Category: Enrique Tessieri

Same-sex marriage bill vote Friday will be a cliff hanger

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland will vote Friday on the long-overdue bill that would make marriage legal between same-sex couples. A lot rides on tomorrow’s vote. In many respects, the outcome of Friday’s vote shows Finland to be at an important crossroads.

Some analysts see the passage of the same-sex marriage bill not only as a victory for gays but for all minorities in Finland.

At present, the social construct of the so-called white, heterosexual Finn is being seriously challenged by tomorrow’s vote as well as by our ever-growing cultural diversity.

According to political observers, the vote is still too close to call.

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Read full story here.

 

The debate on same-sex marriage has divided Finland. Even so, Evangelical Church of Finland Archbishop Kari Mäkinen said this week he supports granting homosexual couples the right to marriage.

It’s highly probable that the historic vote Friday would not be a cliff hanger if it weren’t for the Perussuomalaiset (PS),* which are betting much of their political capital against the bill.

In 2011 the PS won their historic parliamentary election victory by gaining 39 seats in parliament from 5 previously. Their election victory was based on hostility and mistrust of the EU, immigrants, refugees, cultural diversity and homosexuals.

Friday’s vote will reveal a lot of things. One is whether we are a closed or open-minded society.

The closed society, supported by the PS, is outright hostile to minorities and keeps such groups excluded by building fences of mistrust with the help of myths.

The open-minded society is the new face of Finland in this century that cannot be stopped. That face and landscape comprises of minorities with equal rights.

 

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Finland: A nation of emigrants

Posted on by Migrant Tales

While some heads of state like Barack Obama speak of the United States as a nation of immigrants, Finland has historically been a nation of emigrants. How does being a nation of emigrants differ from being a nation of immigrants? There is a big difference and reveals in part why some Finns are so hostile to immigration. 

Finland is a good example of a country made up of emigrants. During 1860-1999, over 1.2 million emigrated, with the majority moving to Sweden (580,000) and North America (411,000).

If all of these emigrants would have stayed put in Finland, our population would be today about 7 million instead of 5.470 million.

Emigration has had a big demographic never mind social impact on Finland.

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Source: Jouni Korkiasaari and Ismo Söderling: Finnish emigration and immigration after World War II. Migration Institute 2003.    Source: http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/articles/011_Korkiasaari_Soderling.pdf

Since we are a nation of emigrants, it explains in part why some of our politicians and society don’t see immigration as a positive matter.

Being a land of emigration has distorted our view of things. Instead of seeing the world as an opportunity, it’s seen by too many as a threat. This is understandable considering our difficult history with the former Soviet Union. Even so, wars and conflicts end and we must learn to move on, even if the Ukraine crisis has reinforced our worst prejudices.

Finland is slowly learning to become a nation of immigrants. When we’ll be able to call ourselves a nation of immigrants, that’s when our perceptions of foreigners and newcomers will change, hopefully for the better.

This will take time. But we’re already on that road no matter how some resist this fact tooth and nail and throw everything they have against our ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse nation.

Homophobic Finland? Thank the Perussuomalaiset

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Some weren’t too worried when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* won their historic parliamentary election victory in 2011 by raising the number of MPs to 39 from 5. “They’ll implode like the Rural Party did in the 1970s,” and “This is only a passing [political] fad” was what one heard. 

One matter is clear after almost four years of bitter-tasting PS politicking: Attitudes towards migrants, minorities like gays has stiffened; such attitudes have made Finland ever-intolerant and thereby less attractive to skilled migrants and foreign investment.

It’s clear that if the PS ever get into government, they would spearhead and breathe new life in this country to the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who brought us mass unemployment and exacerbated social and economic inequality.

One of the best examples of hardening attitudes in Finland – thanks to the PS – is against gays and the long and winding road of approving same-sex marriage is a good example.

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One of the most outspoken voices against same-sex marriage is the Perussuomalaiset party. Read full story here.

 

It’s clear that if the PS wouldn’t have won in 2011, same-sex marriage would have already been legal in this country.

Taking into account that recent polls show the Center Party to be the clear favorite to win the next parliamentary elections in April and the party’s voting record, Friday’s parliamentary vote for or against same-sex marriage will be the last for a very long time.

The PS has tried to pull many fast ones on the public. One of these was a recent claim that migration costs Finland near-2 billion euros. While such claims were conjured by the PS for obvious reasons, has anyone asked how much the populist party has cost Finland in the way of lost skilled migrants, jobs, opportunities and investment?

Finland has a problem: It’s population is aging and we need skilled migrants to fill the gap as well as new jobs. Why would any person in his right mind move to a country that is suspicious of migrants and foreign investment?

