UK wants to model its asylum system on Denmark's. This is why it's a bad idea

Sitting on the floor of a small room in one of Denmark’s two deportation centres in 2017, Faiza – a mother of two and survivor of domestic and political violence – reflected on what life was like in Udrejsecenter Sjælsmark.

“It’s so hard being a single mother, it’s so hard,” she said. “It’s so bad, I feel so bad for Denmark, one thing that they don’t care about the woman who has two kids, who’s a single mother, who had violence but no… no one can listen, no one can help.”

I have been researching responses to refugees seeking asylum in Denmark since 2014 and although unique to Faiza, her experiences are reflective of a system that has caused deep emotional harms to refugee survivors of conflict, violence and torture.

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They are the manifestation of increased ‘Enhanced motivation techniques’, which have been employed in Denmark since 1997 to motivate unwanted migrants to leave. So, although they are new to many people in the UK, they are not a new concept. They have been increasingly implemented as a way of speeding up deportations by encouraging reductions in autonomy and welfare allowances.  

In response to the rising number of asylum applications, and as a pre-emptive measure against applications yet to come, Denmark established Udrejsecenter Sjælsmark, the country’s first deportation centre which formally opened in 2013. Situated close to the centre for arrivals (Center Sandholm) and Ellebæk closed detention centre, it is built in a former military barracks approximately 25 kilometres north of Copenhagen, and takes around 1.5 hours to reach by public transport from the city centre.

These three centres are next to an operational military barracks which has regular gunfire practice. As a psychologist working in Sandholm told me in 2014: “Sometimes you have military rehearsals around Sandholm. So they stand practising how to throw a grenade like a 100 metres away, and all the people in Sandholm are just like, back in the war. People with PTSD. ‘No but that’s just the Danish soldiers practising’… It’s completely absurd.”

An even harsher policy – and more similar to the UK’s long-term approach – was later promoted by the former Danish minister for immigration, integration and housing, Inger Støjberg, who promised to make life ‘intolerable’ for people on tolerated stay.

As the co-ordinator of a national support service for refugees in Denmark said about deportation centres: “They are designed to make life as intolerable as possible, to persuade people to go back.”

However, it was the Danish Social Democrats party, led by prime minister Mette Frederiksen, that pushed forward with their ‘zero asylum seekers’ goal, using policy and deterrence strategies to undermine human rights obligations. 

Originally, the policies were known as 50 Stramninger, or the 50 Restrictions, and have more than doubled as the years have gone on. The most internationally controversial of these, and one which has been recently made headlines as a suggested policy in the UK, was the introduction of the ability to search people seeking asylum in order to seize assets that cover the cost of their stay in Denmark, up to the value of 1,300 Euros, through an amendment to the Aliens Act 1983/2003. Despite the controversy it understandably caused at the time it is used infrequently – an arguably expensive and degrading but toothless policy embarrassment.  

Although it is the punitive aspects of the Danish asylum system that the current Labour government wishes to draw from, there are other lessons about justice that British ministers can and should learn from Denmark.  

A key lesson that has thus far been overlooked is that the violation of refugee rights has not gone on with complete impunity. In one remarkable case, Inger Støjberg was sentenced to 60 days in prison in 2021 for violations of the European Convention on Human Rights for separating couples seeking asylum.

Then in June 2025, the Danish Supreme Court ruled that the government had violated Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, findings that people who had sought asylum without documentation and who had been punished were treated unlawfully. Meanwhile, the controversial ‘ghetto law’, which allowed the Danish state to demolish apartment blocks in areas where at least half of residents have a non-western background, has been termed ‘direct discrimination’ by the European Court of Justice.  

In short, as the conditions for refugees and people seeking asylum degenerated in Denmark, resistance to rights violations mounted, both in terms of public protest and legal intervention. While areas of the city have been branded as ‘ghettos’ by many politicians, they are also spaces of resistance, community building and mutual aid. These are the lessons we can share and learn from each other when states turn against those who most need their protection: the reminders that those responsible for human rights violations against refugees can be held accountable. 

Victoria Canning is professor of criminology at Lancaster University and has spent more than 10 years researching refugee rights in Denmark, Sweden and the UK. At the time of writing, she is in Denmark launching ‘Supporting Survival’, a toolkit for supporting refugee survivors of torture.

What is the Supporting Survival toolkit?

The new toolkit, Supporting Survival, aims to help asylum seeker and refugee survivors of torture and torturous violence.

Built on more than 15 years of research focussing on social harm, Victoria Canning, working with the Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY), has designed the kit which includes an easy-to-use pack of cards as its centrepiece.

The set of 52 cards and has been divided into four main colour-coded themes: definitions of violence and torture, surviving violence, barriers to support, and embedding positive practice. These are intended to inform or spark discussion.

The hope is that the new toolkit will bridge the gaps between survivor experiences, information sharing and positive new ways of working as well as providing a rich and accurate insight to support recovery with the strength to carve a new future.

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