Tag: Cultural diversity in Finland

KOTOUTUMINEN #14: Disseminate and vanish

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Remember back in the 1990s when Finland brought Vietnamese refugees and dispersed them like pepper throughout Finland? It appeared back then that the main goal of the migration authorities was to disseminate newcomers and make them vanish.

One matter that this type of coercive assimilation aimed at doing was to ensure that these Vietnamese boat people would not form communities. By not enabling them to form strong communities, white Finland was ensured.

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Finns living together in a house in Colonia Finlandesa, Argentina. Source: Olavi Lähteenmäki, “Colonia Finlandesa – Uuden Suomen perustaminen Argentiinaan 1900-luvun alussa”

Even today, you will hear, as I did this week, complaints by some municipal politicians that “too many migrants live in one area of the city.”

“Why don’t they disperse them and force them to live elsewhere?” one of the persons in the room asked. “They try to but then they always want to return [to where they lived].”

Not accepting cultural diversity shows how difficult it is for some to share public spaces and accept that Finland has changed. Instead of trying to sweep these people under the rug and pretend that their communities do not exist, why not accept them as an integral part of our society? Aren’t they the new face of Finland?

I wonder what such Finns I heard this week believe is an effective path towards inclusion. Apart from being too simplistic and revealing racist attitudes, such policies would never work.

And what about the hundreds of thousands off Finns that emigrated to other lands? Many stuck together, formed associations and groups, newspapers to defend their culture and lives in their new homeland.

The same thing that migrant and minority communities are doing today.

See also:

*Kotoutiminen is the Finnish term for integration. It came about in the late-1990s because there was no such term in the Finnish language.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Racism in Finland? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

Posted on by Migrant Tales

When I came to live permanently in Finland over 40 years ago, people like me were seen as an ethnic anomaly. Sometimes having a different skin color or looking “foreign” meant receiving microaggressions like people shoving your child with a lighted cigarette that burns them, or hearing a perfect stranger saying something racist to you in public.

I know children who aren’t white Finns of hiding from the sun because it darkens their skin. What kind of a society do we live in where children see the sun as something negative because it tans their beautiful brown skins?

The more culturally diverse Finland becomes more racism. The only reason why some Finns believed that there was no racism in the country was that there weren’t enough foreigners or “foreign-looking people” to load off or test how racist they are.

Matters will get worse before they improve.

The hostile environment, political cowardice and the rise of a hostile Islamophobic party are just a few signs on the wayward journey.

Cultural diversity: The key question that should have been asked on YLE’s A-Studio talk show

Posted on by Migrant Tales

YLE A-Studio had an interesting debate with Perussuomalaisiet (PS) MPs Olli Immonen, Jussi Halla-aho, Left Alliance Helsinki city councilman Dan Koivulaakso and Swedish-language daily HBL journalist Marianne Lydén. Despite assurances by Immonen, Suomen Sisu’s new president, that  the extremist anti-immigration association is against racism, they should their same colors by reinforcing over and over again their loathing for cultural diversity. 

No matter how much Immonen wants to “renew” Suomen Sisu, it will always be an association that has its roots in racism, which they won’t admit, but in their strong opposition to cultural diversity, which he admitted a number of times on the show. In plain English this means demonizing immigrants and visible immigrants.

Far right researcher Jussi Jalonen was interviewed at the start of the program. He made it very clear that Suomen Sisu is an extremist association that is no different from other European extremist groups.

Such groups, like Suomen Sisu, point out that certain ethnic groups  are incompatible with our culture and therefore should not  be allowed to live in Western Europe. It is an old argument used over and over again by those who oppose immigration and cultural diversity.

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Watch full program here.

While few believe that Suomen Sisu is going to champion for more social equality in Finland, their agenda and their new program will be based on undermining cultural diversity and especially limiting immigration from outside Europe. This reinforces the association’s stand on diversity. What they are saying is that few “dark” people should move to Finland. They are, however, willing to accept white European immigrants because they believe they can integrate faster into our society.

The way that Halla-aho and Immonen spoke about how cultures must not mix (multiculturalism) hinges on myths. People have always moved and mixed with people from other groups.

When I hear what people like Immonen and Halla-aho say about diversity, their deep hatred and disregard shows for who I am and how I identify with Finland. According to them, my father, an Argentinean, should have never married my mother. My Jewish ancestors should have stayed where they came from instead of come to Finland in 1799.

In their Nazi- or far right spirited world, we are the so-called Rheinland bastards.

Finland has tens of thousands of so-called multicultural Finns that Suomen Sisu would like to wipe off the map.

Suomen Sisu’s ideology in a Finnish context is very much like the Ku Klux Klan’s and that of the American Nazi Party. They have the same opinions about cultural diversity as the extremist association headed by Immonen. One of the people Suomen Sisu recommends reading is by by Nazi war criminal Alfred Rosenberg.

Immonen and Halla-aho believe that the Garden of Eden was actually in Finland. According to them, people evolved and never mixed with anyone outside their group.

In their minds there is no such thing as black Finns or Finns from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

 

Halla-aho scandal in Finland: Leadership is now needed more than ever

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland’s political parties,  including the Perussuomalaiset (PS), have a golden opportunity to show leadership and make a clear break from Jussi Halla-aho and his Suomen Sisu association followers. We’ll be back, however, to square one if Halla-aho’s heir-apparent, Juho Eerola, becomes the new chairman of the administration committee of parliament. 

