{"id":132737,"date":"2026-07-21T14:16:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/132737\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T14:16:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:16:21","slug":"mjolnerparken-the-copenhagen-ghetto-where-the-community-are-fighting-back-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/132737\/","title":{"rendered":"Mj\u00f8lnerparken: the Copenhagen \u2018ghetto\u2019 where the community are fighting back \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years now, the Mj\u00f8lnerparken<\/a> social housing estate in the Danish capital has been a building site \u2013\u00a0politically as well as literally. <\/p>\n

Construction hoardings, construction machinery and construction workers dominate the area around its apartment blocks in the city\u2019s trendy N\u00f8rrebro<\/a> district.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, then-prime minister Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen used it as the setting for the announcement of his \u2018Ghetto Law<\/a>\u2019, which he said would crack down on so-called \u2018parallel societies\u2019 and finally provide a way of dealing with the failed integration of immigrants.<\/p>\n

Under this law, social housing estates that meet certain criteria such as low educational attainment, high unemployment rates or high numbers of residents with criminal convictions have been listed as \u201cvulnerable residential areas\u201d and subjected to a range of measures aimed at upgrading them and breaking up the \u2018ghettos\u2019.<\/p>\n

Over the years, however, the thresholds for these criteria have shifted, meaning that some estates remain on the list despite having improved. <\/p>\n

The key criterion, however, is ethnic origin, since only estates where at least half the residents are non-Western immigrants and their descendants are designated as \u2018ghettos\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Mj\u00f8lnerparken neighbourhood building site in Copenhagen. Source: Der Standard<\/p>\n

Born a ghetto<\/p>\n

In the office of the Residents\u2019 Association, teacher Majken Felle, 52, said that Mj\u00f8lnerparken was born on the ghetto list, so to speak. This is because measures are only supposed to be applied to so-called \u2018hard ghettos\u2019, defined as residential areas that have been classified as \u2018ghettos\u2019 for several years in succession.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet work to dismantle this estate with its red-brick buildings and white balconies began immediately. <\/p>\n

“The law applied retroactively, so we were affected right from the start,” she says. While some areas were given time to improve their statistics and be removed from the list, an immediate plan to reduce the amount of social housing had to be created for Mj\u00f8lnerparken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years now, the Mj\u00f8lnerparken social housing estate in the Danish capital has been a building site \u2013\u00a0politically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[5754,108,37869,46227,47031,46225,47029,37867,46226,47030,37868],"class_list":["post-132737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-copenhagen","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-copenhagen","tag-identifier23","tag-identifier4462","tag-identifier4679","tag-namedenmark","tag-namehousing","tag-namemigration","tag-termcodedenmark","tag-termcodehousing","tag-termcodemigration"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116958395658091247","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}