social exclusion Archives - Page 6 of 11

Challenging urban tales about migrants and ourselves should be our first and foremost priority

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Migrant Tales

After contributing regularly for Migrant Tales and reading and answering some of the over 30,000 comments we have received in the past seven years, a bigger picture emerges. This has been reinforced by my work at a folk high school, where the majority of the students on campus aren’t white Finns.

As Don Flynn of Migrants’ Right Network wrote, it’s crucial especially today that migrant community groups start working together to challenge the urban tales spread by opportunistic politicians in order to make a positive case for migration.

One such campaign he mentions is #MigrantsContribute!

He writes: ”[The group is] a social media-style name for a campaign that aims to bust into the mainstream with its core message that, far from being the unwelcome border crossers looking for a free ride so often presented by unscrupulous politicians and headline writers, migrants come to the UK full of hope and expectation that they will have the opportunity to contribute fully as fully rounded people in British society, and not merely exist as dehumanized factors of economic production.”

In order to get into the mindset of the far-right populist and those that spread anti-immigration rhetoric, it’s important to spot the red herring(s).

Since some politicians of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* of Finland, an anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party, built their political careers on a message of intolerance, it’s clear that they seek today to find some kind of legitimacy.

An effective way of doing this is by giving a more mainstream image of the party and of oneself.

While such political parties and politicians may want to forge a new image of themselves, the context hasn’t changed at all.

They use underhanded and cheap-trick arguments to achieve a mainstream facelift. These arguments change constantly because they are based mostly on hearsay. If they stayed put, they’d be exposed as lies in many cases.

One typical argument used today by anti-immigration politicians is the following: We aren’t against immigration.”

The problem with this odd affirmation is that they are against immigration. It’s like the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. A white migrant Prince Charming appears, kisses the native Sleeping Beauty, she awakens and they live happily ever after in their white society.

If we dig a bit deeper into this claim by some anti-immigration parties and politicians, we’ll find another layer that is highly revealing. By wanting only white, or the right migrants, our real aim is to keep our society white. Thus anti-immigration groups are against non-white migrants because they loathe cultural diversity.

Another important matter that Migrant Tales has taught me is to be especially careful with those that offer simplistic answer to complex questions like integration.

One of the most common simplistic arguments used in Finland – in my opinion – is learn Finnish or Swedish and problem solved: You’re integrated!

Learning the local language is crucial and plays an important part in the migrants adaption to his or her new homeland, but it isn’t, however, a panacea to integration.

By giving into simplistic arguments like “just learn the language,” we forget other equally important issues like why integration should be the rule but too often everyone expects you to assimilate. There are many other factors we lose sight of as well: acceptance, inclusion, respect for cultural diversity, identifying pitfalls like poor performance of third-culture children at school, ethnic profiling, high migrant unemployment, poverty, health and social exclusion.

* 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.

Healthy advice: Don’t flirt with racism, include don’t exclude, involve and we’ll learn to live together

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Migrant Tales

One of the matters one learns after answering thousands of comments on Migrant Tales and posting near daily on this humble site is the language and arguments used by anti-immigration groups, which are openly against a Finland that is international, multicultural and open.

By multicultural I mean treating everyone in this country, irrespective of their background, with respect and equality.

Those who are for “white power” can say it subtler terms like“we must find work for all of our jobless before we can think about migration.” In plain English it’s known as white privilege.

A common argument used by the anti-immigration camp in Finland, even by well-intentioned socialists, is that “we must find work for all of our jobless before we can think about migration,” or we can only think about migration “when matters for ethnic Finns are optimal.”

If we expose the red herring and decipher the code behind these arguments, the following dangerous message emerges: We don’t want any migration. We are against multiculturalism, cultural diversity and our global integration.

Apart from being a subtle yet dangerous declaration of war against migrants and minorities in Finland, it leaves is with the following critical questions:

What about those that live here, pay taxes and who aren’t white Finnish-speaking Finns? Do they have to wait for full employment before their situation improves?
Do you accept discrimination as an effective means to guarantee “that all white Finnish-speaking Finns will be employed?”
Are you denying who you are, your identity and history if over 1.2 million people emigrated from Finland between 1860 and 1999?
Have you forgotten the suffering of refugees if we had 420,000 of them from Karelia after the last war?
Is the United States’ Civil Rights Movement (1955-68) an answer?

