TAARNBY, DENMARK—Johnny Christensen, a stout and silver-whiskered retired bank employee, always thought of himself as sympathetic to people fleeing war and welcoming to immigrants. But after more than 36,000 mostly Muslim asylum seekers poured into Denmark over the past two years, Christensen, 65, said, “I’ve become a racist.”

He believes these new migrants are draining Denmark’s cherished social-welfare system but failing to adapt to its customs. “Just kick them out,” he said, unleashing a mighty kick at an imaginary target on a suburban sidewalk. “These Muslims want to keep their own culture, but we have our own rules here, and everyone must follow them.”

Denmark, a small and orderly nation with a progressive self-image, is built on a social covenant: In return for some of the world’s highest wages and benefits, people are expected to work hard and pay into the system. Newcomers must quickly learn Danish — and adapt to norms like keeping tidy gardens and riding bicycles.

The country had little experience with immigrants until 1967, when the first “guest workers” were invited from Turkey, Pakistan and what was then Yugoslavia. Its 5.7 million people remain overwhelmingly native born, though the percentage has dropped to 88 today from 97 in 1980.

Bo Lidegaard, a prominent historian, said many Danes feel strongly that “we are a multi-ethnic society today, and we have to realize it — but we are not and should never become a multicultural society.”

The recent influx pales next to the one million migrants absorbed into Germany or the 163,000 into Sweden last year, but the pace shocked this stable, homogeneous country. The centre-right government has backed harsh measures targeting migrants, hate speech has risen and the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party is now the second largest in Parliament.

Some of the same hostilities were reflected this weekend in Germany, where voters in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s home state embraced anti-immigrant candidates — an emphatic rejection of her refugee policy.

There is new tension between Danes still opening their arms and a resurgent right wing that seeks to ban all Muslims and shut Denmark off from Europe. Christensen, the retired banker, supports emerging proposals for his country to follow Britain in exiting the European Union.

There is tension, too, over whether the backlash is really about a strain on Denmark’s generous public benefits or a rising terrorist threat — or whether a long-standing but latent racial hostility is being unearthed.

Analysts say that the public voiced little opposition after 5,000 Poles and 3,300 Americans, among other Westerners, emigrated to Denmark in 2014, but that there has been significant criticism of the nearly 16,000 Syrian asylum seekers who arrived that year and the next. They and other migrants were not invited, and many ended up here by accident, intercepted on their route to Sweden.

Critics complain that these newcomers have been slow to learn Danish — though the immigration ministry recently reported that 72 per cent passed a required language exam. Some Danes blister at what they see as ethnic enclaves: About 30 per cent of new immigrants lived in the nation’s two largest cities, Aarhus and Copenhagen, where Muslim women in abayas and men in prayer caps stand out among the blond and blue-eyed crowds on narrow streets.

Perhaps the leading — and most substantive — concern is that the migrants are an economic drain. In 2014, 48 per cent of immigrants from non-Western countries ages 16 to 64 were employed, compared with 74 per cent of native Danes.

The immigration ministry has sought to avoid what it calls “parallel societies” of migrants living in “vicious circles of bad image, social problems and a high rate of unemployment.” Tightened immigration requirements, the ministry said in its latest annual report, weed out those “who have weaker capabilities for being able to integrate into Danish society.”

‘It’s not racism to be aware of the difference’

Denmark is just one of many European nations grappling with the wave of migrants amid a spate of terrorist attacks across the continent by Islamic extremists: A recent Pew Research Center survey found that at least half the citizens in eight of 10 countries polled said incoming refugees increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks.

The confluence of these and other factors has prompted a re-examination of the postwar promise of a unified, borderless Europe. Macedonia, Hungary and Slovenia have all built border fences. Denmark imposed new identity controls on its border with Germany in January, and for the first time since 1958, Sweden requires entering Danes to show identity papers.

Last year, Denmark placed ads in Arabic-language newspapers stressing its tough new policies, essentially suggesting: Don’t come here.

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Muslims do not assimilate as easily as Europeans or some Asians, said Denmark’s culture minister, Bertel Haarder, partly because, as he put it, their patriarchal culture frowns on women working outside the home and often constrains freedom of speech.

“It’s not racism to be aware of the difference — it’s stupid not to be aware,” Haarder said. “We do them a blessing by being very clear and outspoken as to what kind of country they have come to, what are our basic values.”

‘A Dane of a different colour’

Sherif Sulaiman, an organic food scientist who moved to Denmark eight years ago from Egypt, said Muslims must not close themselves off in enclaves but open themselves up for interaction.

He is the manager of an Islamic centre that opened in 2014 and invites Danes in for meals and for an annual “harmony week.” Sulaiman pushed to have the mosque complex use Scandinavian architectural style and furniture, and lends its conference room to a church for meetings.

“We should be like this glass — transparent,” he said, pointing to a window. “As long as we follow the rules of the country, we are part of Danish society.”

But some dark-skinned immigrants who have lived in Denmark for decades say assimilation seems an elusive and ever-shifting target.

Patricia Bandak and her brother Sylvester Bbaale came to Denmark from Uganda as babies in 1989. Like their native neighbours, they are polite and punctual and ride their bicycles everywhere.

The siblings are not Muslim but said they frequently encountered racism: In school, they were called the “N” word, and told that they should stop eating Ugandan food like matoke, a starchy fruit. Bbaale, who is 27 and operates a food truck, said he was beaten on the street last year by three men who cursed at him and told him to go back to Africa.

“For a lot of people, being Danish is in your blood, so I will never be Danish,” said Bandak, 28, who became a Danish citizen in 2010 and is studying documentary film. “I call myself a Dane of a different colour.”

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