I am not Danish, but I am no longer Iraqi either. Iraq is a ravaged country. War destroys people. My family members were communists. They were educated and cultured and had a good life. But following the war, they lost all their belongings and also their morals. Even though my family is still alive, it doesn’t feel like it. My home should be where my family is.

My life has been an adventure full of excitement and drama. Already when I was 17, I was a well-known actress in Baghdad, and I loved every minute of it. But everything changed when Saddam came to power, and I was forced to flee. After a couple of years in exile, I returned to fight for my country. For four years I lived in the mountains in the northern part of Iraq. We lived under very poor conditions, no running water or electricity.

When I became pregnant it was too dangerous for me to stay due to Saddam bombing the area with chemical weapons. I have lived in three different countries before I came to Denmark, and I have always been able to work in my field
of expertise, but here it is impossible. There are very strict demands as to the language, so I have had to train myself as hairdresser, beautician and health care assistant. The many years in the mountains have taken their toll on my body, so I find it problematic to work. I suffer in particular from arthritis as a direct result of the many hours
we spent in ice-cold rivers hiding from the military.

I still try to keep my adventure alive, but my life is no longer the same. I don’t have anything to fight for any more.

Nidal Mustafa / 57 years / female / single / children / trained health care assistant / Copenhagen S / from Iraq / came to Denmark in 1992 / residence permit in 1994

Generally speaking I don’t feel foreign in Denmark, and I don’t think of foreignness as something which is necessarily about where you were born. When I was nine and living in Hungary, I discovered that
my family was Jewish when the war started.

Suddenly I was foreign because of a background I had never been aware off. Much later in life I found out that I was more into men than women, and I feared that this would alienate my children. However, they have always met me with love and understanding.

I grew up with an overwhelming love of theatre and music. My mother was an accomplished amateur pianist, and she made me start playing the piano.
At one point I told her that I wanted to become a musician, so we visited a big Hungarian composer. I played for him, but he didn’t think I had what
it takes to become a musician. Maybe that is why I became a musician.

The rehearsals have always been the worst for me. I prefer it when the music is unleashed, and I am notorious for saving situations. Someone falls sick in the last minute, and I step in. I like the spontaneity and lack of rehearsals, because then I can beat wherever I like. Something here in Denmark which I find difficult is that everything must be so cozy, also in the professional music scene. When people lose their concentration during a rehearsal, you are expected to tell a funny story, and when you walk around, absorbed in your own thoughts and without smiling, you can be sure of being met with the words: “are you mad?”. Coziness is fine, but I don’t think everything has to
be cozy.

Tamàs Vetö / 81 years / male / single / children / retired conductor / Taastrup / from Hungary / came to Denmark in 1957 / residence permit same
year

I was nine when I came to Denmark, and I feel zero percent foreign. At least here in Copenhagen. My dad is a Russian Jew, my mum is Georgian, and her boyfriend is Italian, so there are many languages
around the dinner table. I embrace my mixed identity and perceive it as a strength rather than a weakness.

As a child I was really nerdy, always wore the wrong clothes, a fan of authors rather than of boy bands and I listened to Leonard Cohen rather than to Ace of Base. Today I have an almost religious
relationship with the Tønder Festival, which features folk and country music. Every year I am ecstatic when I return from there. I work as a journalist and love my work. I prefer the somewhat quirky stories and personalities. They are also the ones I seek out when I travel. My travels mean a lot to me, especially my trips to South America and
the Southern States of the USA. I love the people’s hospitality, warmth and the way they express themselves.

People may see me as a colourful person, who talks with her arms and laughs out loud. I’m allergic to anything streamlined and also to trivial rules.
There should be more space for the quirky and eccentric here in Denmark.

When people return from a trip to Italy, they talk about how charming it is with people on balconies chatting to one another across the street, the colourful buildings, the laundry hanging in the streets. But then it is weird that they come home and vote for quiet after 9 pm in the housing cooperative, they vote for only neutral coloured paint, and they will absolutely not allow laundry hanging out to dry.

Evelina Gold / 34 years / female / in a relationship / journalist / Copenhagen N / from Russia / came to Denmark in 1991 / residence permit in 1993

Despite having been in Denmark for more than two decades, I am still 62% foreign. That is also how most people see me, but my children are 100% Danish. I often dream about being able to return to Burundi one day and then use what I have learned in Denmark about thinking collectively rather than individually. I feel a great responsibility for the people who were left behind in Burundi, so staying here for the rest of my life would be to let them down.

I grew up in a society where men have a natural authority in the families because they earn the money, but I have children in a country where both the child benefit system and a female orientated labour market challenge this authority. The gender roles in the family change when the man is no longer the sole earner.

My wife goes to work, and we share the housework, so I am forced to be a man in a very different way to my father. This can be challenging, because certain traditions and perceptions are still deeply rooted in you.