Don’t be fooled by the “we must employ ethnic Finns first” argument because such advocates believe in your social exclusion and keeping you, your children and grandchildren as a second- or third-class citizen in this society indefinitely. By denying you a rightful identity other than “migrant” or “person with migrant background,” is a dead giveaway of your social exclusion and unequal place in this society.

It’s crucially important that present and future generations of Finns, irrespective of their ethnic background, learn from an early age that all forms of intolerance is a threat to our values. There’s nothing Nordic or “patriotic” about being racist and socially excluding others.

What is our goal? To be treated with respect and as equal members of society. This is the best insurance of the survival of our Nordic welfare state. Bring in intolerance and you’ll destroy what took so long to build.

I believe in this country and its ability to tackle anti-Nordic welfare state values like social exclusion and racism. But if push comes to shove, we shouldn’t hesitate for one second to use every democratic means at our disposal to drive home our point. And that is what we are doing or should be doing at this moment.

Invovle everyone but especially those who are socially excluded and especially vulnerable.

The high price of being too alike and not thinking outside the ethnic and national box

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Some may correctly ask what is the price Finland pays today for its lack of cultural and ethnic diversity. Finding answers to this question would require some serious thinking outside our ethnic and national box.

This question is an important one today for two reasons: Our population is seeing dramatic changes due to the graying of the population while the growth of anti-immigration sentiment is becoming more visible through parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS).

These are the lies that parties like the Ukip are spreading. Nigel Farage of the Ukip and Timo Soini of the PS are political and ideological soul mates.

According to one forecast by Statistics Finland, 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).

While such parties and voices want to make Finland white again, the fact is that this can never happen but promise voters that they’ll do just that. Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders shocked Holland recently when to supporters that “we’re going to take care” that there would be less Moroccans in Holland.

Here’s a question politicians like PS MP Jussi Halla-aho or Wilders won’t answer: If you are so much against multiculturalism, what will happen to those people you constantly loathe after you tighten immigration policy and close your borders to the visible migrants and refugees?

When I moved to Finland, there were very few foreigners. In 1980, there were officially 12,843 migrants.

Unfriendly labels were given to non-Finns back then like muukalainen, or alien. In order not to upset our giant eastern neighbor, the former Soviet Union, refugees from that country weren’t called as such but known officially as loikkarit, or defectors.

While hundreds of thousands of Finns emigrated from this land between 1860 and 1999, our foreign population has been relatively small. During independence, it reached a peak in 1928 of 29,685 migrants and hit an all-time low in 1970 of 5,483 migrants, according to three sources cited by the Migration Institute.

Matters have changed since EU membership in 1995. Finland’s foreign population has grown steadily and last year 195,511 people, accounting for 3.6% of the country’s total population, lived here, according to the Population Register Center.

If we look at the Restricting Act of 1939, which effectively shut Finland from foreign investment and foreigners, and that first aliens act that came into force in 1983, or 66 years after independence, it’s pretty clear that we haven’t been a nation that has accepted foreigners with open arms.

This attitude and suspicion of the outsiders creeps in everywhere. In the 1970s, when Finland considered bringing foreign workers to compensate for the over 700,000 Finns had emigrated to Sweden after World War 2, the government decided against bringing foreign migrants.

Returning back to the original question, has our lack of cultural and ethnic diversity been a positive or negative matter, sheds light in my opinion on many of our economic, social and political problems. Does our lack of cultural and ethnic diversity explain the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS), Finland’s ever-growing anti-immigration sentiment, and some who are quite open these days about their fascination with fascism?

Matters would be quite different today if Finland were a more culturally and ethnically diverse society like Sweden. I’m certain that issues like racism and discrimination would get more attention and we’d challenge such social ills with more resolve.

One matter that is difficult for me to understand in the ongoing debate about our ever-growing cultural and ethnic diversity is how we’ve forgotten who we are. Over 1.2 million people emigrated from Finland between 1860 and 1999. Think about how much these people mixed culturally with other groups. How come we’ve nearly forsaken them?

While those that loathe cultural diversity will invest a lot of time stressing how different and Other we are, our answer to them should be the following: This land is much as mine as it is yours.

Why do we consider Timo Soini to be “a good cop” if he brought all these “bad cops” to power?

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Doesn’t Perussuomalaiset (PS) leader Timo Soini bear responsibility for giving people like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari, Teuvo Hakkarainen, Olli Immonen and a very long list of others a platform to spread their hatred and intolerance? Why does the media let Soini get off the hook so easily?

