This text was originally published in Swedish in Arbetar Historia (No.191-192, 2024). Special thanks to the editors for granting permission to republish.
In 2015, during the peak of what became known as the “refugee crisis,” global attention turned towards an unexpected actor: Denmark. Long regarded as a liberal refuge and one of the first signatories of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, Denmark experienced a significant policy shift under the ruling Social Democrats. i The country implemented some of the world’s strictest refugee policies, becoming the first nation to mandate that even resettled refugees must eventually return to their home countries.
Sjælsmark and Kærshovedgård, two semi-open “departure centres” established in 2013 to process rejected asylum-seekers, paradoxically became temporary residences for refugees who had already been granted permission to remain in Denmark. These deportation centres, which subject non-deported individuals to indefinite waits under conditions that verge on de facto incarceration, have become pivotal sites in Denmark’s deportation-focused asylum policy.
Danish migration scholar and documentary director Helle Stenum’s latest documentary, The Sad Truth (2023), takes viewers through the gates of these camps while situating them within Denmark’s broader historical context. The film focuses on young Syrian women confined to these camps, grappling with a harsh ultimatum: return to their war-torn homeland or remain indefinitely in a state of uncertainty. By interweaving their struggles with historical accounts of Danish deportation practices—such as the expulsion of Jews in the 1930s and the treatment of German war refugees between 1945-47—Stenum raises profound questions about historical memory: who gets to tell these stories, who is remembered, and who is forgotten? At its heart, the documentary interrogates the concept of agency, connecting past and present experiences.
This interrogation of agency plays out in several layers throughout the film, both in the personal experiences of the refugees and the broader political discourse. At the highest political levels, Danish prime ministers invoke refugee issues in their New Year messages, reducing complex human experiences to numbers in debates about national challenges. Next, these numbers gain a face. We meet the young refugee women awaiting their fate in prison-like deportation camps, their circumstances shaped by constraints that limit their agency. Yet, through their stories of resilience and hope, we see the enduring power of personal narratives to illuminate the human cost of political decisions. White Danish activists represent another form of agency, using their privilege to amplify marginalized voices and challenge dominant narratives. Among the refugees, Rahima Abdullah’s journey reflects a dynamic and evolving agency. Initially impressed by Denmark’s commitment to the rule of law, her disillusionment grows as she witnesses its violations first-hand.
Finally, the film highlights the agency of two older female historians, Kirsten Lylloff and Lone Rünitz, who wrestle with the challenges of confronting uncomfortable historical truths.ii One of them poignantly reflects on the backlash that arises when challenging a nation’s self-image, saying, “A bird does not shit in its own nest.” This sentiment about the difficulty of critiquing one’s own country echoes a broader public discomfort with such discussions. A recent Washington Post opinion piece captures this shift in Danish politics, titled “How Progressive Denmark Became the Face of the Anti-Migration Left.”iii The article chronicles Denmark’s dramatic turn in refugee politics, noting, “Denmark was not always like this. Thirty years ago, the country was relatively open and welcoming, with strong protections for asylum seekers and refugees. But that started to change in the 1990s, as the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the far-right Danish People’s Party proved politically potent.”
To this, our two historians might reply in present-day social media jargon: “Hold my beer! We need to go much further back than that to understand what’s happening now!” This is where the film’s second storyline comes in—the research of Lylloff and Rünitz on Denmark’s treatment of Jews in the 1930s and German war refugees between 1945-47, which provides crucial historical context to the contemporary refugee debate.
When the historians speak in the documentary, their presence closely aligns with what is often called the expository documentary format.iv This style typically features an authoritative voice-over or a historian presenting directly to the camera, acting as both narrator and objective assessor of evidence. However, Lylloff and Rünitz offer more than just authoritative voices. Their involvement goes beyond simply providing historical facts; they bring personal and professional insights into the conversation, adding depth and complexity to the film’s exploration of Denmark’s current refugee policies.
