81 MARTINDALE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE more anti-immigration (“Why Have Danes Turned…,” 2021). Other scholars and studies have taken varied approaches to understanding the effects of immigration on the welfare economy and arrive at different conclusions. Foged and Peri (2016) move beyond simply observing the net economic output of non-EU immigrants and refugees to focus on how their presence in the labor force interacts with the presence and output of native Danes. They conclude that an increase in refugees to Denmark led young Danish workers and those with limited experience toward more high-skilled and non-manual occupations, leading to positive or null effects on their employment and wages. For a country that depends so heavily on its labor force, particularly in high-skilled occupations, this is significant. Upward mobility of native Danes and higher wages due to immigration mean not only higher incomes for those native families but also the ability to contribute more to the welfare state. The specific net gains of this upward mobility and how they offset the overall net loss caused by immigrants remain fertile ground for future research to fully understand the interaction of immigrants with the Danish economy. However, Foged and Peri’s conclusion is that immigrants have a positive effect on the Danish labor market. A 2023 article in European Policy Analysis on how immigration relates to social expenditures and generosity of pension and unemployment benefits policy finds that “there is little support that migration has a burdening or undermining effect on the welfare state.” The reason this recent study reaches such a different conclusion is that rather than focusing on social expenditure as the indicator of welfare state strength, it addresses policy generosity more broadly, including areas such as unemployment protection and pensions. Although this report uses pooled data from 21 different OECD countries, including Denmark, further research into how these conclusions hold up specifically in the Danish state is needed to provide a different context to the discussion of immigrants’ position in the Danish welfare economy (Römer, 2023). Racism, xenophobia, and fear Alongside the economic arguments against immigration, there are other reasons for Denmark’s anti-immigration policies and attitudes that do not have economic justifications. When national-level politicians made comments regarding the segregated swimming outrage in 2019, their opposition was not because of any negative economic outcomes caused by immigrant women learning to swim. Moreover in 2016, when officials of the Danish city Randers approved a DPP proposal to require pork on the menu of all public institutions, it was not because the lack of pork in Muslim food led to their net negative economic Figure 2 Average net contribution to public finances, 2018 (kroner, thousands) * And their descendants. † Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey. Source: “Why Have Danes Turned…”, 2021, based on data from the Danish Foreign Ministry.
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