One problem with racism and ethnocentrism is that it distorts reality.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Systemic disenfranchisement of migrants and minorities in Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One important question that doesn’t appear to bother too many politicians is why migrant voter turnout in Europe is so low. In the 2012 municipal elections of Finland, 20% of eligible migrants voted compared with 18.6% in 2008. This is a far cry from 59.5% and 62.2% of Finnish citizens that voted in such elections, respectively. 

As we saw in the EU elections of May, the far right made important gains especially in countries like France, United Kingdom, Denmark Austria, Sweden and Greece. The low voter turnout coupled with the disenfranchisement of migrants from the political system and society in general has benefited the far right.

According to  an opinion piece on euobserver by Thomas Huddleston, the low levels of voter participation and naturalization of Europe’s ever-growing immigrant population have become “the major disenfranchisement cause of our time.”

Table 1: Persons entitled to vote and those who voted by nationality in municipal elections during 1996-2012.

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Source: Statistics Finland.

Some of the key issues that Huddleston points out are the following:

  • There are 51 million migrants aged 15-74 in the EU, or 14% of the adult population;
  • 32 million migrants are first- and 18 million are second-generation migrants;
  • Two thirds of the first first-generation are not citizens of their country of residence;
  • A large number of young second generation adults are not citizens in around half of the EU member states;
  • Among non-EU citizens, 10 million live in EU countries (Germany, Italy, France, Greece and Austria) denying them even the right to vote in local elections;
  • Far right parties in countries like Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and the UK are benefiting the most from this democratic deficit.

It’s clear why the far right and anti-immigration groups do not want to give migrants greater voting rights since such a move would undermine their power. But if we want to make the EU more inclusive, it’s clear that we are going to have to make an about-turn in voting rights to migrants.

Writes Huddleston:

Research finds that the electoral power of the far-right is the most important factor explaining the restrictiveness of European countries’ citizenship policies, which then has major effects on immigrants’ naturalization rates, even for high-educated and developed-world immigrants.

For those who still believe that parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which has far right roots, haven’t poisoned the air for migrants and polarized society should think twice. A good example is the ongoing debate on same-sex marriage in Finland. If the PS wouldn’t have won the 2011 elections and become the third-largest party in parliament, same-sex marriage would most likely have been approved a long time ago.

 

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. 

Do you think David Cameron should be given ‘a medal’ for immigration?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finnish Prime Minister Alexsander Stubb continues to surprise us. This time he proposed giving the UK, or Prime Minister David Cameron, ‘a medal’ for immigration. Taking into account how Cameron sees himself threatened by the UKIP and how he’s caved in to anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric, the distinction proposed by Stubb is odd to say the least. 

Cameron’s anti-immigration rhetoric is nothing new.

One of the matters that becomes clear in Martin Barker’s The New Racism (1981) is that the same anti-immigration sound bites are used today. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher claimed before the 1979 general election on BBC Radio 4 that Britain was being ‘swamped’ by immigrants and alien cultures.

Remember when Cameron warned how Britain was going to be swamped by Bulgarians and Romanians that on January 1, 2014? Such claims were totally false.

Why do politicians make such irresponsible statements that victimize whole groups? Is it because they lack backbone and seek political gains at any cost? Is it because immigrants and minorities are easy targets to bully publicly?

Näyttökuva 2014-11-15 kello 1.10.07

 

Read full story here.

 

I never could understand how a country that was a colonial and imperialist power like the UK is so touchy about immigration. Since Cameron is into populist anti-immigration rhetoric, certainly we can make a case for the abuse of hundreds of millions of people under colonialism. What about its complicity in the slave trade?

Whatever happened to that Subb before the 2011 parliamentary elections, when he took a strong stand against the xenophobia, racism and ignorance gripping the debate on immigration and immigrants in Finland?

Should we give the Finnish prime minister ‘a medal’ for forgetting that intolerance and populist anti-immigration rhetoric, parroted by Cameron, have little to do with our Nordic values?

 

 

Defining white Finnish privilege #14: Losing sight of the real issue

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the matters that has always surprised me in Finland is that if you speak out against intolerance and racism, you are sometimes seen as the rude one, not the one making the inappropriate comment. Apart from playing down a social ill like intolerance, we too often lose sight of the real issue: the victim. 

There are many factors that make us play down racism. One could be that we don’t want to rock the boat and get involved because intolerance doesn’t affect us directly. The issue is too complicated and hairy.

Take for example a recent case in Lieksa where parents don’t want their children to be taken to and from school by Somali drivers because they ‘don’t speak Finnish well enough.’

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Read full story here.