We first see these two women casually sitting on a bench, engaged in conversation with each other, sharing the personal and professional costs of their academic research. This intimate exchange adds a layer of depth to their authoritative roles, making them more relatable and humanized. In addition, another historian makes her presence felt in the film, though her face remains unseen—Helle Stenum herself. Through her academic writing and documentaries, including those that address the legacies of Danish colonialism, Stenum exposes her country’s troubling historical and contemporary record.v
In “The Sad Truth,” Stenum undertakes a challenging task—a diachronic historical comparison—that many historians are usually hesitant to pursue given the clear and significant structural and contextual differences between the late 1930s and the mid-2010s. Academically, the contemporary European (so-called) refugee crisis has not received sufficient historical contextualization. Historical analyses have been slow to integrate into refugee studies, a relatively new field dominated by social scientists with largely presentist concerns.vi However, outside academia, such comparisons have been made in public and political debates.
A notable example comes from Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who, in the autumn of 2015, during the height of the so-called refugee crisis, warned of the dangers of “amnesia.” In an interview with The Guardian, Al Hussein argued that contemporary public rhetoric about refugees echoed that used by Western leaders in the late 1930s.vii It is this amnesia that the two Danish historians are trying to confront by telling the stories of Jewish and German war refugees. “Both politicians and ordinary Danes have incredibly short-term memories,” says one of them. As I watched, I found myself answering back, “Well, which nation doesn’t?” But it is not only public forgetting or historical amnesia at stake here. A Danish retiree affiliated with Grandparents for Asylum, a coalition of activists who support refugees, offers another perspective. She notes that many Danes she encounters remain unaware—or unwilling to acknowledge—what is happening. “When I tell them what we are doing, people don’t believe me,” she says. “They say, ‘But we Danes don’t treat people like that.’” viii So, what we’re dealing with is not just public forgetting of the past, but also a wilful ignorance of the present.
But where lies the distinction between the two? How do these two forces intertwine in the everyday lives of those affected by them? The documentary poignantly links two refugees from different time periods through a powerful scene: Syrian refugee Rahima touching the Stolpersteine, the stumbling stone marking the home of German Jew Ruth Niedrig, who was handed over to the Gestapo by Danish authorities. This gesture made me wonder: Did Stenum have the chance to show this scene to Rahima and other Syrian refugees? If so, how did they react? What was Rahima’s understanding of this history? Given her initial view of Denmark as a bastion of the rule of law, how did she respond to the historical context unfolding before her?
Though both Ruth and Rahima have grappled with profound uncertainties during their time in Denmark—navigating what can be described as the Danish limbo—their experiences are rooted in vastly different historical contexts, both politically and economically. In 1930s Denmark, amid post-Depression economic hardship and widespread unemployment, concerns about refugees draining social policy resources were widespread. By contrast, Rahima and her fellow Syrian refugees arrived during a period of economic prosperity, within the context of a strong welfare state. Yet, how did a country with a tradition of social solidarity gradually adopt an anti-refugee stance? How did this tradition evolve into a protectionist and xenophobic form of welfare-state patriotism? The film starkly illustrates this shift, particularly when the Danish Minister of Migration proudly references the Danish welfare state tradition in defence of the new refugee policy at the European Parliament.
The discourse of welfare-state patriotism transcends racial, religious, and cultural boundaries, feeding into broader debates about immigrant integration into Danish society. Central to these discussions are concerns about immigrants’ socioeconomic status, their employment in low-pay jobs, and their reliance on social benefits. Refugees are often depicted within this narrative as a burden—requiring substantial long-term investment from the state, while struggling to enter the labour market effectively. As such, the aim of the current Danish refugee and asylum policyseems twofold: to pressure those already in the country into accepting voluntary return, while simultaneously sending a loud and clear message: “Don’t think about coming to Denmark.” But, then, who is this message truly directed at?
The influx of largely extra-European refugees raised concerns about the potential long-term impact of mostly young Middle Eastern males on the social stability of European democracies. In 2012, sociologist Sara Farris coined the term “femonationalism” to describe the alignment between nationalist ideologies and certain feminist ideas, particularly when driven by xenophobic motivations.ix Farris documents how some European right-wing parties and self-identified feminists exploit women’s rights and gender equality principles to justify discriminatory practices against Muslim and non-Western immigrants.
