingly run its course.

The West’s attempt to create a massive crossborder economy was always going to be hard to combine with national state-building. Many liberals were naive to believe that international trade and investment would automatically spread democracy and its institutions. With their plans now in tatters, it is time for a rethink on European migration policy.

The Need to Intervene

In the refugee debate, Europe’s voters and politicians are putting their fears before reason. In the case of liberals, they see all border measures as unjust and EU overseas interventions as “burden-shifting.” Europe as “the lone beacon of liberalism” is just the other side of the coin of “Fortress Europe.” Both ideas reflect pessimism about the EU’s ability to positively influence the chaos beyond its borders.

What drives liberals to test the EU’s moral credentials by making it stand as a beacon in a collapsing international order? It comes down to a reluctance to tackle the root causes of migration: the West has a poor recent track record of state-building, and interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya seem nothing short of hubris in hindsight. These interventions have certainly contributed to the refugee crisis.

Policies to address the causes of irregular migration – interventions, trade, aid – may have been flawed and messy, but they were also necessary. Moreover, the EU’s approach of managing migration from its neighbors was essentially constructive. The EU has tried to build up neighboring countries and regions, then gradually reduce barriers with them. That is what the EU was doing when it enlarged eastwards or removed visa restrictions for the Western Balkans.

Starting from the Bottom Up

Happily, the overseas interventions required to address migration do not involve classic state-building. Certainly saving Libya or Syria feature on the EU’s agenda. But what is required to manage migration is an effort at the micro-level. Take the people-smuggling networks across the EU’s neighborhood. We talk about “king pins” and “crime bosses.” But the networks are in fact mostly run by individuals making a quick buck. If only it were a case of eliminating “Mr. Big.”

Syrians and Afghans often speak highly of the people who smuggle them across borders – except when being interviewed by European border guards. This is because the smuggling networks are increasingly controlled from diaspora groups in the EU and family members outside. By contrast, the refugees speak badly of the Istanbul taxi drivers who know the safe houses and are notorious for overcharging Syrians.

Migrants are using the networks designed to escape development failures. Syrians flee in no small part because of poor urbanization. They coordinate themselves via smartphone. If they move on from Turkey, it is in search of education for their children. As for those arriving in the EU, sixty percent rely on classic travel agents and just two percent on the EU’s attempts to engage on social media.

Why are we not looking for bottom-up solutions across the Middle East? Aid workers on the front line in northern Syria complain that large humanitarian organizations are “withdrawing from the world.” Big organizations, says one aid worker, subcontract the spadework to smaller ones like his, meaning he is the one teaching the law of war in rebel-held zones or deciding whether to help refugees cross borders. As they divorce themselves from reality, the big organizations take the moral high ground in Brussels and Berlin, but they can no longer convey information from the ground up.

Four Observations

If liberals are to rediscover their sense of reality, they may well have to confront some unpalatable political ideas. When Bob Smith and Bob Wilson created their famous 12-step plan to sobriety, they were drawing from their own experience as reformed alcoholics. Consider what follows as talking points of a political rehabilitation drawn from bitter experience.

Europe must externalize the solution. Today, just as in the 1990s, the main locus of the refugee crisis is beyond the EU’s borders. The real global crisis is not one of mobility but immobility: the vast majority of people displaced by violence are internally displaced, unable to cross borders. The majority of those who do leave their country are sitting close to the border. The UK Government Science Office acknowledged this predicament in 2011 when trying to predict numbers of climate refugees: the real problem, it came to realize, would not be mass migration but “trapped populations.”

Refugees are not helpless. OECD data suggest that the people who flee to Europe are often resilient, educated, and trained. But as they enter the EU, they are suddenly made to fit the European conception of what a refugee ought to be. Why do European societies require asylum seekers to be helpless? Today, migrants daily prove the reverse is true: those who move are often safest, have the best job opportunities, and can “vote with their feet.” A liberal Europe that is unable to make a sedentary lifestyle sustainable finds itself trying to make the mobile helpless.

Let’s be more ambitious. Many cling to the belief that all EU migration policy is illiberal, but they cannot offer a clear alternative to it. That is not to deny that some reform proposals do mark a clear liberal alternative – for example giving Frontex a search-and-rescue mandate or creating so-called Nansen passports for people to come to Europe to make a claim for refuge. When these ideas fail to gain traction, their supporters grumble it is because they are too ambitious. The reverse is true: Europe’s politicians have lost a whole liberal toolbox for dealing with migration, one which allowed them to affect the root causes abroad. As a result, the EU is left at the mercy of external forces.