 

The taxi owner, who hired the Somali drivers, claims that the parents’ motives are racist. The parents deny that their actions have anything to do with the drivers’ skin color or nationality.

But what about if both have some complicity in the matter and that we’re losing focus on the real problem?

‘I highly doubt that the man who hired the [Somali] drivers did so because he’s a good Samaritan,’ a Joensuu source told Migrant Tales. ‘Certainly there are racists among the parents but then again has anyone asked if the man who hired the drivers pays them less money [than white Finn driver] in order to maximize profit?’  

Definition #14

While we still don’t know all the facts, white privilege appears to be written all over the most recent case in Lieksa: Parents can demand one thing and the owner of the taxis can say another. Nobody asks the Somali drivers their opinion.

Thus white privilege permits us to miss the real issue at play: suspicion, prejudice and exploitation of migrants.

It’s not always an open-and-shut matter. White privilege permits you to lose sight of the real issue because it is convenient. It allows you to forget the victim, or the taxi drivers, as is the case in Lieksa.

See also:

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Lieksa, Finland: Parents don’t want their children to be driven to school by Somali taxi drivers

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Leiksa, a far-flung town in eastern Finland, has attracted a lot of bad publicity in recent years from Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilmen who demanded a ‘Somali-free’ meeting room to a migrant taxi driver that was assaulted recently,  is once again in the news for all the wrong reasons. A group of parents from the town of 12,000 inhabitants don’t want their children to be driven to and from school by Somali taxi drivers. 

The parents claim that the taxis that the children are taken to school haven’t passed the annual vehicle safety and roadworthiness test or have alcohol ignition locks required by law.

Some parents have filed complaints to the police and threatened to boycott the taxis if the drivers aren’t changed and that the cars have passed the annual vehicle safety test.

Pauli Meriläinen, the owner who hired the Somali taxi drivers, denies the accusations made against him.

‘The whole fuss started when I hired by mistake migrant taxi drivers,” he was quoted as saying on Joensuu-based Karjalainen. ‘Right after that the problems began. Parents started to made up these accusations.’

Näyttökuva 2014-11-12 kello 21.06.30

 

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

 

One of the parents told YLE Pohjois-Karjala that the parents don’t feel comfortable with the Somali drivers because they don’t speak sufficient Finnish.

‘This has nothing to do with the color of their skin or their nationality,’ the person said. ‘In the agreement it states that [Finnish] language proficiency must be sufficient but in this case it isn’t.’

The parents of the children accuse Meriläinen of using the ‘racism card’ to not resolve their two demands: change the drivers and the roadworthiness of the taxis.

‘I wonder what the union thinks if parents demand that I change the drivers?’ Meriläinen said. ‘Is that a reason to layoff [these drivers]? The [taxi] drivers [are qualified and] have driven buses in Helsinki.’

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Migrant Tales (July 3, 2014): Is ‘Heikki the drunk’ Finnish or Swedish?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrants’ Tales insight: This story is interesting when looking at the Fazer gigolo tv commercial in Finland, which reinforces stereotypes about certain migrants and minorities in this country. An all-white board of the Council of Ethics in Advertising, which gets all of its funding from the private sector, will have a difficult time understanding what some minorities may feel about such commercials. 

Check out the story below about ‘Heikki the drunk’ and how it offended some Swedish Finns. 

Are the two related? Certainly they are. 

____________________

Some Swedish Finns are up in arms about a children’s book published in Sweden that pictures a wino called Heikki, according to YLE in English.  The character in the book, who is lying in a bush next to a plastic bag full of beer, was too much for Swedish Finn Sirpa Lamminpää, who filed a complaint to the Discrimination Ombudsman.  

YLE in English reports that the Discrimination Ombudsman will not take the case since “perceived prejudice” in printed books is falls under the jurisdiction of Swedish Chancellor of Justice.

Illustrator Gunna Grähs defends the character by stating that Heikki is a Swede.

“Perhaps she [Lamminpää]  is simply upset about the character being an alcoholic,” Grähs was quoted as saying. “Only one thing links him to Finland, and that is his name. In my opinion Heikki’s is a case of social class, not nationality.”

Grähs has a good point. Sweden is culturally diverse and a person with a name like Heikki can be a Swede.

Even so, the commotion about Heikki shows that Sweden is still a far ways off from being a post-racial society.

Risto Laakkonen, who is outspoken on migrant rights in Finland, said that any type of stereotyping is wrong and shouldn’t be tolerated.

 

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Read full story here.

 

Laakkonen was active in a campaign in the 1970s to change the way that the Swedish media pictured Finns. Whenever a crime was reported by the media the first national group that came to mind as the culprits were Finns.