Is Soini the culprit for anti-immigration sentiment and xenophobia or does he represent something much deeper about ourselves that we’re not yet ready to openly admit never mind challenge in earnest?

If I’d draw a cartoon of Soini, I’d put him in a concentration camp standing in front of people like Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Teuvo Hakkarainen and many others. Soini would tell the media with a poker face and then smile at the end of the following statement: “I’m against anti-Semitism and racism.”

One matter that has perplexed me for quite a while is how the media and journalists, who should know better, is that they treat Soini as some “good guy” in the face of the party’s near-constant anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, homophobic and conservative values.

If we search through the maze of answers and explanations, I believe that what we’ll find at the end of the day will find the word denial as the root of the problem.

I’ll never forget April 17, 2011 when the PS won their historic election victory, rising from the minor leagues with 5 to 39 MPs! Some thought it was something passing that wouldn’t last too long. They claimed that it’s only a question of time when internal bickering would cause the PS to implode like the Rural Party did in the 1970s.

One of the most incredible matters about the rise of the PS is how little opposition it has had and how easily it has been allowed to spread its intolerance. Institutions like the media have played a helping role. From a migrant’s or minority’s standpoint, however, the view is quite different since the PS is seen as hostile and dangerous.

Since one of the PS’ main messages is that non-white migrants and refugees should not be allowed to move to Finland never mind marry Finns because they are lazy and even stupid, it’s pretty clear how the PS exploits fear and racism.

Certainly the denial that takes place in our society of the PS wouldn’t be possible without the help as well of the other parties, which may have the same closest racists among their ranks like the most outspoken anti-immigration voices of Soini’s party.

The PS are not a threat to Finland per se, but our denial of them and our own intolerance are.

Jussi Halla-aho’s broken record: destroy cultural and ethnic diversity

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Migrant Tales

We hear over and over again the same anti-immigration diatribe by politicians like Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho, who complain constantly about too liberal immigration policy and multiculturalism.

PS MP Jussi Halla-aho would like to restrict free movement of people in Europe and tighten migration policy if elected Euro MP, according to Swedish-language daily HBL. Read full story here.

Even if the Finnish media and politicians consider Halla-aho near-invincible, he is very vulnerable. What would happen if the PS return to the single-digit-percentage league like before the 2011 parliamentary elections?

Would Halla-aho face the same fate as his ideological soul mate MP James Hirvisaar, who has been largely forgotten by the media after he was sacked from the PS in October?

In the same far-right populist style as other politicians in his dubious group, Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, whines near-constantly about multiculturalism but does not offer any solutions. He does not give any solutions because he’d lose a lot of support if he did.

Much of the prejudices that Finns house today are parroted by Halla-aho. One of these is his hostility of our cultural and ethnic diversity. If he ever got enough power and backing, it would be only a matter of time when he’d expose his dark side on how to maintain Finland white. He’d suggest something that Dutch anti-immigration extremist Geert Wilders said recently.

Wilders outraged many people in Holland in March and much of the political establishment, including his own party, by telling a crowd of supporters that he would find a way for Holland to have fewer Moroccans.

It’s Halla-aho and his kind that should get with the times. Finland was, is and will be ethnically and culturally diverse.

Sweden’s white paper on the abuses and rights violations against the Roma will have a positive effect on Finland

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Sweden published on March 26 a white paper on abuses and rights violations against the Roma during the last century. The white paper is significant since it is the first time that the Swedish government has published and acknowledged Sweden’s long history of discrimination against the Roma minority. Should Finland follow Sweden’s example?

If sociologist and economist Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) pointed out that “discrimination breeds discrimination,” contrarily positive concrete steps that challenge discrimination help undermine it. Myrdal referred to this type of knock-on effect as cumulative causation.

Read full story here.

Despite the white paper, discrimination against the Roma is still very much alive in Sweden. Migrant Tales reported last week that a Roma wearing her traditional dress was escorted out of the hotel’s breakfast room. The woman was an invited speaker at the event where the white paper was announced.

In Sweden, compulsory sterilization of the Roma took place between 1934 and 1974.

Already in the middle ages the Roma, which are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe with 6 million members, European states enacted laws that were specifically designed to marginalize and victimize them.

Writes the European Roma Information Office (ERIO): “In fact, a number of heads of state legalized the killing of Roma and anti-Gypsyism became widespread amongst the generation population across the continent. The long-held and socially ingrained prejudice

against Roma, culminated in the destructive and violent ideologies of the Nazi’s in the Third Reich…Along with numerous other

communities, the Roma were classified as Untermenschen (subhuman creatures) by the Nazi regime, and between 220,000 and 1.5 million Roma were systematically exterminated in the Holocaust.”

While the number of the Roma has been smaller in Finland than Sweden, today numbering about 10,000, greater official recognition pf the wrongs committed against the Roma in Sweden, effective anti-discrimination legislation and the role of education on cultural diversity play key roles in not only improving the lives of the Roma in this country but other minorities and migrants.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said a Roma official in Finland. “But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

What Finnish school children from a small town think about racism?

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Migrant Tales

During the European Action Week Against Racism (March 15-23), I had the opportunity to visit an elementary and middle school in rural Eastern Finland. The event, which was organized by the Red Cross, asked elementary and middle school students to do a posters pointing out the good and bad things about Finland. Some did short plays demonstrating intolerance.*

Since the educational system in Finland is one of the best in the world according the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results, we’re speaking of well-informed students.

Gathering from some of the posters that the students made, I’d be surprised if some of the students didn’t list prejudice as a negative factor about Finland. What do these posters reveal to us about some of the challenges we face in strengthening our Nordic values, which rest firmly on social equality and against all forms of intolerance?

Here’s some food for thought:

The posters don’t mention anywhere multiculturalism, or about our ever-growing culturally diverse society;
Insight: Cultural diversity is here and now. It’s not tomorrow or after tomorrow. What positive steps must we take in order that everyone, irrespective of his or her ethnic and cultural background, is treated with respect?
Since there are very few migrants in this town, its’s clear students see foreigners as refugees, which are a minority of Finland’s migrant population;
Insight: How do we change this image to show that migrants bring progress, hard work and new blood? Aren’t these new inhabitants going to pay taxes and some take care of our elderly?
The most revealing matter of the day happened at the cafeteria during lunchtime. The schools only foreign student was eating alone at the table.
Insight: What steps can be taken at schools to bring students together, even if they have different backgrounds?

Certainly the reason why the refugee student eats alone may be her fault as well. Even so, one of the complaints of some refugee students who attended the same school was their difficulty in making friends with Finnish classmates.

Some of the short 3-5-minute plays that the students performed showed how prejudice works. According to them, underestimating a migrant’s intelligence or language skills by speaking slowly like to a child were seen as clear cases of prejudice.

This poster lists unemployment benefits, free schools, associations like the Red Cross and refugee centers as “positive” factors about Finland, while cold winters, people with prejudices, cold winters, expensive country, unclear ingredients listings and language as negative factors.

This poster by middle school student listed free school meals, peace, free elementary school, nature, high educational level and other factors as reasons why migrants should move to Finland. Bad things were junk food and litter in the yard.

Some posters didn’t mention any negative things like this one above. According to this poster, landscape, school, health, lakes, security and food are factors why you should move to Finland.

This picture was added Monday. It is the only poster that claims racism as something negative about Finland. Other negative factors that it lists include prejudice, taxes, alcoholism. Some positive factors include brave people, beautiful nature, warm summers, health care, friendly people, free comprehensive school.

So what do Finnish school children from a small town think about racism?

Answer: It’s wrong.

Even if these children show that there is hope that we will be successful in building a society that based on respect for others, a lot of work still remains to be done.

* Even if it was the Action Week Against Racism, term racism was only mentioned once in a poster. They preferred instead to use prejudice as a synonym for the former.

European Network Against Racism report highlights Finland’s racism and discrimination challenges

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Shadow reports on racism in Europe by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) reveals something we’ve not known and written about on Migrant Tales for a long time. Apart from racism and discrimination happening in employment, the question behind the question is why is this still an issue? Why are governments still doing too little?

Read full report here.

Unemployment in Finland is three times higher than the national average, which stood at 8.5% in January, according to Statistics Finland. Even so, you rarely if ever hear politicians or the media bring this fact to public attention. Certainly some do but to show how much of a problem and burden migrants are to our society.

While there are some bold moves to change the current situation like the municipality of Helsinki, which is trying out job applications from anonymous job applications, too little is being done.

The Social Democratic Party of Finland is calling that anonymous applications for state and municipal jobs should be standard practice throughout Finland.

