Among the countries praised by Brussels for their integration of migrants, Denmark, like most Scandinavian countries, is at the top of the ranking. But while the population may have been struggling to confront the recurrent problems in the host countries in recent years, a high school in the suburbs of Copenhagen has taken up the problem head on.
As the Danish daily Berlingske reported, the Greve Gymnasium has taken the decision to give designated places to its students who eat in the canteen, with the aim being to encourage interactions between Danes and immigrants.
It is an exception in Denmark, in this establishment which counts one pupil in five of non-Western origin. The school quickly noticed how the students preferred to meet their own friends at mealtimes.
The management of the Greve Gymnasium then reacted: “We are working to achieve diversity from the start […] because we do not want ethnically divided groups within the framework of the school. So we put signs on the tables,” said the director of the school, Mette Trangbæk.
Already, in January, the establishment had reported tendencies, on the part of pupils with an immigrant background, to find their own friends in middle and high schools. The group rather than an individual dynamic were deemed “harmful” by the school and social environment.
In 2016, a high school had in particular been criticized for having composed its classes according to the ethnic origin of the students, limiting to 50 percent the maximum proportion of foreign students in three classes of first year, according to BFMTV.