Kvindehuset in Aarhus is a community center welcoming women who moved to Denmark from another country and need support and a network to jump-start their new life. It is a safe space in the middle of a rather unwelcoming environment for migrants and refugee seekers created by Danish immigration legislation.

Denmark is known for its extensive welfare system, providing free and equal healthcare, financial support for students and an internationally renowned long-term care system, just to name a few perks of being a Danish resident. While the Danish population enjoys one of the best social systems in the world, those who are not Danish are met with hardship. This is exemplified by a law cutting bachelor programs in English to prevent European students coming to Denmark and receiving the state support SU or the reduction of so-called “ghettos”, parts of the cities with 50 percent of the people coming from non-western countries. And: Denmark, an otherwise quite liberal and progressive country, is known to be one of the countries in the EU with the strictest policies on migration and asylum. The goal: "zero asylum seekers" according to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in January 2021.

One would expect policies like these being penned by the AfD in Germany or the Rassemblement National in France. But the party that is behind all these changes in law, is the Danish social democratic party, which has been in power since 2019.

The peculiar thing about this political paradigm shift: It is supported by all sides of the parliament, on the right as well as on the left. Compared to parties in a lot of other European countries facing a shift to the right and a loss of votes, the social democrats seem to follow a quite different tactic: Backing hardline immigration politics instead of leaving more and more space for the right-wing parties ; in the case of Denmark, the rightwing populist party Dansk Folkeparti and the far-right party Stram Kurs.

And: A lot of the Danes stand behind the laws. The plan of processing asylum applications in a third country outside of the EU, was already a big part of the social democratic program leading up to the last elections in 2019. Only this year though the parliament passed the law. They plan to set up centers for the reception of asylum seekers in a country outside the EU. Asylum seekers would therefore have to apply at the Danish border to be then flown to reception centers in other countries and wait there for their application to be processed.

The goal behind this law: stopping spontaneous asylum seekers. Instead, the Danish government wants to make a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea less “attractive” when asylum applications must be processed in reception centers outside of Europe. But: The application process must be started at the Danish border, so that the people still have to travel to Denmark paying a lot of money or risking their lives. So far, Denmark could not yet win over a country as a partner; Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria already declined . 

Also, the European Union is not completely comfortable with Denmark's immigration politics. Just a while ago, on October 2nd, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the current three-year wait for refugees to apply for family reunification is too excessive and must be reduced to two years. But the court leaves the possibility of longer waits open in case of periods of extremely high refugee numbers.

Not everybody in Denmark applauds those bills and there are institutions working to create a welcoming space in the midst of this rather unwelcoming environment that the Danish government created for migrants in recent years. Kvindehuset Aarhus is one of those organizations wanting to provide a safe haven. Its focus is women, as the name already reveals if one's able to understand Danish.

One big part to achieving that goal is counseling - whatever the women need to be dealt with, they can seek support at Kvindehuset. A big issue is the digitalized bureaucracy in Denmark that most of the women are not familiar with and struggle to understand. Another common counseling topic is how to apply for a job in Denmark. But sometimes bigger problems come up and the employees at Kvindehuset do their best to help with that as well. Marianne Frederiksen, the manager, tells that they had cases of women struggling with getting assistance for their child with a disability or to find a social worker supporting them as single mothers. In addition, Kvindehuser offers more than 40 hours of activities every week: Danish classes, knitting classes, cooking evenings, sports, gardening, a reading club and much more. Also, they celebrate holidays together, Christmas for example but also the Muslim holidays Ramadan or Eid al-Adha. "It's the type of activities, which build up competencies and your ability to live a life as close as possible to what you yourself prefer", says Marianne. 360 women profited or still profit from these offers ever since Kvindehuset opened its doors in 2008. 30 to 50 women come in every day. Some who used to be on the receiving end are now giving back by volunteering and supporting women, who just started settling in in Denmark, while still going to Danish classes. "It's a win-win situation," says Marianne.

Recently, Kvindehuset moved into new buildings in Frederiksbjerg, in the center of Aarhus. Marianne feels that it was an important step towards the integration of the women coming there. "It did not make sense to keep the women secluded in Viby - it is one of the so-called 'ghettos'. We wanted to transform not just the women's house into a setting which is closer to mainstream Denmark, but also open up the eyes of the women to other places, and other communities.” More women come now regularly, says Marianne, she feels like Kvindehuset got even more relevant than it used to be.

So, how does someone working with migrated women every day feel about the Danish strict take on immigration politics? Marianne is not too eager to state her opinion or even to give a kind of official comment about the Kvindehuset's attitudes towards the government. “In the women's house, we do not have a specific opinion on the Danish policies. What we do is to try to meet the women where they are and assist them as much as possible.” She can personally understand the need for migration regulation though: “I'm not saying that the way in which we are addressing the problems in Denmark now is the way I prefer to address the problems. I think we should move a bit of the latter and look at it from a global perspective, because we are also benefiting from the global labor market.”

But maybe it is not important what Marianne, her colleagues or even the women coming to Kvindehuset think about Danish immigration legislation. Maybe it matters more that there still are places like Kvindehuset, supporting migrants as long they manage two get into the country, despite of all of the obstacles thrown in their way by the Danish government.