Why are the Danish National Elections important from a Decolonial Stance?

I’ve been feeling extremely overwhelmed by the current geopolitical crises. I find myself trying to figure out how to perfectly recycle the multi-material packaging of my vegetarian onigiri, while trying to keep up with the Aljazeera liveblog on the USA-Iran War, while an oil refinery catches fire in Mexico and more gruesome details bubble up from the Epstein Files, only to be suppressed by an item on Jake Paul being endorsed by Donald Trump? (yes, this really happened if you had not seen this yet.)

In times when the most popular reported crisis changes more quickly than the Billboard top-100 Charts, keeping up has become an endurance sport. One moment you’re enrolled in a crash course on Venezuelan history, in the next you feel guilty that you could not name 3 big cities in Iran.

It is a crazy time... And you become crazy trying to keep up. 

While news items can bring you a sense of “staying informed”, it pushes you into reactive mode. You will find yourself too busy with trying to put out fires everywhere that you don't see who is actually setting them.

In the meantime, deeper research into the systems behind this circus can help you  make sense of things. Capitalism, Supremacism, Colonialism- the first three words I will teach my baby... And the real reasons we see our world descending into

Environmental crises

       Ecological crises

          Military crises

  Political crises

Human-to-human crises. 

This article is a gentle reminder that communities like the CDC, and many others, do bring hope, and also to remind you that you too have the power to act…

… which is, among many other things, to ‘exercise your democratic power’- Go Vote!. 

Though it feels like a small thing,voting is one of the most powerful things you can do at an individual level to see and create change!

With the upcoming Folketingsvalget 2026/ National Elections in Denmark, we wanted to take a moment to spark some thoughts about how your vote is directly related to our hegemonic systems of power and oppression, and which critical questions you can bring with you to the voting booth. How can your little cross on an impossible-to-fold-sheet help to build a better world?

If you’re reading this as a non-Danish resident, I invite you to reflect upon your own vote, because even though I will build out the arguments in this article using Danish examples, they are to some extent applicable to any context Europe (you might have some different (political comments) on decolonial voting, if your ballot is sent out to a non-European Country- definitely feel free to share your thoughts below).

Why are the Danish National elections important from a decolonial stance?

Expat or migrant?

If posters like these, where a woman dressed in a burka made of Danish Kroner bills and is framed by a racist slogan (translation: 63% of 30-59-year-old Lebanese women live off your money, should we do something about it?) can be openly pasted around Copenhagen’s streets, there is no doubt we find ourselves amidst a strong anti-migration narrative. 

In 2024, approximately 860 people were granted asylum, a historic low for a non-pandemic year (the lowest figure in 40 years outside the 2020 pandemic year). In recent years, Denmark has also accepted 200 refugees annually from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. (As of 2023, similarly sized Norway was accepting 2,000.)

Internationally, Denmark is notorious for its strict anti-migration politics. While traditionally, the Danes were shamed for their low tolerance of newcomers, we see a growing willingness across other countries to adopt their strict migration system. However, this “Danish Model" should not be celebrated, rather it is one of the most visible examples of today’s colonial continuity, as it reproduces racial hierarchies. For example, Denmark explicitly limits work migration to nationals from only 16 countries, “whose nationals are believed to be easier to integrate”, none of which are in the Middle East or Africa. (For more, check out this publication.)

Denmark often frames itself as a mere bystander of European colonialism (an incorrect belief if you managed to colonise parts of three different continents I would say). This amnesia is not innocent, but intentional. It allows the state to frame its strict migration policies as culturally neutral, even as they rely on a Western/non-Western categorisation that maps almost exactly onto White/non-White distinctions inherited from colonial-era thinking, also described as the coloniality of migration. What colonialism did to racial hierarchies through direct coercion, exploitation, and force, the Danish Model employs through welfare chauvinism, deportation regimes, and strict integration demands (that most Danish-born do not even meet themselves). Why? Because it creates an intentional line between those who “belong” and those who must earn, assimilate, or leave… and this line still follows the same colour as always. 

The dominant political argument explaining the strict migration discourse is that high levels of migration threaten the welfare state's cohesion thus burdening its poorest citizens. However, this constructs the welfare state as something bound by nationality and/or ethnicity, framing racialised residents and newcomers as threats rather than contributors. Not only does it hide behind the fact that Danish prosperity is partially built on the colonial extraction of its colonies, immigrants also provide crucial labour in the care economy, which grows exponentially as societies age. 

