Denmark became the world's most trusting country – how have the Danes achieved this level of faith in their fellow citizens?

Bijoe, 50, and Kris, 29, are having a beer in the anarchic “free town” of Christiania, in the middle of Copenhagen. They’re both originally from Nepal. “Danish people aren’t racist at all,” Bijoe says, “but Danish policy is very racist.” The signal example is the so-called “ghetto list”, which started in 2010, and set a threshold of 50% migrants (first or second generation) who could live in an area, above which it classified as a “ghetto”, which triggered mass evictions and regeneration (the basketball court where Valdemar was playing is in Mjølnerparken, which was designated a ghetto in 2020, and is now, after evictions and regeneration, full of white guys playing basketball).

This is one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" things. On the opposite end, France has long been criticized for relegating its Arab and African immigrants to the banlieues, or poor suburban ghettos that are disconnected from economic and educational opportunities and which fail to integrate their residents into broader French society.

An area made up of 49.9% 1st or 2nd gen migrants is still plenty diverse and can enable a strong and vibrant ethnic community to form while enabling sufficient contact area between the social surfaces of both immigrant and native communities.