Liberals are fueling populism. Liberals, like populists, are using refugees as metaphors in an emotional debate of their own about the need for a progressive Europe. When liberals cite Europe’s “demographic crisis” as grounds to welcome refugees, they are siding with heavily globalized urban hubs and adopting arguments that reduce people to mere economic or breeding units. This is exactly what populists fear.

Lessons of History

In the early 1990s, the EU experienced the last major shift in global power. At the time, there were fears of a massive, permanent flow of migration. Populists called on the EU to tear up its plans for a passport-free travel area (“Schengen”) and roll back refugee law. Despite the panic, the flows never materialized.

The historical lesson is not that such fears are always unfounded. Rather, it showed how necessary emergency border controls were to reestablish the rule of law and liberal institutions and to usher in a shift in liberal policy.

Those emergency restrictions have been the first priority in this crisis, too. But liberals must see that just as in 1991, European migration policy is a vacuum waiting to be filled – and that they have the scope to propose ambitious long-term reforms. After all, the old European policy of trade liberalization and state-building rested on the pledge that goods, capital, jobs, and democracy would come to the developing world, so people there did not have to move in search of them. It has not worked out that way, and people are on the move. That means the world needs new ways of matching up people and things across borders. Imagine the globalization of the sharing economy!

Away from the emotive debates about the Turkey deal, EU policy is quietly cohering around four principles: helping displaced people help themselves; giving people opportunities as close to home as possible; engaging with the more progressive of the West’s “rivals”; and, creating genuine political partnerships with poorer states.

There is plenty of potential there for a truly liberal approach.

NB. The author’s recent study “People on the Move. The New Global (Dis)Order” can be found here.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – July/August 2016 issue.

The post Reason Before Fear appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

But before we get to the conclusion, we have to begin at the beginning.

Act One: A New Actor Debuts

For years, Germany was more or less absent on migration policy at the EU level. Berlin repeatedly blocked any meaningful reform of the Dublin system, which requires that asylum seekers make their claims in the first EU country they enter, placing most of the burden on border states. Shielded by a ring of buffer states, Germany quietly relaxed backstage while others, like Italy and Greece, were front and center, asking for support in managing increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers.

Then last year, the number of people making their way north from Italy and Greece – mostly undocumented – began to surge. While other countries were receiving more migrants and asylum seekers per capita, the increased number of people arriving in Germany put a considerable strain on unprepared German cities and communities. This strain ultimately pushed Merkel to step out of the background and onto the European stage as she realized that Germany could not manage the increasing numbers on its own and needed European and international actors to help. It was not solidarity with Italy or Greece, nor a historic obligation to offset the atrocities of World War II, nor any other higher motive that compelled the shift; it was simple self-interest, combined with the inconveniently late realization that the Dublin system really was in need of reform, and that the war in Syria was no closer to ending.

Thus it was Berlin’s turn to call for European solidarity, backing the Commission’s relocation plans, and pushing for a permanent quota among member states. At the same time, Germany was applauded internationally for taking up to 800,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Never mind that Germany did not want to take up all these people, and had simply corrected its estimates to pragmatically prepare for the increase – an image of Germany’s openness was born.

…

Read the complete article in the Berlin Policy Journal App – November/December 2015 issue.

The post Stage Fright appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

There are some journalistic cliches that are best avoided. The columnist writing about his cat is one; the foreign correspondent quoting taxi drivers is another. Yet on my latest visit to Dresden last week, I found myself trapped in the taxi of Horst, a true Pegida believer.

I was in town to report on the first anniversary of a movement that began when a small group of “concerned citizens” gathered in central Dresden to protest against the “Islamization of the West”. Organized through Facebook, the movement gained momentum and, even on the coldest January evenings, brought 40,000 people onto the streets.

Sitting in the back of the car, I discreetly made notes of everything Horst told me. Reading them back now is like encountering the angry rant of someone who is relieved to finally have an audience. What was worse, I wondered to myself as I listened – his views, or his lack of inhibitions in sharing them?
“They get everything though they’ve never paid anything in, those young men with their smartphones, we don’t need them.”

“If someone comes, fleeing war, and agrees to our constitution, then fine,” he said. “But they have to show respect.”

