By Simone Feilberg-Nielsen, GSD and PAIS Finalist

In 2019, Donald Trump proposed that he would be willing to buy Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, which Mette Frederiksen (the Danish Prime Minister at the time) politely declined in that ‘Greenland was not for sale’. Although Trump’s bid was not the first time that Greenland had received a financial offer throughout its history, it did bring new attention to this unique place that rarely gets featured in demographic data, nor does the Inuit language appear on Google Translate. However, considering Greenland as a “large real estate deal”, according to Trump, is a major oversight of the socio-political processes happening on this island: the largest in the world covering 2.1 million km² with the smallest population density of just 55,000 inhabitants.

A modern Greenland

Greenland now holds a semi-independent status, with autonomy over domestic affairs such as economic development, welfare distribution, taxes and education whilst the Danish administration continues to have decision-making power over foreign policy and defence. As part of this agreement, Greenland receives a national grant of just under 4 billion DKK of Danish tax revenue a year to fund Greenlandic public expenses. Without a productive and self-sufficient Greenlandic labour force, the grant reinforces Greenland’s economically dependent relationship to Denmark.

Amongst all the political and environmental debate about Greenland’s future is the Greenlandic youth. I had the chance to speak to a handful of Greenlandic students who have chosen to leave their homeland for further study in Denmark to understand what motivated them to emigrate and what their hopes for the future are in a rapidly changing Arctic.

Are educational systems and networks replicating neo-colonial relations?

Speaking to Greenlandic students, I wanted to get to the bottom of the driving forces behind the migration pattern of students leaving home and moving to Greenland’s colonial parent, Denmark, for a university education.

Many of the students I spoke with explained that Greenland simply does not offer the quality or range of university courses that they are looking for such as engineering, law, medicine, social studies etc. Greenland has a total of four high schools and one relatively new university (Ilisimatusarfik) in the capital of Nuuk. Many of the course options here support Greenland’s nation-building project by producing competent nurses, teachers, social workers and so on. For those wanting something more, Denmark’s long-standing prestigious institutions are an attractive option for many Greenlandic students seeking higher education.

Brain drain is a common phenomenon of student emigration when students decide not to return home. Students may come to enjoy the benefits of residing in a welfare state like Denmark where there is access to cheaper goods, better healthcare, a new culture or the likely event of a romantic relationship. This is problematic for Greenland whose domestic Inuit labour force is underproductive and still reliant on welfare payments from the Danish state.

However, this dilemma was not quite the impression I got from what students told me:

“I want to return home to make a difference and give back”

Many of those I spoke with were motivated to return home with their new toolkit to help build a new Greenland. The only concern here is that students apply Danish ways of doing things in a Greenlandic context, which historically hasn’t benefitted the average Greenlandic citizen.

More interestingly however, is the fact that Greenland itself is pushing students to go abroad. The Greenlandic government pays for students’ flight tickets and offer students grants which makes studying abroad financially advantageous. Since the 2009 referendum, Greenland has been setting an educational agenda to encourage Greenlandic youths to undertake a university education, much different to what their ancestors were encouraged to do. It is perhaps no wonder that 30% of Greenlandic students decide to leave Greenland for a high-quality education with a range of programmes to choose from … in Danish of course.

What about the rest of us?

One student I spoke with underlined that a university education is not for everyone. It is wrong to assume that every young Greenlandic person will equally benefit from a degree, which can be argued as a ‘western’ way of doing development. Not every job requires a degree in Greenland where the economy “still needs people to do jobs with their hands” as one student described, such as fishing, hunting, and blue-collar roles so to speak.

The real challenge here is that many Greenlandic people are unmotivated to work as the benefits of welfare payments outweigh the toil of manual work that can so easily be imported nowadays. A consultant explained to me that the issue of brain drain will not be so significant if Greenland can create a buffer of its own internal workforce to ease the pressure. However, this will require more people complete their secondary or high school level education.

School dropout is a huge problem in Greenland. If you come from a small settlement, chances are you will have to relocate to another town away from your family and live in student halls from a young age. Seeing as no two towns are connected by road in Greenland, coming home on the weekends is not realistic for most young people. One student even described to me:

“I had to use a helicopter and 2 flights to get home from Southern Greenland during the holidays”

Issues of homesickness, and disconnection from one’s community is a key contributor to the dropout rates in Greenland.

However, geography is not necessarily to blame for Greenland’s lagging graduate turnover. The real problem is that Greenland continues to mimic Danish (colonial) educational structures that expect young people to attend a physical institution that separates them from their families. An understanding of the indigenous values of community in Greenland (different to Danish social norms) will be essential for a sustainable Inuit labour force that is detached from Danish colonial legacies. New technologies such as E-learning have been made possible by the new deep-sea cable running along the west coast. This will give small towns Wi-Fi access that can perhaps allow young Greenlandic people to stay in their hometowns whilst having access to a quality education.

A call for postcolonial approaches to education in Greenland should not, however, aim for a Danish divorce. Cooperation between the two countries will be important for Greenland’s sustainable development in a time when climate change and geopolitical tension threatens the integrity of Greenland’s small indigenous population.

Header image by Arctic-Images via Getty Images

Image 2 by Paul Souders via Getty Images