The immigration debate in Finland is far from “normal”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

When debating discrimination of immigrants and refugees in Finland, one can scent two matters in the air: hostile suspicion mixed with a dose of patronizing.

The tragic events of the Sello Mall killings on the last day of December show how some of our political leaders view immigrants. As soon as a psychopath is on the lose and it happens to be an immigrant or former refugee, it is an opportunity to reinforce our stereotypes, fears and hostility toward others.

Whenever a Finn goes on the rampage and kills indiscriminately innocent bystanders  as we have tragically seen before, we don’t jump up and demand how people from a certain region of Finland should be placed under scrutiny.

Accusing immigrants and refugees of being freeloaders, lazy and a menace to our Finnish way of life is not only unfair but a cover used by some to hide the real challenges facing our society. It is tantamount to brushing our country’s real problems under the rug and using immigrants as scapegoats.

Immigration will, however, reveal many pleasant and unpleasant things about who we are.

Take for instance high unemployment. Immigrant critics and populist parties such as the True Finns argue that it is the immigrants’ fault because they are lazy and so challenged professionally that they cannot do even menial jobs.

High unemployment in Finland reveals a wider problem of labor markets that need a serious overhauling. How is it possible that after strong years of growth, Finland’s unemployment rate continued to be around 8%?

The suspicion that some Finns have of immigrants and refugees reveals another fact: Their fear of competition and laziness to deal with those   challenges that threaten our way of life and future living standards.

Foreign journalists and Finnish interpretations of history

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If one wants to do an interesting study into the role of the state and the media, one could look at the cold war years of Finland.

An article written by Max Jakobson, Substance and Appearance: Finland, is one example of how the governments viewed foreign journalists.  He writes: “As a result, Finland is forever at the mercy of the itinerant columnist who after lunch and cocktails in Helsinki is ready to pronounce himself upon the fate of the Finnish people.”

Notice that he uses the word “columnist” not “journalist.”

When the article was written in 1980, there was little to no criticism even by the Finnish media on our special relations with the former Soviet Union. Even though it is a great matter that Finland retained its independence despite two wars with the Soviet Union, Jakobson asks a key question in the article whether Finlandization forced the country to give up any essential national interests in order to have good relations with Moscow.

He writes: “Here it is important to distinguish between substance and appearance, between abstract principle and political reality and to make the distinction in terms of the Finnish experience. One again it is necessary to take the account of the legacy of the war.”

One of the biggest flaws in the article is that it aims to be THE only opinion on how we should interpret Helsinki-Moscow relations. Nobody, except for a few wise men such as Jakobson, were able to speak publicly about Finnish-Soviet relations. The former diplomat does not mention a word about the censorship and self-censorship that existed on this front even though he stresses how “Western” we are.

What does Jakobson’s article tell us today? It shows, I believe, a country that has seen foreigners with suspicion. Even though there are valid factors that have fueled this suspicion, it has been reinforced over and over by our history. Apart from having few foreigners in the country, the Restricting Act of 1939 also made made foreign investment virtually impossible.

Like the government, which must have reaped a lot of political benefits from our special relation with Moscow, Finland enjoyed and grew accustomed to being a geopolitical recluse.

Language rights in 1862, independence from Russia in 1917, civil war, Winter and Continuation War and Cold War tell us of a continuing story that has fueled suspicion of outsiders. So, for a foreign journalist to come to Finland and, “after lunch and cocktails,” to write about our special relation with the Soviet Union naturally hits a very nationalistic nerve.

The impact of the previous century on the present one explains why some of us continue to see immigrants as a threat.

Those reticent one-sided views or ourselves and the outside world we learned in the previous century may turn out to be a threat to our future because opening up is still a painful process.

The Sello Mall killings in Finland reveal a lot about our views of outsiders

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The tragic events that occurred at the Sello Mall on December 31 in the suburb of Leppavaara located next door to Helsinki do not only shed light on a deranged man but continue to feed some of our highly polarized feelings on immigration and refugee policy.

An article by Kristiina Markkanen in the English-language Helsingin Sanomat highlights some of these questions. In my opinion, the knee-jerk reaction of some Finns and the complacent silence of some politicians on the killings show that we still have a very long way to go before our society can relate to immigrants/refugees in a near-normal fashion.

Even though such a harrowing event must be condemned vociferously by all members of society, it should not serve as a platform to ostracize immigrants and refugees living in Finland.

If we go deeper into the context of the tragic killings, what questions do they bring about how Finnish society views immigrants and refugees?

(1) Immigrants/refugees are still such a new phenomenon in Finland that we have trouble relating to these people in a normal societal fashion;

(2) Immigrants/refugees have little to no say in Finland and politicians/policy-makers treat them as charity. They hold minuscule political, economic and demographic weight in society.

What is most incredulous in the one-sided immigrant debate after the Sello Mall killings is that some Finns, with the tacit wanted or unwanted silent approval of some politicians, can generalize freely without almost any opposition to include all immigrants and refugees.

The truth is that the shock that the Sello Mall killings caused on Finns was equally felt by all members of our society.

