Living and working in Denmark, I meet many people like me, foreigners, and get to hear their personal unique stories about living in Denmark.

Their perspective is always contemporary and strongly attached to the here and now.

There’s been a lot of talk of recent changes in the demographic composition of Denmark. So let’s look at how it was 30 years ago.

Less populated than today
In Denmark, then Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen’s government focused on tackling unemployment, promoting economic growth, and implementing welfare state reforms.

The Danish society was a little different than the one we live in today.

With a population of almost 5.2 million (5,196,642) on January 1, 1994, a little over 5 million (5,007,628) were Danish citizens, meaning Denmark was home to only 189,014 (3.6 percent) foreign citizens.

Back then, 94.9 percent of the population (4,930,573) were persons of Danish origins and only 217,154 people were immigrants in Denmark.

Only 30.8 percent of those immigrants had a Danish passport. These figures depict an extremely tribal and homogeneous society.

What has changed over the last 30 years?

Overwhelming homogeneous
On January 1 2024, the Danish population consisted of nearly 6 million (5,961,249) people.

Interestingly, people of Danish origin comprise a little over 5 million (5,018,183) people. That is 84.2 percent of the total population, and 94.5 percent of those with Danish citizenship.

It’s still strongly homogenous.

Comparing these numbers to those of 30 years ago, when 94.9 percent of total population, and 98.5 percent of Danish citizens were people of Danish origin, it also explains a lot about the difficulties foreign people experience in Denmark.

We are truly still in a striking minority.

Who are the foreign residents in Denmark?
Let’s dive in and find out who the ‘foreigners’ in Denmark are in 2024.

Foreigners are defined as either residents who are of Danish origin but do not have Danish citizenship, or immigrants and their descendants regardless of their citizenship.

This group of 948,513 people come from all around the globe, are of diverse nationalities and have different relationships to Denmark.

According to Danmarks Statistik, 649,994 have a foreign citizenship while 298,519 have Danish citizenship.

Descendants and immigrants

• 5,447 are people of Danish origin, born in Denmark and live in Denmark, yet do not hold a Danish citizenship.
• 724,681 immigrants, out of which 160,181 hold Danish citizenship.
• And last, 218,385 are descendants of immigrants, with 138,338 of them having Danish citizenship.

In other words, only 22.1 percent of immigrants in Denmark hold a Danish citizenship, while for their descendants the situation is different: 63.4 percent of them are Danish citizens.

To go further down the rabbit hole, let’s look at the group of descendants without Danish citizenship. Who are they? Where does their lineage come from?

They are most commonly born to families from:

• Turkey, where 47.3 percent are between 20 to 34 years old

• Syria with 95.5 percent are children under 10

• Poland, where 66.3 percent are children under 10

• Romania with 87.7 percent are children under 10

• Smaller groups are from Pakistan, Ukraine, Somalia, Iraq, Lithuania, Afghanistan, and Germany.

Tough to become a Danish citizen
Their status seems a bit odd: descendants of immigrants, who are not classed as immigrants, but nonetheless do not have citizenship in the country they live.

It raises questions regarding the policies that facilitate that status.

Over the last 30 years, a number of policies came into force that played a role in this area.

• The 1999 Integration Act, which established an obligatory Introduction Programme for all new non-EU immigrants.

• Following the EU enlargement in May 2004, Denmark, along with Norway, requested a transition period until 2009 before allowing free movement of workers from the new EU member states.

• The 2018 Citizenship Reforms saw stricter rules for obtaining citizenship introduced, including extended waiting periods for those with criminal records.

• The 2021 Multiparty Immigration Agreement brought in new conditions for naturalization. This included a citizenship examination focusing on Danish language, history, and culture, and provisions for revoking citizenship in cases of serious crimes like gang-related activities​.

The correlations of these policy changes with citizenship numbers are clear: in the years 2001, 2003, 2005 the numbers of foreigners in Denmark decreased compared to previous years, while in 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2020, 2021 the number of foreigners increased by less than 3 percent compared to the previous year.

On the other hand, in 1996, 2016 and 2023, the numbers of foreigners increased by 10 percent or more compared with the previous years.