Month: March 2012

Stateless persons do not have the right to open a bank account in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Here is a pretty odd case that I encountered Monday when I went to Nordea bank in Mikkeli to open an account for a stateless person.  After a few questions, the bank employee said that the person needs a valid passport to open an account at that bank. But if on that passport it reads “his/her identity cannot be confirmed,” the person can never open an account at Nordea.

I asked the Nordea employee what could be done.

“Why don’t you go to OP bank,” she said. “I’ve read in Länsi-Savo [the local paper] that such persons can open accounts at that bank.”

Surprised by what I was hearing, I asked the bank employee if she was serious.

“Why do they [OP bank] have one set of rules and you have another?” I asked. “Don’t you think it is pretty incredible that you are sending a potential client to the competition?”

When I asked JusticeDemon about what happened, he said that there is a clear administrative problem over what counts as proof of identity and over the  implementation of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (Accession by Finland on 10 October 1968).

One point of that Convention is Article 27 (Identity papers), which states, “The Contracting States shall issue identity papers to any stateless person in their territory who does not possess a valid travel document.”

According to the Ombudsman for Minorities, an identity card issued by the police should count as valid identification just like a passport.

Some believe that the decision by the banks to not allow a stateless person to open a bank account as arbitrary.

There is not much a person from a war-torn country can do if he or she is stateless. Who’s to blame? The refugee? The failed state? The bank(s)? Or authorities regulating the bank sector?

Whatever the case, it sure isn’t the fault of the stateless person.

Ilta-Sanomat tabloid ad (lööppi) from March 9, 1995

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales will begin to publish Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how some of them reflected our xenophobic and racist views.  

The billboard below shows Finland’s surprise at the new brave world that emerged after the demise of the former Soviet Union.  In an exclusive scoop, Ilta-Sanomat reveals to its readers how a Russian millionaire lives in Finland.

Seventeen years later in Finland such a story would probably not receive such attention by the tabloids.

A warning to those that push urban tales and stereotypes of immigrants and minorities today: You may end up looking as ridiculous as some of these ads. 

*Migration Institute archive. 

Who needs integration: immigrants or natives?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

We must ask hard questions if we want our new integration program, which came into force in September, to do what it sets out to: effectively integrate new immigrants as equal members of  society.  But one of the many challenges of the program aren’t resources and immigrants but the attitudes of the native population. 

Another important question is can an integration program actually integrate people? Integration, or adaption, is a long and complex process. How many years do natives need to study at schools in order to be integrated into society and the job market?

One of the most worrisome matters in the ongoing debate concerning our ever-growing cultural diversity is how some anti-immigration groups and politicians would be more than happy to have one set of laws and rules for the majority and another one for immigrants. Thus the natives would enjoy all the civil rights enshrined in our laws while the latter groups would have limited rights.

This is not to say, however, that this two- or many-tiered society already exists in Finland.

Good examples of this situation can be found on Migrant Tales’ comment board, where some bloggers have suggested limiting religious freedom and freedom of expression for certain immigrant groups.

The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s Nuiva Manifesto is a case in point. If ever adopted as the big picture of how Finland should integrate immigrants, the manifesto would not only spell disaster but seriously hinder immigrants from becoming equal members of society. Even if other parties don’t have such a manifesto, they quietly identify and support it.

Debate on different social media discussion sites show us another worrisome fact:  ignorance about our basic civil rights.

Should the government launch for some Finns their very own  integration program to bring them up to date about their rights and obligations as well of that of other groups?  Certainly. The sooner the better.

In my opinion, one of the flaws of the government’s integration program is that there is no big picture concerning the role immigrants and their children in our society.  Without such a grand picture it is difficult to debate matters like equal rights, social justice and equal opportunities.

Are we hesitant to speak and promote such a grand societal view that would include immigrants because it would require some of us to accept them as equal members of society?

If we have two sets of unwritten laws and rules for the native population and other groups, integration will only be a catchword used by politicians for their own selfish means.

One very important first step in the ongoing debate should be to include more immigrants and Finns with international backgrounds in the debate. That would certainly give more perspective to the debate and permit us to look at the realities and challenges instead of expectations by the majority population.

 

Ilta-Sanomat tabloid ad (lööppi) from December 28, 1992

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales will begin to publish Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how they reflected some people’s xenophobic and racist views.  