Suomen Sisu is an extremist association that discourages Finns from marrying foreigners, especially those with African or Muslim backgrounds.

Suomen Sisu discourages Finns from marrying foreigners. Source: Vallan vahtikoira.

What value can an anti-immigration politician like MP Eerola bring to the administration committee, which sets, among other matters, immigration policy?

Eerola claims that he has enough experience to be the chairman of such an important committee because he has worked at a refugee center in Kotka.  The PS MP is a practical nurse by profession who has done a number of odd jobs to survive before he was elected to parliament last year.

Apart from his unimpressive qualifications and experience to chair the administration committee, one of the matters that should set alarm bells ringing are Eerola’s extremist political views. These are well-known. He once wrote that he liked Benito Mussolini’s economic system because there was full employment.

His views of a dictator like Mussolini and the corporatist state that maintained him in power reveals more ignorance than anything else. How much employment was there in Italy after Mussolini’s policies and political world view brought so much devastation and suffering to the country?

Eerola wasn’t too concerned last year when his aide, Ulla Pyysalo, was found on a membership list of the Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta, a neo-Nazi association.

There has been too much complacency by political parties to a small extremist group within the PS led by Halla-aho. Finland and its political parties have today the opportunity to offer leadership by giving a clear thumbs down to Eerola and begin the process of isolating Halla-aho and his cronies.

There is a clear message in our actions: Finland will not tolerate people who want to exclude others because of their ethnic background.


 

 

 

Debating Finland’s cultural diversity is opening up old wounds

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Ever wonder why immigrants, multicultural Finns, immigration to Finland and refugees don’t have any history in Finland? If historical importance could be measured like a loaf of bread, the history of older minorities like the Saami, Roma, Tartars, Jews and others would be mere crumbs.   

The question why immigrants and minorities don’t have a history in Finland is like investigating the history of the exploited by the exploiters. By not having, or denying a group its history, you forsake them a place in society. Since they don’t exist they have no rights never mind the right to demand them.

In many respects, the social construct of the prototype Finns as the bonafide Finn in the last century was a pretext for steamrolling minorities and denying them their right to be Finns.  It explains why a large part of the population has today difficulty in accepting cultural diversity as natural in Finland.

If we look at the independence of the United States in 1776 or that of other Latin American countries during 1808-1826, there is a big difference with Finland’s independence in 1917. Even though the former loathed the political system that permitted their exploitation under colonialism, a large number of them were former inhabitants or descendants of these European kingdoms. They even spoke their languages as well as practiced their culture and religion.

In Finland, however, it was a different story. History teaches us that we sought independence because we didn’t want to be or were Russians. In order to build a national identity we amalgamated or “fennified” our culture through measures like changing our surnames into Finnish ones. Killing our cultural diversity was acceptable because of our hatred of groups like the Russians.

Does this same hatred affect our good judgement today as a modern twenty-first century nation?

Difficult questions about our history and cultural roots had to be conveniently forgotten by history in order for us to forge a near-monolithic Finnish national identity.

One group that were nearly forgotten were Finnish immigrants and their descendants.

Thanks to the over million immigrants that left this country from the 1860s, Finnish culture has evolved in many lands. Instead of accepting our rich cultural diversity that Finnish immigrants and their descendants gave this nation, we passed strict citizenship laws that disjointed them from us.

Debating what happened to our cultural diversity and why it was nearly erased would be questioning the whole essence of our reason for being as a nation in the twentieth century.

What will come out of such a debate in the future is a question mark. One matter is for certain, however: It should make us stronger at the end of the day because Finnish culture will be more acceptant of its diversity.

An immigrant call to change and Finnish society

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Some wrongfully accuse those of speaking up for cultural diversity in Finland of “whining” and being “ungrateful.” Apart from exercising one’s democratic right of free speech, bigger steps have to be taken by minorities in this country to drive home their message of greater equality and fair treatment.

If we wait for change it will never happen in our lifetimes.

In my opinion, the situation of immigrants in Finland is tragic and shameful. On the one hand, you have people who want to eagerly take part in this society but cannot due to a number of imagined and real factors such as language, while Finnish authorities simultaneously spend a lot of funds and good will on integrating these persons to our society.

The integration program, although well-intentioned, lacks one very important component in order for it to be successful: Immigrants’ input. The program is the majority’s view on how newcomers should integrate into our society.

On many occasions I have mentioned that we do not need any magic trick to integrate immigrants and refugees. Those very values that makeup our society would be enough. However, the problem is that these legal benchmarks enshrined in the Constitution and Non-Discrimination Act do not apply to minorities who don’t speak Finnish or Swedish as natives.

Real integration does not only mean job opportunities but, most importantly, a willingness by society to accept these people. Today unemployment among immigrants is officially 2-3 higher than the national level and by looking at the silence and lack of leadership of Finnish politicians, the closed view of institutions such as the police and the constant attacks by hardline “Finland for Finns” proponents, it is clear what a significant part of the population thinks.

We are still at such a diaper stage in the immigrant debate that some of our politicians and policy-makers do not even grasp why immigration is important for this country but prefer instead to stick their heads in the sand and hide behind nationalism.

Change will not come from the majority because there is a definite lack of leadership in this area. If this is so, we must spearhead change and make our voices heard and take part more vociferously than ever in the ongoing one-sided debate on immigrants in Finland. We must lobby politicians and use all the opportunities and channels offered by democratic society to make our voices heard.

That time has come now.