In Copenhagen, even the red-light district is pretty. The beautiful cobbled streets with brightly painted facades are dotted with sex shops and vaping stores.

It's here, walking through a tiny doorway, I find Ellie Jokar, sitting with her pet pooch and the first of several morning coffees. Ellie is a comedian, a rapper, an actress and a Muslim. She has lived in Denmark most of her life but, like many Muslims here, she feels she no longer fits in.

Denmark once welcomed immigrants but the country is now facing an identity crisis over the issue. ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

"What feeling do you have when you're Danish? And what is the definition of a real Dane?" she asks. "I'm almost 40. I still don't know what a real Dane is."

Ellie's pink taxi

Ellie Jokar's family arrived in Denmark from Iran in the years after the 1979 revolution. Her father's work helping people escape from the Ayatollah's regime put the family at risk, so they fled the country. The family walked for days to get into Turkey, seeking a new life and sanctuary in the West.

This small, progressive Scandinavian country welcomed Ellie and her family with open arms. In their first year, Ellie and her family were invited to spend Christmas in a Danish home with new-found friends. Her mother Ettie was overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"It was very good and people were very kind," says Ettie.

"They assured us, 'You are in Denmark. You are safe in our house and we are here and helping'."

Ellie Jokar as a girl with her father and brother. ( Supplied )

Ellie's family arrived at the beginning of what's now been four decades of mass migration to Denmark. For much of that time, the nation was open and tolerant, welcoming foreigners. The drastic change in atmosphere and attitude towards Muslims has left migrants like Ellie living in what she calls a "grey zone".

"The grey zone is basically a limbo land where you don't really fit in in the Danish community, neither the Persian community," she says. "So you're kind of in the middle with a foot in each camp. You don't really belong."

Ellie hosts a popular YouTube series called The Pink Taxi. She films herself interviewing different personalities from all walks of life — and both sides of the political spectrum — while driving her taxi. Her goal is to use humour to examine Denmark's current identity crisis.

"I meet people that are different than me, and I try to get to the bottom of, how did they become extreme Muslims? Extremist right-wing or whatever?" she says, as we drive around Copenhagen. "We're all different, but even though we're different, does that mean that we cannot talk?"

Ellie interviews Rasmus Paludan for her Pink Taxi show. ( YouTube/Supplied )

For Ellie, no passenger is out of bounds. She even invited one of the country's most radical politicians into the pink taxi. Rasmus Paludan is notorious for wanting to expel all Muslims from Denmark.

The new hard-line politics

Mr Paludan is a lawyer and founder of the political party Stram Kurs, or "hard line", which has attracted attention by staging provocative political stunts in suburbs with high Muslim populations. These exploits have been filmed and posted onto YouTube, building the party a following in the alt-right universe.

During this year's national election campaign, Mr Paludan triggered a riot in Copenhagen after he and his supporters started throwing around a copy of the Koran. In the first four months of this year, he cost the Danish taxpayer more than $9 million in security costs.

Rasmus Paludan's political party Stram Kurs translates to "Hard Line". ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

When Foreign Correspondent catches up with him in a Copenhagen suburb with a high Muslim population, he is at it again. In a cordoned-off area in a public park, guarded by riot police, Mr Paludan and his sidekicks play catch with the Koran.

He laughs off any offence his actions might cause.

"We like to play with it because it's very important in Denmark that we do sports," he says.

Rasmus Paludan needs police security at public events. ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

Mr Paludan believes being born in Denmark doesn't make you a Dane. He is at the extreme end of the Danish political spectrum but Stram Kurs' anti-immigrant policies have much in common with the policies of the Danish People's Party (DPP) — a populist party which has provided support to the ruling conservative coalition over many years.

That coalition failed to win government in this year's election. Mr Paludan also failed to win a seat in Parliament, although his party scored enough votes to secure electoral payments equivalent to nearly half-a-million Australian dollars every year for the next three years.