We apologize to readers for the racist and xenophobic content of the material. Our intention is not to spread these social ills but to exposed it.

One of the good things that former President Mauno Koivisto did during his term (1982-92) was the long-overdue recognition of the Ingrians as part of the Finnish ethnic family.  The first question that many asked at the time was who are the Ingrians? They are Finnish-speakers who were settled in the St Petersberg area and surroundings when Finland was a part of the Swedish Empire (1150-1809).

The cold war had buried these people from our collective memory.

During World War 2, or the Continuation War (1941-44), many Ingrians fought in the Finnish army against the Soviet Union. After the war ended, Finland was required to return an estimated 55,000 Ingrians back to the former Soviet Union.  Some of these ended up in Siberia.

Despite the wrongdoings of history, Ilta-Sanomat showed how some were making money off the Ingrians at 1,000-mark daily rates for dwellings offered to the newly arrived immigrants.

While I did not have access to the story, JusticeDemon and Joku cleared the matter up for me. Thank you.

*Migration Institute archive. 

Ilta-Sanomat tabloid ad (lööppi) from October 24, 1992

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales will begin to publish Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how they reflected some people’s xenophobic and racist views.  

We apologize to readers for the racist and xenophobic content of the material. Our intention is not to spread these social ills but to exposed it.

The tabloid ad below has a picture of Liisa Kulhia, a populist MP (1983-87) who defected from the Center Party. In the ad below, the politician vows to discipline the Russian mafia and Somalis. Supposedly this type of populist baloney aimed at further victimizing Somalis by suggesting they were in the same league as the Russian mafia.

At the time, the term refugee, never mind Somali refugee, had a very negative meaning. Some Finns saw immigrants as refugees.

As a social illness, xenophobia and racism leave open wounds and scars on society. We don’t have to search far to find them because they exist right under our noses. Xenophobia and racism leave lots of witnesses. The only question is if we want to hear their evidence in society’s witness box.

*Migration Institute archive. 

Coming out of the stuffy Finnish cultural closet

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

I would like to thank those bloggers for reading my previous blog entry in which I wrote about the international background of  my Finnish family. I must confess, however, that I thought about writing such a blog entry for months but could not find the right approach to tackle the topic. The answer appeared when I decided to come out.

Coming out of that closet has not been easy because the pressure to remain there has been sometimes immense. So imposing, in fact, that coming out in the previous century could have banished you from that small national group we created in the last century.

In order to be a part of that exclusive white Finnish national identity club, you had to renounce your “Other” and embrace without any questions asked your new identity.  You had to be white as well. That new identity was strongly peppered with nationalism and right-wing ideology and values. After the Winter War (1939-40), the losers of Finland’s Civil War of 1918, were included as well.

Considering that we had a marked class society especially in the first half of the last century, there were strong social and economic differences that determined where you stood in that exclusive club.

Since there were few immigrants in Finland in the 1920s, and their numbers declined up to the 1970s to a mere 7,000 souls (many if not most were expat Finns), the molding of our national identity was relatively easy process. But by defining in such narrow terms our identity we automatically excluded the Romany, Saami and other minorities. We even made it virtually impossible for outsiders to be accepted as equal members of society. The latter is one of the big obstacles that hinders acceptance of new immigrant groups in Finland today.

My great aunts Lally (left) and Irma Handwargh seated with Hannu (surname unknown). Written in French on the back side of the picture: the writer says humorously that Lally would like to have a mustache, which was drawn with a pen on Hannu, would make her look very feminine. The picture is dated “Miekkoniemi (located next door to Savonlinna), July 11, 1920.”

My grandfather, whose father was Jewish, is a case in point how Finns embraced their new national identity and erased their past. A captain in the Finnish army and like many of his generation, he too had learned to loathe the Russians. That suspicion he housed permitted him to erase, or bury deep in his subconscious, his background and even hope that Nazi Germany would be victorious against the Red Army.

He probably knew but refused to face that a terrible fate awaited him and other if Adolf Hitler’s forces would have been victorious in World War 2. Like many others in Finland with Jewish backgrounds, my grandfather and his family would have ended up at concentration camps as part of the Final Solution.

Those who claim that Finns are closely related to a tribe flirt with racism.  Much of our history and our national identity, a social construct, is based on racism. Certainly we can keep the positive matters about such myths, like our desire to be an independent and free nation, but we must banish those matters that continue to fuel our mistrust and suspicions of others, especially the Russians.