I asked him whether he respected Lutz Bachmann. The Pegida founder was sidelined, if only for a few weeks this year, after a selfie emerged in which he was dressed as Adolf Hitler, alongside Facebook posts describing refugees as “cattle”. Now, however, Bachmann is back on top. “Bachmann, well, I don’t like all the vomit that he speaks,” said Horst, as the traffic slowed, “but some of the things he says are right.”

As the traffic picked up again, so did Horst. He was tired of driving around asylum seekers with vouchers from the local immigration office, and he was tired of them occupying the local fitness hall. Looking at his considerable belly, I mulled asking him when he had last used the fitness facilities, but decided against it.

I asked him instead why the scale of protests against foreigners in Germany always seems to be inversely proportional to the number of foreigners in a region.

It was a pre-emptive protest, he said: many of his friends had seen how things were in the West and wanted to stop that happening here in their “pretty Dresden”. Perhaps the strangest element of the Pegida movement is its apparent concern for the “Abendland” – the West or the Occident. I asked Horst what, for him, defines the “Abendland”. He scratched his head and said: “Na, die Ruhe, die man hat.” “Eh, the peace and quiet you have.”

Asked about these “defenders of the Occident” recently, Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that the problem was perhaps one of perspective. “We have every chance to stand up for our religion, insofar as we practice and believe, to have the courage to say we are Christians, to go to mass again or be sure about the Bible,” she said. To see what Germans actually know of the Christian Occident, she said, you have only to ask about the meaning of Pentecost. “But to then complain that Muslims know their Koran, that I find strange,” she said. “Perhaps this debate can lead to us addressing our own roots, to know more about them.”

The trouble with this is that the people who go to Pegida demonstrations aren’t curious and don’t read anything except poisonous Facebook posts full of dubious statistics and self-fulfilling conspiracy theories. If you inform yourself exclusively through Pegida newsfeeds – as many supporters are thought to – you play a game of digital telephone: all you hear is about criminal foreigners, about Germans evicted to make room for refugees, and why the Americans and the Jews control the media. You cannot reach these people in their self-contained, xenophobic vacuum.

That evening, Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann said he had “goosebumps” when came on the stage. He said he wouldn’t have believed a year ago that Pegida would attract so many followers, or thrive despite “hate” from the establishment. “But we are still here, we will stay to win – and we will win,” said Mr. Bachmann. “We are doing this for our country, our culture and our children’s future.”

As threatening cheers of “We are the people” echoed around the cobbled square at the Semper Opera House, smiling protesters waved the German black-red-gold, along with another flag: the resistance flag of the 1944 Stauffenberg plot against Hitler.
”We are the new resistance, we at war but people don’t realize it yet,” said one marcher, Uwe, a 43-year-old industrial designer. “Merkel is causing as much damage to Germany as Hitler did.” Another held a sign “Rotschild and Co”, blaming an international Jewish conspiracy for the refugee crisis, saying he voted “in the national socialist spectrum.”

It was striking to see that the other side of Pegida – the concerned citizens – have largely gone. The crowd today is younger and rougher. You hear the same from people in Dresden who tried to engage with Pegida a year ago. They say now that they have given up; the hard core that remains is not interested in constructive dialogue, they say, only “broadcasting” their frustrations. Anyone who could be reached has either left, they say, or has been radicalized after a year on the streets. A year on, they sigh – the window of opportunity has closed for Saxon politicians to bring people back.

As Pegida demonstrations swell alongside refugee numbers, concerned observers in Dresden believe this is the greatest test yet of the 25-year-old eastern German democracy. Can its leaders act proactively, or are they doomed to be reactive, driven by events and extremists?

My heart aches for the wonderful city of Dresden and its sensible citizens. They, too, have concerns about the refugee crisis, but not as great as their concerns about the intolerant image of their city being broadcast around the world.

Walking away from the demonstration, Lutz Bachmann babbling in the background, I marvel at the achievement of a clever snake-oil salesman who covers up his rhetorical gift for preaching xenophobia by sounding like a Saxon mechanic talking about winter tires. In just one year he has transformed Pegida into a living, breathing, hating contradiction. It demands tolerance from immigrants while preaching hate towards them; it demands they integrate while insisting on exclusion; it claims to be defending our values while betraying them.

As one Dresden counter-demonstrator warned on his banner last Monday: “Your Kind of Patriotism Kills.”

The post Deadly Patriotism appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.