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 some of the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how some of them reflected our xenophobic and racist views.
Sounding as if we lived in some social war zone, the billboard below lures readers with the following headline: “Armed refugee hater chased blacks.”
Refugees that came to Finland in the early 1990s, when the country was suffering from one of its worst recessions in a century, were assaulted in public. One of our bloggers told me that he remembers being attacked by total strangers in the street when he went with his mother to the market.
Shameful behavior that has no place in our society.
*Migration Institute archive.
Category: Enrique