As long as we continue to foster such ideas from our history, it will be difficult if not impossible to accept other groups as equal members of our society.

Unless you believe that the Garden of Eden was in Finland, all it takes is a rapid view of our ancestors to understand that we came from somewhere else before they moved to Finland.

Humans have always built roads because they never believed in isolation. Claiming the contrary is nothing more than an exercise in national self-deceit and the fuel that feeds our racism and xenophobia.

Defending religious bigotry – a case study!

Posted on by Mark

This article is the final narrative of an exchange I had recently with a Migrant Tales’ commentator who goes under the handle of Elven the Archer. If you have read his very many comments on the Migrant Tales article “Why are Finland’s politicians still so silent?”, I think you will already be aware of his religious bigotry in regard to Muslims.

What interested me was how to keep track of his many diversions and meanderings in defending himself against the charge of bigotry, even while displaying a horrific lack of respect for the universal human rights of Muslim individuals. It is certainly an interesting case study in the bare-faced denial of bigotry of an obvious Islamaphobe. Here is that narrative as told from my point of view.

It all began when Elven posted this:

The Muslim population multiplied 10 times faster than the rest of society, the research by the Office for National Statistics [UK] done during the period of 2004-2008 reveals.”

In very strong terms, I denounced the use of these statistics in the context of an argument against Muslim immigration to Europe as “utter bigotry”. Elven then claimed (as many other bigots do) that because it was a fact, it could not possibly be bigotry.

What about the national office that produced the study? Are they bigots too in there? And that professor of demographics studies, is he too an utter bigot?

And later, this arrogant little quip:

Show me the error [in the fact] and so stop squirming. It is as simple as that.

Elven then went on to argue that in the context of this thread, the figures were relevant. However, Elven did NOT introduce the figures in a debate on demographics. He introduced the figures in a long post that was making the case for barring Islamic immigrants to Europe on the grounds of their apparent negative characteristics. His words quoted below are sarcastic, as is often his style.

Not even when almost 40 % of the so called modern western muslims in Britain want religious laws. Obviously they are integrating so well and hey, just look at the islamic countries, you can’t find problems at all with islam. They are quite paradises on earth (just a few bad governments here or there, but the values of the people are just about right, right?), no human rights violations, no hatred against sexual minorities, no problems with women being not equal and so forth.

and in the same post:

That is mixing people with very different core values.

And finished it off with a further heavily sarcastic comment:

It doesn’t shape the UK in an unwanted way but instead it just makes the country better, more multiculturalist?

Interestingly, in later posts he tried to defend these statements and subsequent additional negative slurs on Muslims by saying:

I simply presented some statistics about the problems. I didn’t say why was that, why was the higher crime rate. You can take it however you want it. But as long as I don’t make such a claim [Muslims are more criminal] you can’t put words into my mouth.

This is a very weak defence given that the absolute thrust of his argument is that Muslims are just not good enough to live with native Europeans.

So, in trying to show Elven the Archer the error of his bigoted ways, I asked Elven to respond to a hypothetical scenario:

It’s a fact that the German’s murdered 6 million Jews. However, if a German arrived at a job interview and upon sitting down opposite the interviewers was immediately presented with this fact, would you regard it as a kind of bigotry?

Elven squirmed, as he does, and after much procrastination and irrelevant posting, he finally answered:

yes

I continued to elaborate the example by rephrasing this ‘yes’ into a general principle and asked Elven if he also agreed with this:

So, from this it also follows that people can state completely factual things and yet that statement, because of the context, is clearly bigotry?”

After dodging this question THREE times, Elven gave something almost approaching an answer:

Stating a fact about a waaaaaay different context can be some kind of bigotry.

When challenged further about this, he added:

The number of immigrants are not out the context when the context is the immigration.

However, Elven is deflecting attention away from the fact it was not the numbers, but the multiplying numbers of Muslims immigrants specifically that was the salient point of his quote. Together with his earlier stated stance that Muslim immigrants should not be allowed into Europe, he was clearly offering up what he thought were justifications for why Muslims should be refused entry. The true context is therefore not simply a discussion about the number of Muslims in the UK, but the justifications for a policy that would see individual Muslims told they cannot enter Europe because they are Muslim.