“With [then] Ambassador Max Jakobson we got in touch with all the editor-in-chiefs and managing editors of all the newspapers and television channels and told them that this type of stereotyping isn’t good since you’re labeling people who are working in this country,” he said. “The portrayal of Finns as the culprits ended pretty rapidly.”

Laakkonen said that in Finland it was impossible for the media to be racist towards migrants since there were so few back in the 1970s. He said that Finland’s media caught up to the Swedes in the 1990s.

“Things were actually much worse than today before when you had openly [fascist] groups [like the IKL 1932-44] that talked about Finns as a tribe and influenced this type of thinking to be taught at schools,” he said. “The Perussuomalaiset* are small fry when compared to the past.”

Laakkonen said that human rights and tolerance are like a tree that must be watered.

“The tree will die if you don’t water it,” he said. “All you need is 10% of the population to be awake and active [for human rights] for things to change.”

 

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. 

 

Response to Fazer’s gigolo says a lot about Finland today

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The decision by the Council of Ethics in Advertising of Finland that there was nothing wrong with Fazer’s gigolo television commercial says a lot about why there is so little respect towards minorities in this country. For those who lived in Finland in the 1970s, Fazer’s gigolo was the typical stereotype of the southern European man, who spoke broken Finnish, was useless but was a good lover. 

Irwin Goodman even wrote a racist song about the ‘gigolo’ called Marcello Magaoni, or Marcello Macaroni.  There a similar song in the 1970s by Esa Pakainen, who masqueraded in a 1960 Finnish movie as a blackface with his partner Pätkä.

In a similar story in Sweden in July, some members of the Finnish community in Sweden were outraged about a Heikki the drunk character in a book that they claimed reinforced stereotypes about Finns in Sweden.

Why does a large sweets company like Fazer of Finland think that it’s perfectly acceptable to reinforce stereotypes about minorities in order to boost sales? Are they saying that ‘humorous’ racist stereotypes hit the spot with Finnish consumers?

The response of the Council of Ethic in Advertising is one matter but the comments from readers on different newspapers are just as revealing.

The lion’s share of those responses about the Fazer gigolo didn’t see anything racist or wrong with the commercial and agreed with the Council of Ethics in Advertising that it was humorous.

Writes Pantterit on parhaita: ‘That was a really funny commercial.’

Funny? Certainly if you are white.

Read more comments (in Finnish) on Lappeenranta-based daily Etelä-Saimaa.Näyttökuva 2014-11-10 kello 12.38.31

Why does Fazer think that the way to Finnish consumers’ heart is with the help of ethnicity and race? In 2007, after mounting pressure from the EU, it stopped using its infamous golliwog on its licorice brand and in it stopped using a Chinese man or women in one of its products in 2011.

Migrant Tales filed a complaint to the Council of Ethic in Advertising because the commercial promoted stereotypes of southern European men. Stereotypes are the breeding ground from with the fruits of intolerance feed off.

The decision by the Council and the reaction of many readers clearly shows how little weight migrants and minorities continue to have in Finland.

I for one will be one person who will boycott Fazer products and I hope that many more will do the same.

 

 

The Council of Ethics in Advertising of Finland finds nothing wrong with Fazer’s ‘gigolo’

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Council of Ethics in Advertising has found nothing wrong with a Fazer advertisement, which depicting a stereotypical Southern European gigolo in a salt licorice television commercial. The seven-member board of the council, which are all white Finns, considered the commercial to be done in good taste and with humor.

Migrant Tales filed a complaint to the Council of Ethics in Advertising citing that the Fazer television commercial reinforced racist stereotypes about men from Southern Europe. Aren’t stereotypes the breeding ground of racism and discrimination?

The council receives all of its financing from the private sector.

For those of us who have lived in Finland in the 1980s, the “mud-faced gigolo speaking broken Finnish” was a common racist stereotype of some foreign men that still exists.

An important question we should ask Fazer is why it persists in using such marketing strategies after racist mascots like its infamous Golliwog on its licorice brand, which was banned in 2007 thanks to EU pressure, and the racist image  of a Chinese man or woman in one of its products in 2011? Why does the company think that race and ethnicity are the way to the Finnish consumer’s heart?

Adding salt to injury, tabloid Ilta-Sanomat headlines that the commercial doesn’t insult migrants.

Right on, Ilta-Sanomat. Here’s a white tabloid giving its “expert view” on what is and isn’t offensive to migrants.

Tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat played an important role in reinforcing intolerance and hostility towards migrants from the 1990s.

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Read full story here.

 

Even if The Council of Ethics in Advertising sees nothing wrong with the television commercial, many minorities in Finland consider it offensive.

 What is your opinion of this tv commercial?

See also: