In a Migrant Tales’ recent article based on a Maailman Kuvalehti report about the mental suffering of daily racism, we promised some “no filtered” outtakes from interviews with those affected.
You can read the first piece, Part I: Racism causes trauma and mental suffering,here.
Eight cases, eight migrants, eight stories, about life in Finland:
“You meet a shared cult-like mindset at every level of this society. Denial of anything considered unattractive is so widespread that it feels like state-sponsored gaslighting. People here have been taught and convinced that what Finland offers is superior. You eventually realize it’s hopeless trying to get even a closest person to consider ‘other’. This inherent xenophobia and the resultant increasingly hostile environment denied to you is extremely isolating. A double whammy”.
Nicola, UK
“What’s truly maddening is not the absolute absence of process. While abusively deaf and delayed, the process does eventually exists, superficially. It’s that as a Finn your accuser’s unquestionable correctness – and therefore as a non-Finn, your necessary guilt – is assumed a priori from the very beginning. And the show trial and mock process exist to give the fake appearance that this wasn’t simply decided beforehand. The stretched and contorted parodies of a process to which you’re exposed impose more harm than simply never being offered them.”
Ben, UK
Migrants and minorities are subject to Finland’s hostile environment. Source: Flickr.
“I have experienced how nationalism here goes well beyond national pride, extending to willful denials of reality even in Finland’s Supreme court. This brings an uneasy fear, an imbalance. Justice makes us feel safe but having no recourse, in an assumed developed European nation has a shocking and traumatizing effect.”
Alexander, Belgium
Continue reading “Part 2: Mental impact and reality of everyday exclusion”
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