Thus far, I had demonstrated that it is clearly POSSIBLE for a factual statement to be used as a weapon of bigotry, even though the CONTENT of that statement was completely factual and itself did not have any racist element. Elven had indeed finally agreed that the example of the German job candidate was bigotry, though he did qualify this agreement somewhat:

Yes, because the person even wasn’t alive when the shit happened.

I interpreted this as trying to blur the logic that describes bigotry. However, in this case, the conditions he calls on are easily falsified. There were Germans from that time who were not responsible for the Holocaust or the Nazis coming to power and it would have been wrong to make them directly responsible. Also, Elven forgets that many Germans fought against the Nazis. With this in mind, it’s clear that one cannot leverage extreme Islam to justify wholesale bigotry.

In Elven’s mind, Muslim’s have equally failed the job interview for the equal right to citizenship in Europe (and Finland) and the reason given is very similar to the person interviewing the German in my example, who simply told a FACT about the Holocaust:

The similarities in the bigotry I think are certainly more than superficial.

Person is German, Holocaust was done by Germans = relevant = excuse for discrimination.

Person is Muslim, horrible things are done by Muslims = relevant = excuse for discrimination.

Returning to Elven’s original comment, it appeared to me that his post implied not just gross religious bigotry, but was also an open call to violate the fundamental human rights of Muslims, i.e. their right to childbirth and their right to freely practice religion. Elven denied this, but the clear intention of presenting his FACT was that Muslims having babies was somehow a threat, and that Muslims practicing their religion was also a threat, and therefore grounds for penalty, that penalty being a ban on Muslim immigrants being allowed to enter Europe. And any penalty imposed arbitrarily on the free exercise of those basic human rights must be considered a violation of those rights.

Considering this point some more, my conclusion is that rather than come out and publicly deny Muslims these freedoms, which would clearly be extremely difficult to defend, he simply advocates NOT allowing them into Europe/Finland, with a collection of negative slurs offered as justification. Problem solved. And no need to suggest that Muslims should not have babies! In collecting his media ‘facts’, he is also well prepared to defend himself against the charge of bigotry on the basis that he is only presenting ‘facts’.

One of the pillars of Elven’s argument has been that Muslims undermine women’s rights (even though these are protected by legislation in the UK and Finland). Of course, like a typical authoritarian young man, he assumes Muslim women cannot fight for their own rights when in Europe. In fact, rather than allowing Muslim women the freedom to come to Europe and have a greater chance of exercising their equal rights, he prefers them to stay in those countries where apparently they have no rights. Elven has a very funny way of trying to promote the rights of women.

Another of Elven’s arguments is that Muslims appear to be more criminal. He denied saying this:

Where did I say that? Nowhere. So you just lied.

However, previously in the thread he had posted this:

“… in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country’s population.”

and also this:

“In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry.

So, draw your own conclusions about what he was actually trying to say about Muslims and crime.

The first thing to be said is that there are various risk factors for crime, and the most documented with evidence is that of poverty. So, if Muslims also happen to be among the poorer members of society (which they are), it would be no surprise that Muslims therefore are overrepresented in crime statistics.

Not only that, but by focusing on their religion, he seems to forget the obvious – crime also breaks the laws of Islam. In other words, blaming the religion seems rather odd when the religion is telling its members very clearly that crime is wrong. Not only that, but breaking the laws of the land in which you live is also forbidden in Islam. Could it be that those committing the crimes are actually not very religious? In which case, blaming the religion for the crime is somewhat disingenuous as well as pointless.

Elven came to this blog, like many others do, as a slogan warrior, but also masquerading as a champion of human rights, and of logic and reason, and yet all the while working incessantly to undermine the human rights of Muslims.

Such bigotry will not go unchallenged on Migrant Tales!

Our Finnish national identity in the new century

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

For some anti-immigration groups, my background as a Finn must be a nightmare. The bad dream these groups dread to see is nothing more than the present and future staring back at them. It is the new Finland of the twenty-first century looking, together with others from our ever-culturally diverse society, confidently at the future. 

Some anti-immigration groups and even some white Finns dread us because we are the long-overdue Finland that has been swept under the rug for so long with the help of nationalism and concocted myths.  

The bad news for those who cling to these views about ourselves is that war, which is glorified by such groups as an important quality about our Finnishness, will play a lesser role in our identity. The history of those days, which only served to underline who are enemies are, will be undermined by our more open and diverse view of ourselves and the world.

