Conclusion

At the completion of my blog, I am able to see how in studying one aspect of Danish culture I was able to gain an understanding of the Danish culture in whole. By examining different aspects of Danish culture through the scope of egalitarianism, I was able to realize that Danish culture had created and was created by egalitarianism. This cross-cultural engagement not only taught me about Danish culture but about culture in general. I could see that when I was in Denmark I had made my own judgments about the Danish culture based on what I know from my own culture and in doing so, I was not able to understand many parts of Danish culture. Before doing this blog, I did not understand why an entire society would support almost staggering taxes that take away and redistribute their wealth. Being from the United States where capitalism and making money are very important in our culture, it did not make sense to me that an entire nation would allow their government to take away so much of their wealth. This cross-cultural encounter made me realize how in suspending your own judgment, you open yourself to understanding another culture. Through cultural relativism, I was able to see that people are socialized into cultural norms and practices. Because they were raised with the idea of egalitarianism, Danes are able to understand that as a part of their culture, they are entitled to equal social benefits that everyone in their society works to support.

Cultural Homogeneity and the Welfare State

To help answer the questions from the last post, I looked again at the welfare system in Denmark and how it was supported and upheld by Danish society. In my research of Danish culture I noticed that Denmark would often be referred to as a welfare state, giving its citizens free heath care, education, unemployment benefits, etc., that all citizens and residents of Denmark could access. These benefits, however, require high taxes that spread wealth more evenly throughout the population. From the website of the Migration Information Source:

“These welfare structures entail both a significant amount of state intervention in the social domain and economic redistribution across social groups. The system is rooted in ideas of social egalitarianism, but also in the assumption that citizens earn their entitlements by contributing (through taxation) over a lifetime of active work to the maintenance and growth of the national wealth. Cultural belonging and political rights are thus intertwined, and "equality" is interpreted to mean two different things simultaneously: "cultural similarity" and "political sameness" (in regards to civic rights).”

Reading this, it became more clear to me why the students felt that immigrants were negatively impacting their country. In Danish culture and society, Danes feel that equal rights to the social benefits programs are a result of being part of the Danish culture and having a shared understanding of the assumption that they are supposed to contribute to the economic growth of their country. I started to see how It is assumed that in being part of the Danish culture, you should want to help the systems that give everyone equal access to social benefits and therefore, be deserving of these benefits. When immigrants of very different cultural backgrounds are not able to assimilate into homogenous Danish culture, they are seen as undeserving of the welfare system because they may not have the same understandings of the welfare system. Danes may begin to believe that in not having this understanding, the non-Western immigrant population will only live off the welfare system and not contribute to it, thus corrupting the egalitarianism of their society. Because of this, it can be seen how negative stereotypes of immigrants in Danish society are created on assumptions. The uneasiness of Danes of outsiders coming into their society shows the importance Danes place on maintaining the cultural homogeneity that in many ways is seen to support the egalitarianism in Danish society. I realized that the egalitarianism in Danish society both creates and is created by cultural norms and practices in Danish society.


Migration Information Source
2007 Denmark: Integrating Immigrants into a Homogenous Welfare State. Electronic document, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?id=485

Danish Society and Immigration

Out of the many discussions with the Danish students during my trip, one of the most interesting and thought-provoking discussions was about immigration into Denmark and the sentiments that were expressed by the Danes regarding this issue. I was surprised to hear quite a few of the students say outright that they were not in support of immigration into their country, particularly from non-Western countries such as Turkey and Somalia. The students reasoned that the immigrants from these countries were only coming to Denmark to live off the welfare system and did not do anything to contribute to Danish society. I remembered that in another instance before this conversation had taken place, one of the students pointed out a group of Somalian women to me and told me that women like them sat at home all day and didn’t work, being supported by the Danish welfare system. Seeing this and hearing these statements did not sit well with me, having been brought up to reject any form of racism or judgment based on someone's background or appearance. However, for this assignment I am suspending my judgments and using cultural relativism to understand why the Danish students would say or think this coming from a relatively tolerant society.
To understand this issue, I researched the history of immigration into Denmark. Denmark has always had some type of flow of immigration into the country. However, most of these immigrants had mostly come from other Scandinavian or Western countries and had been assimilated into the culture after only a few generations. Most recently, people from Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia have been making up the majority of the immigrant population in Denmark. Because these immigrants come from very different cultures with different norms and social practices from the Danish culture, it can be said that complete assimilation into Danish culture would be less likely to occur. Then the question must be asked: Why is it important in Danish society for immigrants to be able to assimilate into their culture? Why did the students think that because the immigrants are from different cultures that they would disrupt the welfare system and the egalitarianism of their society as a whole?

Migration Information Source
2007 Denmark: Integrating Immigrants into a Homogenous Welfare State. Electronic document, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?id=485