Search results for "maahanmuutto"

Migrant women, work, and investment in language learning : Two success stories

2019

Abstract In the media, migrant mothers are often portrayed as uneducated, having trouble learning a new language, and preferring to stay at home rather than entering paid employment. This article offers a contrasting point of view as a result of examining how two migrant women narrativize their experiences of language learning and working-life-related integration during a three-year period. Specific attention is paid to how the women make sense of their language use over time, and how this may have contributed to their integration into working life and the wellbeing of their families. Interview data was analyzed using the short story analytical approach, focusing on both the content and the…

Contesting Family in Finnish and Canadian Immigration and Refugee Policy

2012

Adopting a governmentality perspective, this article explores the multi-conceptuality of family in Finnish and Canadian immigration and refugee policy domains by analyzing official and political discourse. Contestation is found to typically manifest as conflict between Western ‘nuclear’ and non-Western ‘extended’ understandings of family. We argue that family is persistent in immigration and refugee policies of both countries because it continues to be thought of as an effective tool for biopolitical governance of national populations. A closer reading of the contestation over family also reveals competing neoliberal and neoconservative governmental rationalities situated within broader int…

Refracting the Analytical Gaze: Studying Media Representations of Migrant Death at the Border

2020

Predictors of Finnish Adolescent’s Prejudice towards Russian Immigrants and the Effect of Intergroup Contact

2016

This study examined perceived threat as a predictor of Finnish adolescent’s prejudice towards Russian immigrants. Moreover, since Russian immigrants represent the largest immigrant group in Eastern Finland, this study also explored the relationship between intergroup contact, threat, and prejudice. The sample consisted of 305 Finnish adolescents ranging from 11 to 19 years old. Results showed threat to be a significant predictor of prejudice towards Russian immigrants in Eastern Finland. Individually, negative stereotype was found to be the only threat that significantly predicted prejudice towards Russian immigrants. Realistic and symbolic threats were not important to the attitudes of Fin…

THE CONCEPT OF “FAMILY” IN SOMALIS’ IMMIGRATION TO FINLAND Views from Immigration Officials and NGOs

2016

In Addis Ababa one can see dozens of Somali families waiting daily in front of the Embassy of Finland to be interviewed. The interview represents a means of entering Finland, since those waiting presumably have a so-called family re-unifier in Finland, a relative who has of ten already received a residence permit and sometimes even citizenship. This article examines the family reunification process of Somalis who travel from Ethiopia to Finland. Drawing on the experiences related by Finnish immigration officials, it focuses on the fact that they do not share the same definition of “family” as the Somali asylum applicants. Using extensive inter views and observations, this article aims to el…

Presidential speeches and the online politics of belonging : Affective-discursive positions toward refugees in Finland and Estonia

2019

The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ has added urgency to the social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in European societies. This study explores how emotions figure in this politics of belonging by studying their discursive mobilization in Finnish and Estonian public debates on asylum seekers. Focusing on presidential speeches addressing the refugee issue, on the one hand, and their reception by online commenters on popular tabloid news sites, on the other, the comparative analysis highlights both similarities and differences in how emotional expressions are employed in these two countries with very different experiences of taking refugees. Despite employing common discursive elements in thei…

Book review: Radha Hegde, Mediating Migration

2017

Live free or die motionless : Walking the migrant path from Italy to France

2018

This essay and the photographs examine visual traces of irregular mobility in the border landscape between Italy and France. The ruined buildings and objects witness decades of movement of undocumented people on this old migrant path across the mountains. By taking the theoretical concept of multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009) the essay argues that the Path of Hope can be thought of as a memory site through which the issues of migration in contemporary Europe can be seen in a more sustainable light. The ruins and discarded objects link memories of different places – including different border zones – in ways that allow us to critically examine borders as a practice – rather than as exis…

Temporality in cosmopolitan solidarity : Archival activism and participatory documentary film as mediated witnessing of suffering at Europe’s borders

2019

This article develops and extends the idea of cosmopolitan solidarity to temporality through a case study of archival activism and participatory film-making. It examines mediated witnessing within the Italian online audiovisual archive Archivio delle memorie migranti, which documents and archives the experiences of contemporary migrants in Italy. The moral basis of Archivio delle memorie migranti is cosmopolitan solidarity, which is usually understood as a practice that crosses spatial and communal boundaries. However, the ethics of solidarity also bridges past, present and future generations. Through the case of Archivio delle memorie migranti, this article demonstrates the significance o…

Migrants’ economic integration : problematising economic citizenship

2021

Labour market policies to include migrants in their host societies through strategic integration activities usually relate host country belonging to labour market success, commodifying citizenship. Labour market success, however, is not “belonging;” raising the question of whether “economic citizenship” is a misnomer. National citizenships embed territorial, social and ethnic hierarchies in unequal ways. Migrants at the moment of their mobility are outside these national solidarities, and thus are commodified, with their rights depending on their labour market value. Access to national citizenship rights is an important structuring element in segmenting globalizing labour markets. peerRevie…