This new way of looking at ourselves will seek effective solutions not constantly remind us and keep us from never leaving that ditch of the wrongs of history. We survived those times and now we must build a new reality because our survival in this century depends on it.    

 My great great grandfather David Nykänen and his grandchildren Alexander and Ira Cherkassky. Alexander, who was born in Boston, and his sister visited their grandparents of Mikkeli every summer. The picture was taken in the mid-1920s in Mikkeli (Vuorikatu 13). In the background the Naisvuori Observation Tower. (Tessieri family collection)

You may ask, dear reader, what made me so different from you in the previous century?  Let’s answer that question from my mother’s side. 

My great great great grandfather was Jacob Weikain (1758-1848), the first Jew to be granted permanent residence in Finland in 1832. His grandchild, Karl Jakob Hantwargh, a goldsmith, raised with his wife Anna Johanna a big family of eight children in Sääminki, located next door to Savonlinna in Eastern Finland.

Even if my relatives of Savonlinna lived in a very rural part of the country at the time, they were very international. Some of them worked in St Petersburg before the October 1917 Revolution and naturally spoke fluent Russian, French among other languages. 

My great aunt Irma married a U.S. diplomat, who worked in countries like the former Soviet Union, China, Afghanistan and Kenya.

Angus Ward and my aunt Irma speaking with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in Nairobi, Kenya. Irma had come a long way from those rural landscapes of Savonlinna in Eastern Finland.

 My aunt Irma (standing right) with her husband Angus Ward chatting with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Nairobi, Kenya. Irma had come a long way from those rural landscapes of Savonlinna where she grew up.  (Tessieri family collection)

Another great aunt called Lally wed Eero Tammisalo, a Helsinki University professor, was the personal dentist of the first presidents of Finland up to Marshal Carl Mannerheim.

My grandmother Aino was born and brought up in Mikkeli, a town located about 100km west of Savonlinna. She was very international as well and fluent in Finnish, Swedish, Russian, English and even spoke some French. Her first marriage was with Paul Cherkassky. He was already a celebrated violin virtuoso in his teens.

Like many at the time, Paul had fled the Russian Revolution and moved to Finland, where he served as concertmaster of the Helsinki City Orchestra during 1919-23. As a violin soloist, he gave the premiere performances of the Six Impromptus of Jean Sibelius at the composer’s request. In 1923 he was invited to become a member of the first violin section of the Boston Symphony.

Even if my family was never afraid to explore the world outside Finland like hundreds of thousands of Finns who emigrated between 1860 and 1999, I am especially concerned about those Finns who still speak of our ethnicity in the same terms as some political leaders in the 1930s. 

I can say with confidence that if we don’t allow these antiquated views about our national identity to get the best of us, the future will be ours as a unified nation bonded by our diversity. A key value that will strengthen our society will be mutual acceptance and respect.  

There never was, is nor be such a thing as a “typical” Finn. The so-called typical Finn is only a social construct.  

If my ancestors from five generations who made their lives in Finland could speak to us today, I am pretty certain that they would wholeheartedly agree with what I am saying. 

Ilta-Sanomat tabloid ad (lööppi) from August 19, 1992

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales will begin to publish Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how they reflected some people’s xenophobic and racist views.  

We apologize to readers for the racist and xenophobic content of the material. Our intention is not to spread these social ills but to exposed it.

The tabloid ad below states pointing the finger accusingly: “The trail of million [Finnish mark] robbery leads to Estonia.”

Outside of the official Finnish-Soviet speeches and ceremonies during the cold war, Estonia and the former Soviet Union were places where some Finns could get cheap vodka and women. This “colonial” mentality by some Finns was reflected in tabloids. Even if some Finns had access to two important matters in their culture, vodka and women, they acted and treated their linguistic cousins arrogantly, disrespectfully and as bigots.

As a social illness, xenophobia and racism leave open wounds and scars on society. We don’t have to search far to find them because they exist right under our noses. Xenophobia and racism leave lots of witnesses. The only question is if we want to hear their evidence in society’s witness box.

*Migration Institute archive. 

Immigration and integration: What can we honestly expect?

