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An opinion survey ordered by the Swedish-speaking think tank ‘Magma’ has concluded that Swedish-speaking Finns are significantly more positive in their attitudes towards immigration than the Finnish-speaking population.
In January 2009, around 40% of Finnish-speakers questioned in an opinion poll answered that they had the same or partly the same opinion on the statement “an increase in the number of foreigners brings with it useful international influences”. When Magma’s survey asked Swedish-speakers the same question in September this year, 75% of respondents gave this answer.
It is interesting to speculate why Swedish-speakers are, on average, more positive towards immigrant groups. One theory is that Swedish-speakers, as a minority group, find it easier to empathise with other people who find themselves in a similar minority situation. After all, many Swedish-speakers have to make compromises when it comes to their language and habits in order to live their life in an increasingly Finnish-language dominated environment. This experience may cause Swedish-speakers to be more sympathetic towards the demands that ‘trying to fit in’ brings for immigrants. Some people also argue that the average Swedish-speaker is, on average, more international in his or her outlook than the the average Finnish-speaker. Swedish-speakers have often nurtured contacts with the outside world, especially the other Nordic countries, with a greater vivacity. Another argument is that there is a greater degree of community involvement amongst Swedish-speakers who have a more developed “association culture”. This may foster a greater degree of what is known in Swedish as medmänsklighet, roughly “solidarity with your fellow man” or “brotherliness”, amongst those living in Svenskfinland. Of course, all such theories come with their controversies, the stark difference in attitudes is, whatever the reason for them, highly interesting.
This is the conclusion of sociologist Thomas Rosenberg from Lovisa on why some of the Finnish-speaking population are irritated by their Swedish-speaking compatriots.
His remarks come in the wake of the story of an 18-year old Swedish-speaking woman being assaulted at a restaurant in Åbo/Turku by a Finnish-speaking man because she was speaking Swedish.
According to Rosenberg, such a case is nothing new. “I don’t even know how many times I myself have been forced to flee from a pub because I was speaking Swedish – but it’s many”, he told the new Swedish-speaking youth website Peppar.fi. “During the 1970s and 1980s, the aggression against us Swedish-speaking Finns was strong, perhaps stronger even than today.”
Few researchers are prepared to – or dare to – comment on the subject of aggression towards Swedish-speakers by Finnish-speakers, reports Peppar.fi.
Thomas Rosenberg suggests that the reasons behind the increase in anti-Swedish feelings amongst Finnish-speakers may be down to the fact that there has been an increase in Finnish chauvinism in recent times at the same time as populism has grown. According to Rosenberg, this is partly because Europe has become more international and all the more immigrants have arrived. This has caused a kickback reaction. Rosenberg says that we know from the past that negative attitudes towards other cultures have always been strong in Finland, “we are a young nation. What we see now is a strong will to defend Finnishness. It is somewhat comic that this aggression is often directed towards us Swedish-speakers instead of towards immigrants”.
On being asked what Swedish-speakers can do to counteract this aggression, Rosenberg replied that “it is hard because the Finnish-speakers have a picture of us as being happy, positive and pleasant people. This image that they have created of us creates envy. We are not really freed from the stamp of being “bättre talande folket”* just because we are so damned happy and integrated and social competent and cocktail-knowledgeable and succeed so well. We appear to seem as governors of the poor Finnish-speakers in their image. That can be irritating for them. The stamp of us being the elite remains.”
Rosenberg suggests that Swedish-speakers lower their demands in order to improve relations. He suggests that a regional dimension is bought to the fore and suggests that we should abandon the concept of “forcing” people to learn Swedish throughout the entire country.
“I belong to the those that spoke in favour of abandoning compulsory Swedish language lessons in Finnish-speaking schools. We paid a high price for ‘compulsory Swedish’ because it was so unpopular. In the coastal areas [where the majority of Swedish-speakers live], people absolutely ought to study the minority’s language, but I think it is politically unwise to do this in the whole country. We should think in regional terms and restrict Swedish in Finland to the coastal areas – but there we ought to get stronger rights”
On being asked whether he was speaking about a ‘reserve’, Rosenberg answered yes. “Svenskfinland [Swedish-speaking Finland] is already a reserve to a great extent. We ought to reach a historic compromise and wind down the demand for a bilingual Finland and give up ‘compulsory Swedish’, just so long as we do not need to beg an apology for speaking Swedish in Svenskfinland.
Rosenberg hopes that reaching such a compromise would be possible. “Swedish is currently continually being undermined as an official language. There is just an long series of loses, and it is certainly the fault of politicians. We have too long lived with the belief that we have a good language law – but it reflects an early twentieth century reality that we no longer live in. I do believe that in the long run, the historically dependant prejudice based on us being ‘occupants’ will disappear. But we’re not there yet”.
* Svenskatalande bättre folk – “Swedish-speaking better people”. A common stereotype held of the Swedish-speaking Finns, usually with a derogatory meaning. Based on an untrue image that the Swedish-speakers are all rich and perhaps snobbishly assume that they are a ‘better people’ than the Finnish-speakers.
