Protest
© Getty Images/NurPhoto/Aleksander KlugProtest in Aarhus, Denmark, 2018 in defiance of the Danish Governments ban on the burka and niqab.
Evicting migrant tenants from culturally isolated inner-city ghettos and insisting they learn a new language might not appeal to liberal commenters, but Denmark insists its "social experiment" is what the nation needs.

The Scandinavian country is pressing ahead with tough plans to clear and rebuild its troubled and increasingly Islamicized inner-city ghettos, in a move that, predictably, is being condemned by the United Nations and other liberal organizations.

But this is not some cruel social engineering - or the "social experiment" as the Danish media have dubbed it - designed to force generations of immigrants onto the back foot: it is good common sense that can only benefit everyone concerned.

And it's not just Danish society as a whole that stands to gain but, crucially, the immigrants themselves. Not that the United Nations sees it that way.

For the last 10 years, the Danish government has published an annual ghetto list, highlighting those neighborhoods blighted by higher-than-average jobless and crime rates and lower-than-average educational attainment. So far, so no problem for the liberals who would agree that identifying these communities is the starting point to helping them.

But that's not all a deprived neighborhood needs to find a place on the ghetto list. It also needs half of its population to be comprised of first- or second-generation immigrants. And making that a ghetto criteria sends the liberals into a spin.

The former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordan's Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al Hussein was not happy with the ghetto list in 2018 and warned on Twitter that it was "hugely troubling & risks heightening racial discrimination against people of migrant origin - further 'ghettoising' them. Coercive assimilation measures run risk (sic) of fuelling racial prejudice, xenophobia & intolerance."

As far as the Danish government was concerned, the alternative, of doing nothing, was not an option and they ignored the UN and have introduced a set of stringent policies aimed at improving the areas and moving them off the ghetto list.

The measures include: allowing for collective punishment -by eviction- of entire families if one of their members commit a crime; forcing migrants to take language tests, which, if failed, can trigger be withdrawal of benefits; and cutting the amount of public housing to just 40 percent by emptying entire blocks and converting them to private housing. Under a law that came into force in January, tenants will be offered alternative accommodation -but with little control over the location, quality and cost- and those who refuse may be evicted. The Guardianran a critical piece this week under the headline: 'How Denmark's 'ghetto list' is ripping apart migrant communities - Copenhagen and other cities are planning mass housing evictions in a 'social experiment' to encourage integration'

But migrants are not simply being booted out of their homes with nowhere to go. They will have the option of alternative, sometimes renovated, housing as the government seeks to shake the communities out of their sense of what the article describes as "unproductive self-isolation." They are to be re-housed but it has been recognized that just moving home is not the answer to a multi-faceted problem.