Posted on by Mark

Too many words and not enough understanding. That’s my assessment. And words can surely divide us. “I’m for this and against that…” sprinked with a dash of integration, assimilation, multiculturalism, and discrimination. And where does that leave us? Forget the debate for a moment, where does that leave us as people? Arguing, and ever more bitter it seems. There needs to be more agreement, and less getting bogged down in definitions, hypotheticals, generalizations, and population statistics. Still, that IS the world of politics for you.

One argument that tends to define the debate centres on who should change when it comes to immigrants living a new life in a new country. There are those that say immigrants should become as much like the original inhabitants as possible (assimilation), and those that say they should be allowed to hold onto their own cultural identity (multiculturalism).

An argument put up against multiculturalism is that it leads to segregation, with the historical Chinatowns being augmented by new Pakistantowns, Somalitowns, Afghanistantowns, Romatowns etc. The problem is then perceived to be that the immigrants’ descendents may not even make the effort to learn the national language, which is probably seen as one of the most publicly tangible manifestations of non-integration. Some forget perhaps though that we have lived with this kind of phenomenon for millennia – is it not time that we made ourselves more comfortable with the idea? Also, Chinatowns can be very productive economically.

Multiculturalism openly invites communities to establish their own institutions which reflect their cultural heritage, their faith, and their cultural preferences. In a weakly multicultural society, that might entail multifaith schools, culture-sensitive public institutions, culture-specific civic organizations, and culture-specific political advocacy.

The new communities operate like communities within communities, with civic engagement geared to developing and protecting the specific interests of the minority community. As multiculturalism becomes more established, stronger forms show up in the form of faith-specific schools and new places of worship being built that better reflect the new demographics as individuals practice their freedom of religion.

One known effect of this changing diversity is that people of ALL groups can start to feel ‘lost’. Visible differences can make people feel defensive, more specifically, on the outside of their society. That is an uncomfortable feeling that is seen to drive people more towards the inside. For that reason, it’s unsurprising that studies therefore show that people living in the early stages of diverse communities can withdraw from society in general, including from their own communities.

Nevertheless, this is only part of the picture. A lack of complete trust does not mean that there is no trust, nor does mistrust towards a community mean that there is the same level of mistrust towards known individuals from that community. In fact, this is intuitively observable: one can have a negative view of a group but a positive view of individuals from within that group. Contradiction? That’s human beings for you. For that reason, a community-level analysis (see Robert Putnam) is likely to give an overly pessimistic picture. It really ain’t that black and white, figuritively or literally.

For integration (whichever form, multicultural or assimilation) to be successful it requires that there would be no obstacles to immigrants acquiring an education and occupations, that they are free to live where they want without fear of discrimination, that they are able to speak the language of the natives, and ultimately that they are able to intermarry without fear of excommunication or stigma, from any of the communities affected.

The reality can sometimes be quite far from this, though. Locals who witness this diversification but do not feel part of it can be most affected, as the roots of their own identity disappear in front of their eyes: a particular area may have had a very different recent and ancient history. Nevertheless, the incessant march of history can leave any one of us feeling that we have been left behind, and one should be sensitive to that. But really, there are meaningful opportunities in the ‘new world’, and people should be encouraged to reach out to others who are entering the community, who may also feel disorientated by the whole thing.

Of course, we cannot ignore that there are problems with immigration. Two solutions have been put forward by those somewhat to the right of the Maypole. The first is simply to avoid immigration: Close the doors and baton down the hatches! Some might go so far as to say “let’s make the place as unpleasant as possible and then maybe they will all go home!”

This solution will clearly fail. For a start, it’s giving in to a kind of superstitious fear of that which lurks beyond the horizon. And second, arguing that one is skeptical towards immigration is about as sensible as arguing that one is skeptical towards childbirth. It’s a fundamental feature of human populations that we move and that we intermingle and intermarry. How much that happens has depended on many factors: economic, cultural, geographical. But it happens. Likewise, adopting this ‘bunker approach’ when a community is already diverse and has significant 1st, 2nd, 3rd …. and 20th generation immigrants is rather like closing the barn door after the horse has long bolted. It is a fundamental misperception of the current state of reality. No wonder it leads to so much anger.

The other solution put forward has been assimilation, as already mentioned. Usually it is meant in the strong sense, though I will refer to both a strong and weak form. The thinking goes that immigrants are like visitors, i.e. guests or tourists. They are expected to behave as such and not let the ‘team’ down. Also, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In the weaker sense, assimilation is expected to bring new aspects to the native culture, and so the final culture will be some kind of amalgamation of the two (e.g. the national food of the UK could easily be said to be a good old curry! ..and notice that ‘good old…’ doesn’t even sound out of place!).