This article is based heavily on Peppar.fi’s article, which can be found here [SV]. Thus, any errors and the woodenness of the translation are entirely my fault!
SFP Party Conference 2009 in Helsingfors
The Swedish People’s Party (SFP) held its party conference at Arcada in Helsingfors this weekend.
The issues that have been most picked up in the media can all be said to be encompassed as equality related:
- Leader Stefan Wallin condemned the True Finns fishing for votes in the undercurrent of racist attitudes its campaign for the EU parliamentary elections in June. SFP can be said to have one of the least hostile policies on immigration of the Finnish political parties.
- SFP voted to propose that women also be included in military service, to a far greater degree than today.
- Most controversially, SFP voted to support adoption rights for same-sex couples (of any children put up for adoption, not just the children on one of the partners as Finnish law has just been changed to allow). The party voted 108-83 in favour of this motion.
Whilst SFP’s position on all of these issues can be said to be steps in the right direction for equality and liberal thought, the pragmatist can put them into question by wondering to what degree they go along with what should be the party’s key aim: the winning of votes. After all, if SFP does not ensure support at elections, it won’t be in a position to speak out for liberal values to any extent at all. SFP must be careful not to forget its principal raison d’etre: the defence and safeguarding of the position of the Swedish-language in Finnish society. To be able to do this, it needs to unite the Swedish speaking electorate. They also form the party’s core voting bloc; risking alienating or splitting them is dangerous for the party’s future. Yet, some of these decisions, perhaps especially that on same-sex adoption risk just that. There is a serious risk that this decision will alienate a not insignificant core of conservative SFP supporters, particularly in Österbotten, an area where so-called ‘traditional’ religious values are still strong. Whilst I, and many in the liberal wing may support these recent policy decisions, they may run the risk of undermining the more important task of the party, safeguarding Swedish. Certainly, SFP may pick up extra votes from the other language group, for instance from Finnish-speakers appalled at the racism of the True Finns and seeing SFP as the only party to truly condemn them. But will these be enough to replace those votes lost from the party’s key electorate? I doubt it. And even if they are, they are unlikely to come from people who give as much importance to the protection of Swedish.
Time will tell. But I fear that in the current political climate, where Swedish is under threat more than at any point in the last twenty years, SFP can not afford to alienate its core supporters. It is time for the party to unite and concentrate on its key mission. I hope that’s the conclusion that this autumn’s special extraordinary conference will come to. It was announced this weekend as being a chance for SFP’s grassroots to involve themselves to an unprecedented degree in the party’s policy-making. A chance to shape the direction of the party for the next few years.
I recently discovered an interesting blog called ‘Migrant Tales‘. The author of which is clearly concerned with immigration matters and writes a lot on Finland’s migration politics. Often, in debates on how immigrants should be integrated into Finnish society, one hears the argument “When in Rome, do as the Romans”; in other words, that integration should mean that migrants to Finland so quickly as possibly forget their own background and take on entirely a Finnish lifestyle – essentially abandoning or replacing their own cultural values and taking on ours completely. This argument comes up in comments to Migrant Tales and in many other online and offline debates on immigration and integration policy.
This “When in Rome, do as the Romans attitude” got me thinking today when I heard a story on Yle Radio Västnyland (I’m on holiday at the moment in my wife’s home area near Ekenäs) this morning about the increase in people moving from the capital region to the rural municipality of Ingå. The report was about this high level of Finnish-speakers moving into Ingå causing the municipality’s sole Finnish-language school becoming overcrowded and featured a Kokoomus (National Coalition party) Finnish-speaking member of the Ingå council suggesting that Ingå ought to urgently look to constructing a new, second Finnish-language school in the municipaltiy as many Finnish-speaking families were “making do” with putting their children in Swedish-language Ingå schools to save them from travelling longer distances to the municipality’s one Finnish school.
Now, I wonder what the “When in Rome, do as the Romans” attitude holders would make of this. Surely if Rome were Ingå, and one was to do as the local ‘Romans’, one should be adopting the Swedish-language rather than insisting on Finnish language services. Today’s Ingå is a bilingual municipality with Swedish as the majority language (according to the municipal website, around 57% of the 5 458 residents speak Swedish – 40% have Finnish as their mother tongue.) If one went back to 1950, before any widescale immigration to the municipality had got underway, you would have found that 89,5% of Ingå’s residents spoke Swedish as their mother tongue (according to Folktinget’s statistics). Before the wars of the 40s, you would have found that the municipality was unilingually Swedish-speaking. So, presumably if you held the “When in Rome” attitude, you would be condemning those unthoughtful Finnish-speaking immigrants of today and the latter half of the 20th century for not integrating and insisting on the superceding of their own culture on to the Finland-Swedish. You would be accusing them of failing to act as one should in Rome.