Finland’s challenge in the new decade

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The new decade will either make or break Finland. If we are not successful at attracting labor immigrants to our country to plug the ever-growing number of pensioners leaving the labor market during the 2010s, the first one to feel the impact will be the economy.

Due to the recession and age-old taboos of Finnish nationalism, some Finns would rather stick their heads in the sand than face the demographic challenges ahead. According to Statistics Finland,Finland´s population is graying rapidly. As more people retire from the workforce the more strains it will place on public finances and our society.

How many? The number of pensioners will rise from the present 17% (905,000 persons who are older than 65 years) to 27% by 2040 and 29% (1.79 million) by 2060. Better medicare will fuel this trend. Persons over 85 years in Finland will rise from 2% (108,000) to 7% (463,000).

Any sensible person understands that for a country to have a successful and dynamic immigration policy a general acceptance by society is paramount. Does Finland have a favorable attitude towards immigrants?  The jury is still out on this question since Finland’s foreign population is still too small to make any clear assessment. However, if we look at immigrant unemployment figures, which are about two times higher than the national average, Finland does not appear very immigrant-friendly.

One of the matters that we will have overcome as a nation if we want to attract new inhabitants is offer opportunities to attain the Finnish dream.The same matters that makes us want to live here must rub off on those who may choose to move here.

Despite our successful welfare society founded on liberal democratic values, the weight of our history continues to muddy our view of the outside world and of outsiders. It has made us liberal in our perceptions of society but also extremely conservative because we have always felt that we are in danger of being devoured by a foreign power.

Knowledge of our history is vital but more important is how we see the future.

Migrant Tales says thank you!

Posted on by Migrant Tales

With year-end rapidly approaching and giving way to the new year, I would like to thank all those thousands of  bloggers who have visited Migrant Tales recently and shared their thoughts with us. Thanks you!

One of the posts that has stirred a lot of debate is Are you a victim of racism in Finland, which has close to 9,000 hits and about 1,000 comments. Other popular posts that some bloggers enjoyed were The Destroying Angel mushroom, Finnish “culture and personality” and Is there racism in Finland?

I wish everyone lots of success in 2010!

The sub-arctic is truly a fascinating place…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cW-_8LzLfc&feature=related]

Banishing the racial myths of Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the matters that cultural diversity will bring to Finland is challenge the very myths and views of itself especially on the ethnic front.

Even though Finns have created a well-functioning society founded on social justice, these values have basically applied to Finns. Apart from its geographic remoteness form the rest of Europe, some Finns have emphasized in the previous century their cultural and linguistic uniqueness through the hush-hush acknowledgement of  “racial hygiene.”

A good example of this is the professor of social policy Heikki Waris, who wrote in the 1950s: “When conditions in Finland are compared with those elsewhere, for instance in central and southern European countries with their many kinds of racial mixes and all the associated unmanageable social problems, the racial unity of our nation must be seen as a great source of strength.”

Contrary to other parts of the world, “race and language” were the driving forces of our independence as well. This fear, and in many cases hatred, of the Russians even unified the Whites and Reds from the Winter War (1939-40). In the post-war period, it gained further strength through Finland’s geopolitical isolation until its full political and economic integration with Western Europe came in 1995 through EU membership.

If one wants an explanation for the deep-rooted prejudice and racism that is still alive and kicking among some Finns, one does not have to go far to find the reasons behind this societal malice. Our history and near-consensus interpretation of it reveals why.

Matters on the so-called multicultural debate in Finland are still in such a diaper stage that even our political leadership takes special care not to step on the foot of those that make racism respectable instead of defending those that are the victims of their attacks.

The highly one-sided debate in Finland on immigrants is seen as a threat by some Finns because new members of our society bring different points of views. As Finland becomes more multicultural demographically, some of our future historians, sociologists, writers, poets, politicians and others will challenge the very myths that were created in the previous century.

Our new identity and the history we write of ourselves as a nation in this century (new myths?) will be based on totally new points of departure. I for one believe it will be a very rich and inspiring debate that will strengthen our country. Given enough time, it will challenge more forcefully than ever those myths that keep the ogre of racism alive in our society.

It will be the awakening of a new Finland that will fit its needs as a nation in the new century.

MTV3 poll shows Finns do not want more refugees in their municipality

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A survey published by MTV3 (in Finnish) on December 12 showed that the majority of those polled do not want their municipality to accept refugees. Even though 34% had no opinion on the matter, 46% said they were either against or very much against their municipality accepting new refugees. Only 20% were either in favor or very much in favor of accepting refugees.

Another question asked was whether the state should force municipalities to accept refugees. The responses were pretty clear: 70% said no, 16% maybe. 8% yes and 6% had no opinion.

Even though the recession is a factor that has forced Finns to have a more negative attitude of refugees,  one cannot place the full blame on the economic situation. Contrary to the recession of the early 1990s, when unemployment soared close to 20%, the jobless rate in October stood at 8.2% versus 5.8% a year ago, according to Statistics Finland.