More effects of weak assimilation are that notions of justice, social participation, the role of the family, free speech, etc will become more nuanced and diverse, while public institutions will also have learnt to take account of the greater diversity of the citizens that they serve.

In the strong sense, assimilation means that descendents of immigrants are indistinguishable from the old inhabitants, but this ignores that cultural effects work in many directions. Neither the descendents of the original population or the immigrant population will be exactly the same as their parents, and many of the reasons for this will have absolutely nothing to do with immigration (think Facebook, The Bold and the Beautiful, Ipad etc.).

Following a maturing of the process of assimilation, a new and more diverse identity emerges that is able to bring together the majority of the inhabitants in a strong and shared identity, regardless of their origins. Looking at the UK, which is further down this path that many countries, this is absolutely the case for very many natives, immigrants and descendents of immigrants. It is more obviously the case in the cosmopolitan cities and to a larger extent too in the rural areas close to those cities. In other areas, where contacts have been more sporadic or where immigrants are yet to achieve equality, then the effects of the early stages of ‘diversification’ still hold true, i.e. a degree of mistrust, some withdrawal, and as Putnam would probably predict, higher levels of political engagement (as we see in Finland currently with the rise of PS).

So of all these possible directions for the future, which would be best? Strong assimilation, weak assimilation, weak multiculturalism, segregation? What should be our expectations or even our aims?

The answer in my view is both obvious and yet overlooked. Why do we expect or desire only one kind of outcome?

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that we should expect degrees of all these things, as part of an ongoing processes that individuals react to differently and at different speeds. Not only that, but there really is space in our society for a little of everything!

So what can we expect? We can expect more new immigrants who are likely to set up in the cities and then gradually progress from the cities to the regions, though this is complicated by existing problems of regionalisation, with high rural unemployment, especially among the young, and so a slower process of assimilation would be expected to that found in the cities.

We can expect multicultural threads in our society, where people identify through their faith and their community. In that sense, they are expressing their freedoms and these are not generally speaking incompatible with those of natives. We can expect 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants to identify both with their parents ethnic identity and the national identity, to varying degrees and not necessarily with any great conflict, though sometimes there will be.

We can expect areas of some cities to become segregated areas, simply because this has always happened, and in many ways, it can be one of the charms of city life or larger towns – they allow the world to come to you rather than you having to travel to meet the world. We must avoid ghettos (deprivation) and ensure that segregation doesn’t mean isolation. Chinatowns are really a very good model for how those who choose to retain stronger links with their ethnic culture can engage economically with the surrounding economy.

We can expect to see more diversity in what is seen to constitute justice, what our roles are in society and our relationship to the rest of the world. But this diversity will not be a completely new thing, because the fact is there already exists a vast diversity within cultures, so that diversity between cultures is all too easily overemphasized, sometimes purely on the basis of a different colour of skin. Bear in mind that when put in new words, old ideas may indeed seem very foreign. It is always a good idea to ask whether new customs are related somehow to existing customs.

So in sum, we can expect something of each of the ‘solutions’ put forward in the debate on immigration. Immigrants or their descendents will be steered in different directions: some towards strong assimilation, some towards weak assimilation, some towards multiculturalism, and some towards cultural self-defence, some towards completely new identies that unite around the greater diversity. Those living out this integration are as diverse as those looking for the best method of integration. But a little less ‘this way, folks’ and a recognition that there are several ways ahead that can and will exist together would go a long way to taking some of the heat out of the situation: Unless it was never really about integration in the first place!? That’s a challenge to those that say it’s not about racism….

In that sense, what might appear like a broken society to many of those looking for a single solution is not actually broken. It might be a truism to say that the biggest enemy in all of this is not diversity, but that old enemy of all good civilisations – poverty!

Finally, a note of caution. The history of every single nation on Earth reveals that ‘groups’ have come to blows over what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ about how we should organize our society. Politics has the power to truly divide, to literally split our heads open. Finland is no stranger to this kind of conflict. So, when considering how to deal with the extremes within and without our communities, the important thing is to maintain a policy of tolerant engagement with those who seek moderation – i.e. always pull towards the middle and we will all be safer and closer, for sure.