Incidentally, this argument could be applied to many, many more districts – including municipalities that no Finnish speaker would think of as a traditionally Swedish-speaking area today; for instance, the capital region’s Esbo (Espoo) which is today’s second largest city in Finland with around 235 000 residents (mainly due to immigrants from the rest of the country moving to the capital region) was 43% Swedish-speaking still in 1950. Today it is 8,9%. Before the wars and in the first half of the 20th century it was still a very rural, sparsely populated unilingual Swedish municipality. Is this another example where the “When in Rome” attitude holders would see a failure?
Now, I’m not arguing for the application of the “When in Rome, do as the Romans” (i.e. integrate completely or stay away) attitude in official policy. Hopefully my thoughts here help expose such thinking as unrealistic at the very least. I would love to hear from some “When in Rome, do as the Romans” attitude holders as to whether their beliefs also cover their own Finnish-speaking compatriots when they have chosen to move to Swedish-speaking areas and often cause them to dramatically change in cultural and linguistic character.
Even if racism is present out in society, it doesn’t get past the garrison gates. There one is treated surprisingly well, according to Awad Khaliif who is currently doing his military service at Sandhamn (Santahamina).
Hufvudstadsbladet (HBL) reports that immigrants are treated impartially and racism is as good as non-existent within the army.
“I don’t feel like an outsider. The atmosphere is good the whole time,” says Awad Khaliif to HBL.
He comes from a Somalian immigrant family but speaks fluent Finnish, like most of the youth that have grown up in Helsinki. In contrast to his friends of the majority population, Khaliif has experienced a lot of racism out in society.
“But not here. One notes that the training makes sure to do its best so that all feel welcome”
The Defence Forces zero tollerance for racism and discrimination is obviously not just nice words on a piece of paper. That said, Khaliif doesn’t believe that racism stops existing just because one is doing one’s military service. But it does at least become invisible.
“Perhaps it is because of the system that one never hears any swearwords here. The military has its rules. It’s compulsory to follow them.”
Khaliif believes that for the most part racism is on the way to diminishing in Finland. The younger generations that have grown up together with immigrant children are clearly more tolerant than the older people.
“We went to the same schools and now we put on the same military uniforms to learn how to defend the same country. With that skin colour doesn’t any longer matter”
Khaliif seems neither more or less motivated than the other conscripts to complete military service. But if Finland ended up at war, he would fight for the country.
“One certainly must”
Khaliif is doing his service in Uusimaa’s jägare battalion (Uudenmaan Jääkäripataljoona) as is also Fatmir Pllana. He is a Kosovo Albanian and came to Finland when he was four. He is very satisfied with how he has been received in the army.
“Here everyone is treated the same. I know several Somalians and they have never complained,” he says.
Pllana thinks that the Defence Forces are good at integrating immigrants.
“The training can handle people. If someone finds it difficult to understand they have the patience to teach the same thing as many times as necessary until it’s understood. That’s how it must be, we’re dealing with weapons”
Pllana does not believe that the conscripts with an immigrant background are any more or less motivated than others to do military service. On the other hand, he would guess that, as a rule, immigrants are in a bit better physical condition. Being overweight is at least not an immigrant-related problem.
“We have different backgrounds. The Finnish people have been living in such good conditions that they don’t take keeping in shape seriously”.
For Pllana it’s a natural thing to do. He plays football for Grankulla IFK. Accordingly he got through the army’s traditional 12-minute running test well.
“I’ve been playing since I was little. Normally I could pass 3 000 metres in the Cooper test but I had a bit of a cold and stopped at 2 925.”
Nevertheless, not all immigrants have an athlete’s fitness, not even Kosovo Albanians. Jeton Kuka, who’s training to be a signal man at the Swedish-speaking Nylands Brigad’s mortar company stopped at 2 300 metres. Other than that he’s got through Dragsvik (where Nylands brigad is located) well. Even if he has not been affected by racism in civilian life, he does think that military service can facilitate integration because the military command decides who gives and who takes orders regardless of skin colour or ancestry.
“Zero tolerance of discrimination creates a secure situtation where everyone is treated the same. It’s not like that out in society”
Kuka’s family fled the war in Kosovo nine years ago. He was 15 then and ended up in Oravais (in Österbotten) where he began to integrate into the Swedish-speaking Finland, Svenskfinland. He received Finnish citizenship two years ago and therefore was called up for military service.
Apart from the 2 first weeks, everything’s gone well. When he was recruited in January, the independence process in Kosovo was at a sensitive stage and Kuka found it hard to grasp the machine gun training.
“It was terrible but it stopped”
Now he’s not a bit different from any of the other men in the defence service.
“The hardest is getting up in the mornings”, he says.
Kuka will complete his military duty in 6 months. At the beginning of July it’ll be time for the future signalmen to put back on their civil clothes.
“I’m out in 109 days”, he clarifies.
Image: Nylands brigad/Defence Forces. http://www.mil.fi/merivoimat/joukot/uudpr/index_sv.dsp
This blog entry is largely a translation of an article from Saturday 22.3.’s Hufvudstadsbladet. My apologies if it reads a bit hard in English, I’m no professional translator!
