Expecting Different Results

Copenhagen Capacity’s Expat Survey 2025 just dropped. They interviewed thousands of internationals in Denmark to find out how things are going and how they could be better.

Key Findings

The reasons for dissatisfaction are lack of access to the job market, lack of international school places and lack of social connection. They suggest some recommendations for improving retention that help the individual overcome these adverse circumstances. They note that retention is trending down over the past decade.

They made four recommendations:
1. Enhance Job Market Accessibility:

• Job Portal

• Support for job Seekers (e.g. job fairs and courses)

2. Support for international students:

• Career services (e.g. job fairs and courses)

3. Improved Inclusion and sense of belonging

4. Support for Spouse / partners & family:

• Employment Opportunities (e.g. job fairs and courses)

• Schools

In response, I went on a literature review. Did you know:

In 2016, DEA found that if an accompanying partner found a job in the first year, 81% of these families stayed five years¹.

Compare and contrast with new data for the cohort that arrived in 2017, where if an accompanying partner found a job in the first year, 61% of those families stayed five years². This is better than the partner not getting a job by a LOT (49% stay!)

Remember, this is if the partner gets any kind of job and indeed, Copenhagen Kommune found out that the most common jobs partners were getting were in temping agencies, hotels and cleaning. It is far from a smoking gun but it whispers under-employment to me (but then again Expat Survey did not have any mention of it being a factor for dissatisfaction).

Long Standing Problem

I went on an exciting journey through Google Scholar to find out how long we have been grappling with this wicked problem³. This might be more of a reflection of when digitalisation got started in earnest but the furthest back I can see the retention of immigrants being discussed is 2007⁴ and they note that individuals make decisions to leave countries when families are unhappy, for example lack of access to the job market, lack of international school places and lack of social connection.

And I won’t bore you with the details but every single reference I pulled out on this drunken sailor random walk through people’s masters theses and think tank’s reports mention all these problems. Nothing has changed except the retention rate.

Some of these papers also make recommendations. In 2013, Cecilie Bech Lindgren wrote her thesis on the ‘Retention of highly skilled foreign workers in Denmark’ and she listed every initiative out there at the time and she made the following recommendation:-

Hvis de små og mellemstore virksomheder geares til at ansætte og fastholde udenlandske videnarbejdere, vil dette ligeledes skabe flere jobmuligheder for de medfølgende partnere til fordel for de store virksomheder og det danske samfund generelt.

If small and medium enterprises (SMEs), were geared towards recruiting and retaining foreign knowledge workers, this would also create more job opportunities for accompanying partners which would benefit the large businesses and the Danish society in general.

I was curious about how widespread Copenhagen Capacity’s recommendations already are and so I vibe coded an app over breakfast to map provision⁵.

One thing to note is that Aarhus are absolutely CRUSHING IT with all the initiatives and I know I didn’t list them all, I think my robots prioritised programmes run by Erhverv Aarhus and the Kommune, so they thankfully didn’t hallucinate a bunch of cool ideas that don’t exist.

Did you know:

Between 2011 and 2018 there was an organisation run by and for highly qualified immigrants called Novum who did courses and advocacy work⁶.

The thing is though: retention is still pretty rubbish and it appears to be trending down⁷. That’s not to say “GIVE UP ALL HOPE IT IS OVER”. It’s more… we need impact data. We need to know which initiatives move the dial and which are not worth the effort. Also, the ones that don’t really have any impact beyond generally increasing hygge that are reasonably cheap or easy to do anyway.

I know that some kommuner (including Aarhus), are trying out Lindgren’s recommendation above, and to my mind, this is where the magic will happen. There are a few SMEs that work in English (often because they are international business-to-business), but are still skittish about employing foreigners, even ones that speak Danish. Hopefully this swell of interest and discussion will lead to fresh ideas and new approaches. CV workshops and job fairs aren’t cutting it, guys. They get people part of the way there and they have their place, obviously, but they’re not the beginning and the end. The problem needs more than putting it on the individual to solve.

We also need to know… IS retention trending down? The frustrating thing about all of this is Stat Bank already have the data. The info is just sitting there waiting for someone to query it. It is sensitive so that certain someone would need to have official clearance to go anywhere near it, like a kommune department or a ministry or even some NGOs.

We could track the 1-10 year retention rates of all foreigners since records began. We could disaggregate by sex, nationality, groupings like G-20, EU, Global North/South, age, number of children, city and whether their partner found a job. Since Copenhagen Kommune did it, we could track what sort of jobs partners are getting and how quickly. We could know all this stuff, it could be registered, measured and tracked. Kommuner would be able to say “wow guys when we got the SMEs to employ foreigners, retention rates for international students went bananas!” or even “wow guys, talking to the SMEs was a complete waste of time”. My point is we don’t know.

SIRI, or someone like them, should be producing annual impact reports for the use of the many organisations set up to solve this issue.

I love Copenhagen Capacity for being brave and digging into this. I can imagine that it is a hard balance of being a brand for connecting internationals with Danish workplaces and potentially having data that destroy the hygge. And they did a good job, they asked good questions and they found out the same as everyone has found out ever since they started asking about “expat⁸” satisfaction. And the reason the findings aren’t different is because… well, that’s sort of my point. We don’t know.

The next steps have to be getting to the bottom of it.

1. DEA 2016. ER HØJTUDDANNEDE INDVANDRERE EN GOD FORRETNING FOR DANMARK? – EN REGISTERBASERET COST-BENEFIT ANALYSE AF HØJTUDDANNEDE INDVANDRERE. November 2016. København: DEA

2. KK 2025: International arbejdskraft i hovedstadsområdet Nøgletalskatalog May 2025 Det Tværgående Analysekontor og Klimaenheden

3. A wicked problem is different from a complicated problem like bus timetabling, as in there actually isn’t a solution that doesn’t cause problems of its own.

4. BRAIN DRAIN ELLER BRAIN GAIN? VANDRINGER AF HØJTUDDANNEDE TIL OG FRA DANMARK Jespersen S. T. et al KØBENHAVN 2007 SOCIALFORSKNINGSINSTITUTTET

5. Lindgren’s thesis had a lot more programmes listed but perhaps they are defunct since she wrote it over 10 years ago. I will update the app in due course.

6. If anyone remembers them and knows what happened, slide into my DMs and tell me everything.

7. But caution caution! The two studies I am citing might be not comparing like with like.

8. I have a problem with that word. It’s probably not the time or place to get into it.