Despite occupying the political fringes, Mr Paludan and his party are tapping into a broader anti-immigration sentiment that's been part of the political and social debate for years.

One hundred laws

In 2017, former Danish immigration and integration minister Inger Støberg famously posted a photo of herself with a cake celebrating the passage of the 50th law cracking down on immigration and immigrants. By 2018, her government — a coalition of right-wing parties — had passed 100 laws, making Denmark's immigration policies among the toughest in Europe.

Inger Støjberg posing with a cake celebrating the 50th amendment to Denmark's immigration controls. ( Supplied: Facebook )

Some of these laws are controversial. There's the "jewellery law", which allows the Government to confiscate money and valuables from new refugees to fund their resettlement. The Government designated 29 areas as "ghettoes", with high migrant populations, high crime rates and unemployment. The negative connotation of 'ghetto' persists.

The Government also allowed for a doubling of penalties for anyone who commits a crime in a "ghetto".

Then there was the 2018 ban on wearing the burka.

Last year, a new regulation was passed making it compulsory for children from the so-called ghettos to attend 25 hours of "Danish values" day care each week, starting from age one.

Many of these laws were passed with support from the main left-wing party, the Social Democrats, who formed government after this year's elections. While this new left-leaning coalition has relaxed its rhetoric on immigration, it's not changing direction.

Martin Henriksen, a former MP with the right-wing populist Danish People's Party, says the Social Democrats wouldn't have won government if they had taken a soft stance on immigration during their campaign.

The notorious Danish housing project "ghetto" in Vollsmose. ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

"You have to be tough on migration, or you have to at least act like you're tough on migration," he tells Foreign Correspondent at his farmhouse in Denmark's rural heartland.

A major turning point in the Danes' attitudes towards immigrants — nearly half of whom are Muslim — came after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Ellie Jokar and her family felt it keenly.

"It's not just Denmark," she says. "But it changed … the way that some Danes started looking at Muslims."

Anti-Muslim sentiment increased again in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published the Mohammed cartoons, depicting images of the prophet — a no-no in the Islamic faith. The intent, the newspaper said, was to affirm freedom of speech. The public reaction was stunning. Violence and riots broke out in the Middle East and scores of people died. Denmark reeled in shock.

Martin Henriksen, of the Danish People's Party, says politicians have to been seen as tough on immigration. ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

At the same time, many people were concerned that migrants weren't assimilating into Danish culture; that they lived in separate suburbs and were taking advantage of Denmark's generous social welfare system.

When the flood of Syrian refugees washed into Europe in recent years, Denmark's neighbour Germany opened its doors. Denmark did the opposite.

This hardening of attitudes has left many immigrants feeling uneasy.

Building bridges

Ellie and her family feel the change. Since her arrival almost 40 years ago, Ellie's mother set up a successful wedding business for Muslims in Copenhagen and has learned to speak Danish. By any measure, she's a successful citizen but today she says she feels vulnerable.

Ellie's mum Ettie fled Iran with her family after the revolution in 1979. ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

"They don't accept us as Danish. But I feel I'm Danish … I feel I'm home, my country. Here is my country," Ettie says, crying.

"I'm living here. But I don't know … maybe tomorrow is coming some law, 'You must be going back'."

Ellie isn't giving up on her country. She wants to bridge the divide between those who were born here and those who've arrived more recently. Foreign Correspondent filmed her acting in a pilot for a TV comedy where she plays a migrant working at a call centre. In the scene, her boss asks her not to use her Muslim name or use her "ghetto" accent.

Comedian Ellie Jokar uses humour to navigate and explain the cultural divide. ( Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson )

For Ellie, her work as an actor, comedian and singer is all about starting a conversation.

"It took me almost 40 years to find a balance of how to combine these two cultures and become who I am today," she says.

But Ellie knows she can't do it alone.

"The Danes are over here; the Muslims are over here. They don't really know how to communicate. We need some leaders in Denmark that can connect us, that can build bridges."

Watch The State of Denmark at 8:00pm on ABC TV and iview