I raise this concept here for two reasons. First, femonationalism is particularly relevant to Stenum’s documentary, which selectively portrays only female refugees, despite Denmark’s ostensibly non-gender-discriminatory refugee policy. This selective portrayal invites an exploration of its implications within the context of femonationalism and the institutionalization of gendered integration policies. Second, in 2019, the Danish prime minister declared a goal of “zero asylum seekers.” However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Denmark accepted Ukrainian refugees. Danish authorities and NGOs actively assisted these refugees, ensuring their integration into Danish society. What does this shift reveal about the political and societal consequences of categorizing, labelling, and stereotyping refugees?
As we continue to witness devastating acts of state-induced violence, most recently in Palestine, which flagrantly breach international law, the questions raised by Stenum’s documentary take on even greater urgency. Her work forces us to reckon not only with the memory of historical injustices but also with the present moment—where the way we treat refugees is inextricably tied to political ideologies, societal perceptions, and economic realities. This film serves as both a reminder and a challenge, asking us to confront the uncomfortable truths about how we view those who seek refuge, particularly when their needs clash with the dominant narratives of national identity and security. As Walter Benjamin wrote, “Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.” x Stenum’s documentary pushes us to recognize these images, to reckon with the past, and to engage with the present in ways that are both reflective and responsive to the demands of justice and humanity.
i During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, many Danish people played a crucial role in one of the largest and most exceptional rescue operations of the Holocaust, famously saving the lives of the vast majority of Jews living in Denmark, including several hundred German and “stateless Jews,” by helping them escape to Sweden. Levine, Paul A. 2011. “Sweden’s Complicated Neutrality and the Rescue of Danish Jewry.” In The Routledge History of the Holocaust, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman, 305-314. New York: Routledge.
ii See, for example, Lylloff, Kirsten. “Dødsårsager for tyske flygtningebørn i 1945 [Causes of death of German refugee children in 1945].” Ugeskr Laeger, vol. 162, no. 9, 2000; Rünitz, Lone. “Denmark’s Response to the Nazi Expulsion Policy, 1938-39.” Holocaust Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2005.
iii Rauhala, Emily. “How Progressive Denmark Became the Face of the Anti-Migration Left.” Washington Post, April 6, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/06/denmark-zero-asylum-refugees/. Accessed June 20, 2024. It is important to note that in this context, “the left” specifically refers to the Social Democratic Party. However, two parties to the left of the Social Democrats, which currently hold 24 out of 179 seats in parliament, are highly critical of the Social Democrats’ position on this issue. These parties advocate for a more “humanistic” approach to refugee policy and are poised to gain significant support, according to recent polls. Special thanks to Lars Kjølhede Christensen for bringing this point to my attention.
iv Bell, Desmond. “Documentary Film and the Poetics of History.” Journal of Media Practice, vol. 12, no. 1, 2011, p. 9.
v Stenum’s award-winning documentary “We Carry It Within Us” (2017) examines Denmark’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and explores how the colonial past continues to shape contemporary media, art, museums, education, and wealth distribution, alongside various practices of remembering and forgetting.
vi Ahonen, Pertti. “Europe and Refugees: 1938 and 2015-16.” Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 52, no. 2-3, 2018, p. 137.
vii Jones, Sam. “Refugee Rhetoric Echoes 1938 Summit Before Holocaust, UN Official Warns.” The Guardian, October 14, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/14/refugee-rhetoric-echoes-1938-summit-before-holocaust-un-official-warns. Accessed June 20, 2024.
viii Rauhala, “How Progressive Denmark.”
ix Farris, Sara. In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Duke University Press, 2017.
x Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938–1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 2003, p. 391.
Görkem Akgöz is a research fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Her main research interests are global labour history, political economy, and women and gender history. She is the author of In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey(Brill, 2024). She is the co-chair of the Labour Network of the European Social Science History Conference, the co-coordinator of the Workplaces: Pasts and Presents working group of the European Labour History Network, and a member of the Editorial Committee of the International Review of Social History. More information can be found at www.gorkemakgoz.com.
Cite as: Akgöz, Görkem 2025. “’The Sad Truth’ Then and Now: Pasts and Presents of Danish Refugee Policy” Focaalblog 8 January. https://www.focaalblog.com/2025/01/08/gorkem-akgoz-the-sad-truth-then-and-now-pasts-and-presents-of-danish-refugee-policy/