The self-reflection I’ve done in the past four months I’ve lived and travelled in Copenhagen and other European cities have mostly been about identity. I find myself redefining who I am and questioning what I thought was obvious or normal when I am in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. I’ve come to realize this semester that I find comfort in discomfort. Perhaps it is the city I grew up in that shaped me to be this way, but I think I find chaos most comforting; chaos in the clash of identities, traditions, fashion, languages, and morals. This is not as easy to find in Copenhagen as I’d expected, for a temporary student especially, because of the apparent homogeneity and tranquility of this small city.
I kept waiting to feel overwhelmed, to be taken aback by the unfamiliarity and vastness of this city that was so new to me. But the initial impact of newness faded rather quickly and I felt myself falling in to a pattern of life with a Danish calmness I did not know I possessed. What made me transition so quickly yet smoothly to life in Copenhagen was the uniformity of the people and the peaceful society that results from it.
That is why I loved finding pockets of queerness and of alternativeness in Copenhagen through this class. In a city as white and heteronormative as Copenhagen, I knew the rebels and the radicals were around, just not as visible as they would be in, say, New York City. When we visited the Bøssehuset in Christiania, we were exposed to a space where people were free to cross gender boundaries in their fashion, mannerisms, and art within the safe physical boundaries of the house. Despite same-sex marriage being acknowledged by law and by society as a whole, the resistance to queerness and challenges to traditional displays of masculinity/femininity in public is still a grave barrier in Copenhagen for those who do not identify with the majority. The Freetown provides spaces for alternative lifestyles and for people whose modes of expression are not compatible with the greater society, and I think that is why I love the place so much.
I attended an even hosted by the African Empowerment Center of Copenhagen, which was a panel discussion about activism and community-building among People of Color in Denmark as well as Sweden. Immigration, Integration, Identity – while these words get tossed to and from the mouths of white Scandinavian politicians, the experiences and voices of the very people these ‘issues’ are about are greatly being ignored. From this event I got the impression that the task of defining blackness in Denmark is vastly different and even more complex than in the United States. The relatively short history of migration in Denmark has only given time for a few generations of ethnic diversity in Copenhagen, and even less in more suburban neighborhoods, putting the task of defining multi-ethnicity and multi-generational immigration into the hands of Danish youth today.
I linked these observations back to the national identity crisis and migration issues Japan is facing as of late. I was able to draw more similarities between Tokyo and Copenhagen, Tokyo and Barcelona, since that is the only city I know enough to call my own. With the current conservative government’s fear of hostility from neighboring countries, xenophobia has become a pervasive issue in Tokyo as well as Japan as a whole. The island nation has a history of sakoku or “locked country”, the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death. This policy was enacted in 1633 and remained in effect until 1853, meaning more than two hundred years of Japan’s history is dominated by a lack of legal migration and trade at a global scale, where the country’s citizens were urged (or forced) to look inward and focus on the prosperity of a limited community rather than embracing global interaction and the worldwide exchange of goods, people, and ideas.
A part of me believes that this policy, although it has not been in effect for over a century and a half, is one of the root causes for Japan’s delay in achieving Western standards of equality and willingness of embrace queerness. Similarly, Danish values of humility and equality that are deeply rooted in the country’s history as well, in social rules like the Janteloven which was concept created in the 1930s. This condescending attitude towards individuality and success common within the Nordic countries, combined with the tribe mentality of Denmark, leaves little room in societies for diversity.
I think found comfort in Barcelona because of the amalgamation of identities and life stories cramped in to the city of Spain. I fell so quickly in love with the city because of the chaos that enveloped it, apparent in the pace of life. The art, culture, and energy I had come to love about Freetown Christiania were pervasive throughout the city of Barcelona, not just in a section of it. But it was also clear that with this exciting lifestyle and heterogeneity comes more crime, less social security, and lower levels of public health. As I was mainly studying public health this semester, I found myself questioning my praise of Barcelonan life when I learned that the city has immense differences in life expectancy and public hygiene among its neighborhoods. Denmark and other Northern European countries with a welfare state system in place show better statistics when it comes to life expectancy and infant mortality, as well as fewer cases of people living with HIV/AIDS.
And even in Barcelona I was confronted with the reality of achieving a more sustainable and accepting society; we can gender mainstream all we want and create laws that punish the mistreatment of minority populations. And as much as I’d always thought legislative influence was the most effective and macro scale way of instigating change in societies, I’ve come to think that perhaps the real power is in the local, grass-roots movements. The individuals who refuse to conform to normative societal standards of fashion, who organize their community to create social change or to simply support eachothers’ existences, who embrace travellers and students and migrants alike, are the ones who make Barcelona and Copenhagen the uniquely beautiful cities that they are.