Bring these thoughts into your pen, when you choose to put a cross in the box of a pro-strict or anti-strict migration party. Why are some people framed as expats and others as migrants? Why are we the only species that punishes migration?

Danish Military and Defence: A Story of Selective Protection 

Amidst the recent developments in the USA-Iran war, but also Trump's earlier protests of NATO budgeting and interest in Kalaallit Nunaat, ‘military and defence’ has been pushed high up on this election’s political agenda, and framed as ‘important’ and ‘urgent’ to take action now. 

However, the rapid militarisation is one big show of neo-imperial logic around Arctic security delinked from the centrality of the Arctic peoples. The protection comes from a sudden Danish collective experience of protecting what is “theirs”, a place that is coincidentally a resource-rich zone and a military strategic zone. Again, the Inuit, whose ancestral territory this is, are rendered invisible, including vital questions such as what their security means or requires. Dalby highlights how security discourse is never neutral- it always produces a geography of who belongs, who threatens, and whose land is at stake. In the Arctic case, that dynamic remains colonial. 

This sudden motivation of Arctic protection shows another Danish bias: to only protect what is “theirs”, while ignoring what is not (for nearly 2,5 years no concrete national political actions have been taken to stand up against Israel, or show solidarity to other affected regions across Sudan, DR Congo, Myanmar, and Yemen). This shows a selective humanity - the political and moral calculus that determines whose suffering warrants state action and whose does not. The pattern is not coincidental, it reflects the coloniality of solidarity, in which proximity to whiteness, Europeanness, and strategic economic value determine who counts as a subject of protection and who is left as an object of humanitarian concern at best, indifference at worst.

Again, it’s easy to have a ‘not in my backyard’ mentality and to not bring these geopolitical crises into your vote; however, your vote directly impacts how many young people will have to be enlisted or whether we can finally, formally call it a genocide. 

Kalaallit Nunaat

This topic could be a whole essay in itself. I will leave it short, and direct you to Elias Stumpf's who recently published a helpful article in understanding Denmark-Kalaallit Nunaat relations. Just remember that because of the way Denmark-Kalaallit Nunaat relationship in self-determination is currently established, means that you are not just voting for Denmark’s future. That is a piece of power you hold. Consider it. 

Green Transition or Green Colonialism?

Denmark prides itself on being a leader in sustainability issues. Its Green (who defines what we mean by Green, green for who?) agenda centers on Danish agricultural emissions and a sustainable Danish economy. While it’s good that action is being taken towards our escalating climate crisis, it often centers on Danish wellbeing. It never asks: “What is Denmark's climate debt to the Global South?”. What is our duty towards reparations and debt relief as the Global Minority World has exceptionally contributed to greenhouse gas emissions and the exploitation of land, resources, and people?

Even if we bring it closer to home, Danish climate policy holds certain biases. While careful and considerate of its own resource extraction, the green sustainability of extraction politics of oils and minerals in Kalaallit Nunaat is a little more nuanced. As these resources will become more accessible as the ice is melting, a renewed interest from Trump sparked new discussions on ownership of oil and rare minerals. While Kalaallit Nunaat gained authority over its own natural resources through the 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government, the Danish influence hindered its full self-determination of its relationship to its land and oil on the world stage. This coloniality of the green, in which Denmark positions itself as an ambitious global leader in the Green transition, while simultaneously maintaining political and economic relationships with Kalaallit Nunaat that keep the door open to easily accessible, and unfair oil and mineral extraction on Kalaallit territory. Green politics that ignores the sovereignty of the people whose territory holds the resources it wants to either extract or preserve is not climate justice — it is green colonialism in a new font.

Be conscious when parties use big buzzwords, and paint their pamphlets green… What do they really mean by Green and Environmental justice?  Whose climate, whose land, and whose future is actually being protected? Green for whom?

I hope that you can take your wandering thoughts on today’s geopolitical crises, to visualise what your vote can do for our relationships to all people and our planet. And while the connection between a lebanese woman in a burka made of danish kroner bills and the climate crisis might not be immediately clear, it is to demonstrate that there is a dangerous rhetoric in Danish politics. Both discussions center a strong Denmark-first mentality, with deeper layers in (neo)colonial and racist ideologies. Instead, we can also vote for a national parliament that works towards building a global, decolonial and just future for all.