While anonymous job applications clearly show that the migrant unemployment problem may reside with the employer’s prejudices when hiring, one of the key arguments used not to hire migrants and visible minorities is poor Finnish- language skills.

While this may be in some cases, too many Finns, like Finnish-language teachers, place too much emphasis on language. While learning Finnish or Swedish is crucial, it’s not a panacea.

One has only to go to Spain, where there are large Latin American migrant groups who speak Spanish as their native language and are even Catholics. Despite having the same language and religion, discrimination and racism still take place. It shows that adaption and integration are a complex process that hinges on many factors.

Simplifying a social ill like exclusion, racism and discrimination waters down our response to challenge such issues because we lose sight of the other culprits that play equally important roles in the problem.

Just like the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, improving employment among migrants and minorities should be a key priority. It should also be a clarion call of migrants and minorities in Finland and Europe.

So what does the ENAR shadow report on Finland, which cites Migrant Tales as a source, say?

Below are some of its recommendations in the 2013 report:

There should be a concerted campaign through for, instance, diversity training and race awareness education to counter Finnish employers’ prejudice towards hiring migrants and ethnic minorities.
Migrants and ethnic minorities should be encouraged to report discrimination and discriminatory practices at work. They need to be assured by, for example, by NGOS and employment protection bodies such as the Regional State Administrative Agencies about the safeguards against victimisation and harassment prescribed in Finnish legislation.
Recruitment regulations should be clear and straightforward, and enshrined in law, with clear penalties and sanctions for violating them.
Finnish anti-discrimination legislation should be streamlined, and being able to file complaints under it should be made easier for migrants and other ethnic minorities. At the moment, there are diverse provisions of anti-discrimination legislation, which makes it difficult for migrants and even representatives of the native population to understand them.
As a result of the dismantling of the labour offices, which were part of a nationwide reform, such offices should again be available to all unemployed migrants and ethnic minorities.
The labour offices should be structured to cater for the employment needs of migrants and ethnic minorities.
Trade unions and other non-governmental organizations should be more active in fighting labour market discrimination and promote multiculturalism.

The number of homeless migrants in Finland rises sharply in 2013

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Despite a drop in homeless cases in Finland, the number of homeless migrants rose in 2013 to close to 2,000 persons versus breaking the 1,000 mark in 2011, according to the Housing Finance and Development Center of Finland (ARA).* Migrants accounted for 61% of homeless cases in Finland.

Read full statement (in Finnish) here.

The total number of homeless people in Finland stood at 7,500 people, or 420 families.

Most of the homeless lived with either relatives or with acquaintances.

What is significant about the ARA report is that it shows how homeless cases have increased among migrants.

Politicians of the anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam Perussuomalaiset party claim that migrants receive preferential treatment in housing.

*Thank you Finland Times for the heads-up.

Migrant high unemployment in Finland is a good way to measure discrimination and social exclusion

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Apart from Jim Crow laws and centuries of discrimination, one of the many social issues that the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s addressed was high unemployment among blacks. In a country like Finland, which sees work as a crucial pathway to inclusion and acceptance, it’s clear that unemployment is an effective to way to socially exclude and subjugate groups from society.

The expectations of some Finns about migrants is so low that they are willing to accept them to work in low-paying jobs that they would never take.

According to a Helsingin Sanomat article, the jobless rate among migrants rose by one fifth to close to 30,000 migrants compared with a year ago. Migrant unemployment in 2012 totaled over 22%.

As long as unemployment is 2-3 times higher than the national average, it means that migrants, and especially their children, will be denied a better life in Finland.

Why isn’t abysmally high unemployment among some members of the migrant community in Finland an issue? It not only shows, in my opinion, the little social consciousness of some migrants but our little interest in tackling social ills like intolerance and discrimination.

The present situation reveals as well how Finland has benefited from high unemployment among migrants. Not only does it keep certain migrant groups in check, it keeps social workers employed and anti-immigration politicians from parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) in the headlines.

One answer that sheds light on the above-mentioned is that racism makes people and groups invisible.

Read full story here.

Attempting to answer the question, why we’re not paying enough attention to an issue like high unemployment among migrants, is the problem.

Certainly I can give you a long list of excuses why a migrant is unemployed. What I’m not doing is dealing with the many causes of the problem, like structural racism, or how unemployment and social welfare are used to socially exclude migrants.

True, language and the ability of a migrant to adapt to a new country play crucial roles in that person’s adaption and integration.