This report explores in which ways immigrants from abroad contribute to the development of rural Denmark. The Danish rural and remote municipalities have in general a decreasing population by 1% over the past five years. However, if it hasn’t been for the increasing number of immigrant from abroad, the population decrease would have been 2.2%. The report goes in depth with seven rural municipalities, which differ from each other in terms of percentage of immigrants from abroad, combinations of nationalities among the most represented immigrants from abroad, the gender and the age of the immigrants and the municipalities’ distance to urban centres. The study includes a combination of statistical and qualitative data. The analysis focuses on what the seven municipalities have in common in terms of the contributing elements from immigrants from abroad to the local development.
The findings are ordered in three groups in accordance with the contribution to civic society, to socio-economic factors and to the labour market.
The report concludes that immigrants from abroad contribute to a positive rural development on a wide range of elements. Among those by being well-educated, by being employed in a wide range of branches, by a high level of entrepreneurship, by supporting private and public service locally and by cultural competences. The report recommends that actors from the authorities, from the local organisations and from business life should be better to communicate these advantages, that local associations should be better to introduce and include immigrants in local civic life, that the authorities’ capabilities to handle the approval of educations from abroad should be improved, and that business life and the authorities should find new ways of offering residents, so that immigrants from abroad have more opportunities to settle and establish an everyday life in the municipality.