Teksti Anna Kornienko
Mitä tarkoita olla nuori ja niin sanottu maahanmuuttajataustainen Suomessa? Miten, jos olet asunut melkein koko elämäsi Suomessa ja yksi tai molemmat vanhemmistasi ovat siirtolaisia? Kuulutko silloin tähän maan?
Joillekin nuorille nämä kysymykset voivat tuoda ristiriitaisia tunteita. On kiusattu koulussa ja on koettu eriasteista syrjintää.
”Kun olet lapsi haluat ystäviä ja olla samanlainen kun muut,” sanoo tämä artikkelin kirjoittaja. ”Mitä teet jos sinut ei hyväksytäkään koulussa? Se on hyvin kipeä paikka. Tuntuu, että sinussa olisi joku vika, vaikka asiaa ei todellakaan ole niin.”
Bändilinjan opiskelija Ariela Patterson, jonka isä on yhdysvaltalainen ja äiti suomalainen, uskoo yhden syyn ala-asteella kiusaamiseen olleen se, etteivät opettajat eivät puuttuneet asiaan tarpeeksi vakavasti.
”Minun piti puolustaa itseäni, koska kukaan ei välittänyt,” sanoo Ariela. ”Ikävin on, että myös jotkut aikuiset ovat olleet yhtä tyhmiä kadulla. 1990-luvun alussa oli Suomessa hyvin vähään tumma-ihoisia suomalasia.”
Media-kymppi opiskelija Aune Rugojeva muutti Suomeen Venäjältä, kun hän oli vastaa viisi vuotta. Hänellä oli myös joskus vaikeaa koulussa.
”Liperi on pieni kyllä Pohjois-Karjalassa ja siellä ei asunut paljon venäläisiä kun muutimme sinne,” hän jatkaa. ”Yläasteella oli joskus hyvin vaikea olla koulussa, koska luokkakaverit haukkuivat ja eristivät minut porukasta. Se oli kipeä ja yksinäinen paikka.”
Aune sanoo, että Otavan Opistolla on mukavaa opiskella koska täällä saa olla oma itsensä ja erilainen.
”Täällä kunnioitetaan erilaisuutta, koska on paljon kaikenlaisia opiskelijoita,” Aune sanoo.
Aune, Ariela ja minä olemme samaa mieltä yhdestä asiasta: Erilaisuus on voimaanlähde.
*Tämä juttu julkaistiin Otavan Sanomissa (toukokuu 2011).
This story by the three Multicultural Finns raises a lot of interesting questions about their identities and places in Finnish society. If you are a Multicultural Finn is it better to be a visible or invisible minority? Being an invisible minority could be bad because you could hide who you are while being visible one has to be that person. That is why acceptance of oneself is the first important step to a Multicultural Finn. If society has a problem with that, it’s THEIR problem.
I am a Finn. But consider myself multicultural. Have been living in many places. As a young girl of 14 years I was taken with my parents to Argentina, and frankly, I must tell, at first, that was not a good experience. I visited an Argentine-English school, where nor the direction either the teachers understood my condition of foreigner. I was put with ten year old kids half a day, because I didn’t speak Spanish. (Which I did learn by myself in about six months). You can imagine that after a year I wanted back to Finland, which I did. Afterwards I’ve been studying in Finland and in Argentina, and working in many other countries, but for a young person it is always hard to overcome such a change. I hope and think, some things are better nowadays. What I’m telling happened 35 years ago, and my own children who are really multicultural, and live in a global world have had benefits from all my experiences. At least I am very eager to think so!
Hola Merja y bienvenida a Migrant Tales. Great to see you here. Do you like the term Multicultural Finn? Do you consider Finland an inclusive society? It’s odd that 1.2 million left this country between 1860 and 1999 and some Finns feel that they haven’t mixed with anyone. I have started to call myself a Multicultural Finn. I was born in Argentina but grew up in many places. Most of the time I was brought up in Southern California but have lived in London, Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Madrid, Milan and southern Spain.
I can imagine how hard it must have been when you moved to Argentina when you were 14 years old. That’s tough. Ouch! But you pulled through and that made you stronger.
I have three adult children and they are all multicultural. I guess living in many countries and traveling between different cultures makes you more adapted.You could probably place me in Mongolia and I’d adapt.
Welcome to our blog and we hope to hear a lot from you!
It’s probably more meaningful to describe individuals as intercultural than multicultural. Culture is ultimately a collective behaviour pattern, and insofar as it concerns individuals, this is only in terms of the individual’s relation to the collective. It is confusing to use multicultural for individuals, as the term cannot mean the same as in expressions like “multicultural society”. An individual is not a collective.
To call a person intercultural is to say that this person is in some sense a member of more than one cultural collective.
Intercultural individuals are playing an increasingly important role in helping to dispel the pernicious projection of cultural insecurity as racism, xenophobia and cultural intolerance.
Hi JusticeDemon, you have a good point. Intercultural means in between cultures and is another word for integration. Multicultural is on the defensive these days and it means many things to many people. For the anti-immigration far right it means a policy that allows Muslims and Africans to move to Europe; in Canada it is a social policy and in Finland it means cultural diversity and/or many cultures. When I speak of my background I speak of my multicultural background (culturally diverse). What do you think?