Among expats living in Denmark, there seem to be three categories: transferred employees, traveling spouses, and those who come for love. For the first two groups of people – families that often arrive together – the transition to Danish life is eased by a corporate cushion, company-funded relocation services, and a network of spouses (usually wives) who do not work outside the home. For the rest of us who rely on a dual income, it isn’t so simple.
It is a popular myth that employment in Denmark is easy to obtain as long as you have a solid work history, a university degree or two, or even a simple willingness to work. ‘Everyone speaks English’, you are repeatedly told. Yet among those of us who moved here for our partners, it remains a struggle to find the most basic legal employment.
Often, we end up as Denmark’s working poor, struggling to find and maintain jobs as cleaning staff, restaurant workers, and postal service employees. Many well-off expats act enraged by our collective ‘underemployment’, but few in the corporate sector understand that many of us face constant rejection in our basic search for work. Often, we can’t even be called the ‘working poor’, for we have yet to find actual employment. I’m lucky; I’m a writer, and I can continue to write for North American publications and scrape in a bit of income as a freelancer. Many of my transplanted friends cannot even rely on that.
Even among other expats, there is a sense of disbelief when one cannot find a job. I’ve been told to my face by fellow Americans living in Denmark, ‘You have a Master’s degree. Surely you can find something.’ They may mean well, but it’s condescending and insulting to assume I’m not being honest about my struggle – one I share with many others. It is to easy forget – or completely ignore – that unless you take a company transfer or come to Denmark with a job waiting for you, securing a position without a mastery of the Danish language will be an uphill battle.
Expat spouses and employees of Danish companies are also exempt from the fees immigrants are forced to pay just to live together legally. A bank guarantee of 60,000 kroner required of all couples with one immigrating partner, forcing even the poorest couples to pay the government for the privilege to be together. As if the costs of moving abroad were not high enough, many of us go into debt or work overtime before arriving to pay the ‘family reunification’ fees associated with our immigration. My partner and I currently pay down monthly interest on a loan we will never actually cash out.
Few of us came to Denmark with a sense of entitlement. We merely wanted to live safely and be with our loved ones in the same place for an extended period of time. For people like me, being poor is nothing new. I grew up in a small Midwestern American town where car factories have shut down in record numbers over the past two decades. As a high school student, I worked thirty hours a week on top of school to save money to escape. Between my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, I amassed thousands of dollars worth of government loan debt, and I have no idea how I will pay it back. Before I moved to Denmark, I did not have health insurance. I sold nearly everything I owned to relocate, unable to afford the cost to ship my belongings. Yet even though I’m the most upwardly mobile person in my family, my definition of ‘poverty’ often doesn’t make sense to people with comfortable corporate careers – let alone to those who have always lived in a social democracy.
The economic shift since emigrating from the US isn’t drastic for me, but having a limited income is never easy. Those of us with solid relationships will survive the tough financial times until we can begin advancing here. Many of us will also continue to search for and find ways to take our Danish partners and leave.
Instead of focusing on integration bureaucracy, forced language comprehension, and handing out brochures for the same three job websites, Denmark would be well-advised to listen to its newcomers and our needs. Danes are quick to boast their English language skills; it shouldn’t come as a shock that our Danish partners would then be the ones to emigrate. In a country that seems to resent immigrants from any nation, it won’t take long until we begin asking our partners to try acclimating to our home countries instead. Denmark loses valuable contributing members of society when immigrants feel unwelcome, and our skills and work ethic are wasted because of sometimes non-existent language barriers. In my experience, it also causes the most patriotic Danes to reconsider their country’s attitudes about immigration and acceptance.
To people who believe immigrants should assimilate or leave, I say very sincerely: I suspect many of us would love to do the latter – if we could only afford it.