In my opinion, these types of polls only reinforce old stereotypes of foreigners in general and refugees in particular in Finland. There are very few polls that show what immigrants and refugees think about living  in Finland and the impact of high unemployment and exclusion.

Even though the economic situation has got worse, some Finns use this as a pretext to justify their prejudice against refugees and immigrants. Such attitudes are, in my opinion, a failure of the education system and the fact that there are still very few refugees and immigrants living in the country.

Finland’s New Identity in the New Century

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Here is the Finnish-language version of the article below that appeared in the 4/2009 isuue of Monitori-lehti.

What will our new identity be like in the present century as our society becomes more ethnically and culturally diverse? Will immigrants be clumped into one group and called New Finns, or will they prefer a hyphenated identity such as Iraqi-Finn?

A middle-school geography book published in 1941 claims that the Finns comprised of two main racial groups: Nordic and East Baltic. The characteristics of the former group was, ”tall, thin, blue-eyed, fair-haired and have red cheeks,” while the latter one was ”stockier, blonde-haired and have no redness on the cheeks.”

Even though there is no scientific basis for such classifications and they appear odd from our information-age perspective, some history books continued to classify Finns in such a manner up the 1970s. One of the matters that these type of racial classifications did was keep the definition of the Finn on very narrow terms.

In my opinion, our identity as Finns took a radical break from the past with the passage of the new Constitution (1999), Naturalisation (2003) and Non-Discrimination Act (2004). Even though there is no mention of the term multicultural society in these laws, they do show great sensibility to minorities and acceptance of cultural diversity.

Everyone knows that laws cannot change attitudes in an instant. They can, however, be important watersheds of our values and aspirations as a society.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen has called immigrants uusia suomalaisia, or New Finns. In principle there is nothing wrong with this classification since it implies permanency as well as a readiness by society to accept newcomers. Others such as maahanmuuttaja, immigrant, have been met with mixed feelings since it implies non-permanency.

Even though these identity labels are imposed by the outside, it is important to keep in mind that what different groups call themselves depends on them. For some minorities this may be more important than for others.

Whatever identity a group prefers to use – New Finn, Finn, hyphenated, hybrid or none – isn’t the underlying case. The key factor is that we are capable as a society of drawing strength from our diversity, and that Finland can become a new home for those who may choose to live with us.

How do some Finns discriminate?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In countries such as the United States and Brazil the term “race” is used to find out the ethnic diversity of their societies. While it is unclear why Brazil classifies in its census people from different ethnicities, in the United States it is done when drawing up electoral districts.

In order to find out more information on the implementation of the Employment Equity Act, Statistics Canada places minorities into “visible” and “invisible” groups. A visible minority is a “person, other than Aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in color.”

Finland does not use ethnicity nor race to classify different groups but mother tongue.  If we look at the history of this country from the nineteenth century, the role of language has played, and continues to play, in identifying Finns.

Since there were few “visible” immigrants in the nineteenth century in this country, language must have played an important role in helping to figure out from which group the person was.

This brings forth an interesting question: Do some Finns generally discriminate due to mother tongue or skin color – or is it a double whammy? When some employers claim that immigrants “cannot speak Finnish well enough,” are they using language  in the same was as color or ethnicity would be used in the United States to discriminate?

Or is language used to discriminate against “invisible”  and language+ethnicity for “visible” immigrants?

Mannerheim and Finnish provincialism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

I heard yesterday an interesting talk on Marshall Carl Mannerheim (1867-1951) just a few days before the outbreak of the Winter War exactly 70 years ago on November 30, 1939. The talk centered on different aspects of the Civil War of 1918 and how Mannerheim saw the world.

Those who have studied this man, know that he was not the easiest person to get along with and had a mean temper. If he would wake up today from his eternal sleep, one of the matters that would shock him is our liberal, democratic Nordic welfare society.

Without stealing any of his thunder from those difficult decades when he led Finland, Mannerheim’s thinking would have been totally out of touch with these times.

Despite his strong distaste for dissension and the ideology behind Bolshevism (he was trained as an officer of Czarist Russia and had a soft spot for the Menshevics), his view of the world was more open than many Finns when the country became a republic in 1917. How many Finns had back then a broad international view of the world and were not overtaken by the hysteria of nationalism and petty provincialism?

How did nationalism and that narrow view of the outside world impact Finland during those crucial decades that led to the Winter and Continuation Wars? If mistrust and hatred of Russians was the driving force that unified some Finns back in those difficult times, how did it affect its foreign policy? Can we still see this same suspicion and mistrust today sprinkled in our views of immigrants?

Even though it is questionable that Finland could have done something to prevent the Winter War, there are a lot of question marks concerning the Continuation War. Answering, or pondering these queries seriously, will bring to light many things about ourselves as a a people and hitherto-unknown or hidden aspects of our history.

One of these is the reticent attitudes of Finnish authorities towards foreign investment (Restricting Act of 1939) and draconian laws to discourage foreigners to move to the country.

One of the biggest culprits, I am certain, were a small country’s petty provincialism, fear, and suspicion of the outside world.