Suspicion of foreigners in Finland is due to history

I am not the first person by far to state that multiculturalism, or living in a society with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, does not pose challenges. The gravity of the challenges, however, depend a lot on the dominant culture. Will we accept to live with difference?

Certainly it would be a gross generalization to state that modern Finnish society lives in a sort of time warp where everything is static culturally; that is, there are no cultural and life-style variations.

If you want to understand the challenges of living in a multicutlural society, we would have to study it through a historical perspective. Finns had struggled hard in the nineteenth and early twentieth century for language and cultural rights.

When Finland gained independence in 1917, it started to forge a stronger and real sense of national identity that was hostile to Russia and to a lesser degree to the Swedes, its two former masters. In the nation-building identity process there has naturally been a strong emphasis on “us” and “them.”

This “us” and “them” took us into odd cultural explanations of our origins. Even in the 1960s some academics thought that the we were not even European but some odd group that migrated from central Russia to this part of the world. The emphasis of these types of affirmations must have been to strengthen our uniqueness in relation to others.

These strong nationalistic views were in our laws as well. Up to 1995, when we became a EU member, foreign investment to Finland was dictated by the Restricting Act of 1939, which effectively kept foreign investors out of key sectors of the economy as well as restricted land ownership.

Tough laws were also in force for immigrants who wanted to move to Finland. The message was clear: foreigners were seen as a threat and not as an opportunity.

Certainly history had a lot to do with the enforcement of these laws.

If our history, reinforced by our education, instills a strong sense of nationalism and a hostile view of countries such as Russia, this must also rub off on other national groups that are dissimilar to us. The whole process is not based on general acceptance but on suspicion.

Therefore, one of the challenges that multiculturalism will bring is doing away with some of our old hangups about people from other countries. Some claim that most Finns do not have no problems with this while others may disagree.

I personally believe that the indifference of Finnish society towards immigrants can be seen in high unemployment figures. Even though there are many explanations for this, it is a valid indicator of the immigrants’ position in our society. Finns prize work as their lives. Employment is a ticket to membership in this society – being unemployed means you are out and marginalized.

When foreign unemployment figures get closer to total unemployment, maybe this will also be a reflection that attitudes are starting to change.

Foreign unemployment compared with total unemployment

Year          Foreign      Total unemployment

1994            53%              17%
1995            49%              15%
1996           48%               15%
1997            44%              13%
1998            39%               11%
1999            37%              10%
2000           31%               10%
2001            31%                9%
2002            28%                9%
2003            28%                9%
2004            27%                8%
2005            28%                8%
2006            24%                8%
2007            21%                7%
2008            21%                6%

Source: Statistics Finland, Ministry of Employment and the Economy