Venturing into the icy seas around Greenland can be unforgiving and unpredictable. Steffen Andersen, a seasoned skipper preparing his six-man trawler for a fishing trip along the craggy coast, was in the mood to complain.
He had recently hired a 16-year-old local to work with him, but he grumbled that the towering Danish-owned factory ships docked along the nearby quayside more often hired immigrants. “Those who use Filipinos, they are the Danes,’’ he said.
Greenland is increasingly reliant on migrant labour to keep seafood factories, restaurants and its fishing fleet running — critical for an economy overwhelmingly dependent on fisheries and on large annual subsidies from Denmark.
That dependence has taken on fresh political weight as Greenland, an autonomous part of the kingdom of Denmark, finds itself on the frontline of a renewed push for influence in the Arctic.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to seize the island, but its weak economy suggests any such ambition would come with a heavy price tag.
His recent threats have emphasised Greenland’s importance for national security, moving away from his earlier focus on its vast mineral wealth — which remains untapped because of its forbidding geography and the vast sums required to extract materials.
“Mining is seen as something that can pave the way for economic independence from Denmark,” said Javier Arnaut at the University of Greenland’s department of Arctic social science and economics. “The issue is that in statistical terms, it does not add up.”
Many Greenlanders support moving towards cutting ties with Denmark, but there is a disagreement over how much independence should be preceded by efforts to ensure that the island can stand on its own feet economically.
Besides fishing, the only major source of income that Greenland has is a generous annual subsidy from Copenhagen worth about $600mn. This makes up about half of government revenues and enables Greenland to provide a European-style welfare system that it would otherwise be unable to afford.
Denmark also pays directly for several additional services in Greenland, such as courts, defence and policing, at a cost of roughly $240mn. Copenhagen recently pledged to increase spending on infrastructure and healthcare, as well as bolstering its military presence in the Arctic.
That Greenland has been able to attract workers from overseas serves as one bright spot. Hundreds of south-east Asian workers, mainly from the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka, have come to work in the cold over the past five years.
Economic growth, which slowed to 0.2 per cent last year, has stalled as all-important shrimp and halibut stocks decline and infrastructure investments slow. The island also has a rapidly ageing population, high emigration rates and declining birth rates.
Statistics Greenland, the official data body, forecasts that its population will shrink to as few as 46,000 within the next 25 years from 57,000 now, aggravating labour shortages and creating budgetary pressures that Nuuk is struggling to address.
The island is changing at breakneck pace, including because of climate change. But the most visible recent shift, at least in Nuuk, is the sudden arrival of workers from south-east Asia.
Some 1,100 Filipinos and about 400 Thais now live in Greenland, up from around 270 and 200 only five years ago. This increase shows no signs of slowing.
In November, the Danish bureau responsible for helping businesses bring skilled workers from overseas and assisting them with immigration paperwork opened its first office in Greenland.
These arrivals are the new face of a Greenland that is scrambling to address economic and demographic problems that some consider just as urgent as the threat from the US if it is to have an independent future.
“It is probably the greatest threat to our existence that people are leaving Greenland,” said Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a fervently pro-independence former Greenlandic finance minister, who said that depopulation was particularly acute in smaller villages in southern Greenland. “We are losing brains, we are losing the resources that have to be in place to form a nation.”
Most restaurants, as well as many shops around Nuuk, are exclusively staffed by English-speaking Filipinos.
Sipping a matcha latte, Michelle Bech, a singer who came on a three-month contract in 2007, said she was among the first to make her way to Greenland from the Philippines. “We are everywhere now,” she laughed. Bech met her Danish partner and stayed put. Her brother and his family have since followed.
The new Greenlanders have not been met with universal acclaim by some Inuit, who have historically suffered discrimination when looking for work both in Greenland and in Denmark. “There are tensions,” Bech said, adding that south-east Asians tended to prioritise learning Danish over the notoriously difficult Greenlandic.
Christian Keldsen, director of the Greenland Business Association, said it was not always possible for businesses to hire locally. “It is actually a good thing that people want to live here and work here,” he said. “An economy that can attract a workforce is positive.”
Keldsen said a sense was developing among some Greenlanders that immigrants were not needed. The message being promoted was that “we want to do everything ourselves”.
One Greenlandic official said the tensions over immigration were “a worry”, adding that the need for migrant labour would continue as the working-age population shrank.
“Even if politically it is becoming unpopular, the economics is such that it will trump that,” said the University of Greenland’s Arnaut.
Not everybody is concerned. Nukaaraq Lund Serritzlev — a Greenlandic fisherman hanging out inside a warehouse where his colleagues were hacking cod into chunks to use as fishing bait — was relaxed. Locals were uninterested in many jobs that south-east Asians were doing, including working in a nearby processing factory, he said.
Serritzlev, who was about to head out to buy fishing lines from the prison that manufactures them on the far side of Nuuk, had more immediate concerns.
He was worried that if Trump continued to press his claims to Greenland, the very same factories hiring Filipino workers would try to use uncertainty over the future to pay him less for his catch. “Factories will use any problem to lower prices.”
Data visualisation by Keith Fray