The Danish system, where the municipality practically own the children, also challenges the close relationship between parents and their children. Instead of primarily supporting the parents to be good parents, the municipality focuses only on the children, thus
overlooking the generation of parents, whose authority is already weakened, because the children become better Danish speakers than their parents. This has consequences for the family, which should
otherwise be the core of society.

Gerard Niyongabo / 49 years / male / in a relationship / children / financial officer /
Tingbjerg / from Burundi / came to Denmark in 1995 / residence permit in 1997

I see myself as 100% Armenian and 100% Danish. I’ve lived in Denmark for as long as I lived in Armenia, and both countries are close to me. That is why I cannot be indifferent about what is happening in Denmark at the moment, particularly when it comes to refugees.

Despite the fact that we ourselves are refugees, the current situation worries us. The stream of refugees entering the European countries has created several problems. Denmark finds itself in a bind – should we reject or help those who come here?

We belong to the oldest Christian population and we have a proud Armenian heritage with biblical roots. When unannounced guests arrive, we always have extra food in the house. Family is extremely
important to us. My wife’s mother lived with us until she passed away.

Now it is only my wife and I. We have struggled all our lives to have children, but without success. For
an Armenian, children are the whole meaning of life. That is why we get up in the morning and go to work, and why we build a home.

My wife has established the Danish-Armenian Association, which takes care of children in Armenia. They are our children now. We feel joy when we look at their happy faces. Every year the association goes on a pilgrimage from Copenhagen to Gylling to pay homage to Karen Jeppe, a Danish woman, who dedicated her life to helping the Armenian people. She rescued 2000 women and children from the Muslim harems in Aleppo after the Armenian Genocide. Later she opened an orphanage in Aleppo called the “Birds nest”. Karen
Jeppe are commemorated as “the Armenian Mother”

Ashot Abrahamian / 57 years / male / in a relationship / trained blacksmith / Copenhagen
NV / from Armenia / came to Denmark in 1994 / residence permit in 1995

I have no ambition of returning to my home country like a lot of other foreigners talk about. I am 50% foreign, but only because everybody
keeps asking me where I come from.

I am afraid of growing old. Afraid that my wife and I are going to feel lonely. We have just one son, aged 27, and he has not yet started a family. It is completely up to him of course, but I do think it was high time he started. He has had two Danish girlfriends. I just don’t think they were patient enough for my son. Asian girls are more patient
with their men, and they are not so strict. I have advised him to find a wife who is not too beautiful, to avoid the worrying and stressing if someone else might come and take her away one day. It is certainly not easy to find a good wife.

I met my wife on the boat from Vietnam to Hong Kong. She was catholic while I grew up an atheist. So I had to attend bible school for two years before we could marry. Every day we sat and read the Bible. That was in the days when I tried to impress her. Now I am too lazy.

But I do look after her. Women are like flowers. They need watering every day, as otherwise they will shrivel. I really regret that we didn’t have more children. When we lived in the refugee camp in Hong Kong, many of the Vietnamese women were offered a birth control product which was later discovered to have left them infertile. So we had to make do with one child. He is a lovely boy, and he is also handsome. He should be able to find a wife.

Cong Hung Nguyen / 54 years / male / in a relationship / child / Copenhagen N / cleaner
in Tivoli / from Vietnam / came to Denmark in 1992 / residence permit same year

I feel at home here. Most of my family is here, and through the Catholic Church I have a large circle of friends, as well as friends from the Vietnamese community and my work. I want for nothing, and today I feel more at home here than I do in Vietnam.

I have never resorted to tears over the things I have experienced. I was a soldier in Vietnam, and I have seen many things I wish I hadn’t. My life here in Denmark has not always been a bed of roses.

The financial crisis hit my husband and I pretty hard, we owned a restaurant, but we could barely afford to live. I have never cried about my situation.
When I studied HF we did an essay about Hans Christian Andersen. I had to read ”The Little Match Girl”, her pain hit me, and suddenly I started crying. It was like being thrown back to another
time.

Back to the time when I was a young girl who went to school in Laos, which is where I read the story about the little girl who had nothing. I still get tears in my eyes when I think of her, and I don’t know why, it just hits me. I retired two years ago, but just couldn’t cope with sitting at home, so I now work part time in the home service and I love being
able to provide the elderly with the care they need.

My own father is in his late 90s and lives with my sister. It is a huge responsibility to take on when you also have a job and a family to take care of. So
I think that the Danish nursing home system is an excellent solution, it gives freedom to the children and the safety that my sister needs in the daily life.

Thị Minh Châu Nguyễn / 66 years / female / in a relationship / children / København V /
trained engineer / health care worker / from Vietnam /came to Denmark in 1980 / residence permit same year