While extensive research on home-school cooperation has been conducted both in Nordic countries and beyond, the perspectives of immigrant parents have received little attention. To bridge the gap, this qualitative study examines the narratives of 24 South Asian immigrant parents regarding home-school cooperation in Finnish schools. The findings are diverse and include positive experiences, concerns and fear. The positive accounts include satisfaction with teachers' skills, acknowledgement of cultural values by schools, timely feedback and schools' efforts to support migrant families. However, the narratives also highlight practical challenges, such as segregation, bullying of children and teachers' unequal treatment of immigrant families. The study contributes theoretically by extending discussions on home-school cooperation through a sociocultural lens, highlighting how social norms shape cooperation and inviting a re-examination of the concept across diverse cultural contexts. Besides, we offer recommendations for promoting the educational inclusion of socioculturally diverse families in Finland.
This article investigates how Ukrainian migrants and war-displaced persons in Finland experience and evaluate interpreter-mediated encounters in public service settings following the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on 57 open-ended responses from an online sociolinguistic questionnaire conducted between November 2022 and January 2023, the study analyses how the respondents discursively construct language preferences, express emotional and ideological stances and react to the use of Russian-speaking interpreters. The methodology combines qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis and lexico-semantic stance analysis. Four dominant discourses were identified: desire, dissatisfaction, availability and emotion discourses. The desire discourse reflects normative expectations for Ukrainian-language interpretation, articulated through agentive and prescriptive expressions. The dissatisfaction discourse highlights perceived institutional insensitivity and frames the use of Russian-speaking interpreters as symbolic exclusion. The availability discourse focusses on the structural absence or insufficiency of Ukrainian-language services, while the emotion discourse captures affective responses-ranging from frustration and sadness to rare relief-towards interpreter experiences. Collectively, these discourses illustrate a post-2022 shift in the symbolic hierarchy of languages, wherein Ukrainian is discursively elevated as the language of identity, legitimacy and dignity, while Russian is increasingly problematised due to its association with aggression and trauma.
In this article, I explore compassion both as a social emotion and as a practice of encounter in ethnographic research. I argue that compassion is not a plain emotion but instead a socially relational one that prompts cognitive processes, leading to a desire to help. My focus is on how compassion deepens our understanding of vulnerability, exposure and the ethics of care in migration research. Empirically, this article draws on fieldwork conducted with unaccompanied refugee minors in Finland. I examine how emotionally challenging moments of (be)longing manifest in the lives of these young people and how compassion can be used to interpret their experiences. I propose that compassion comprises three interrelated dimensions: practical, ethical and analytical. I conclude that taking compassion seriously offers a pathway towards more ethically sustainable and caring research practices, particularly when working with vulnerable subjects and communities.
This new materialist study explores the entanglement between material culture and transnational belonging and investigates the ways an artifact-an inherited vintage coffee creamer-represents transnational migration trajectories and belonging within one Finnish Canadian family across generations. The analysis, completed through a new materialist lens, demonstrates that the artifact is entangled in the trajectories and stories of family members' lives. The artifact takes on a dual role. First, it offers a context and framework for discussion between the participants in the situation. Second, it acts as a voice in the life narratives of their family trajectories. The material artifact is a mediator, a participant in the implementation of mobility in times and spaces. Intra-action, embedded in the Finnish coffee-drinking tradition, reflects many-sided belonging and mobility patterns and connects the creamer and the study participants to places, family members, time periods, and even emotions. This study is located at the intersection of research on material culture, new materialism, intra-action, belonging, and migration. It emphasizes that things are not just things and highlights the relevance of material culture-here, one artifact- of transnational belonging.
Chile is one of the democracies that has significantly expanded citizenship rights. Foreign-born residents over the age of 18 years who have lived in the country for at least five years are automatically registered on the electoral rolls, are legally required to vote, and are allowed to join political parties. While existing literature examines the socioeconomic and institutional factors influencing migrant electoral participation, there is limited research on partisan affiliation, which represents a more concrete form of political incorporation. This article investigates whether foreign-born party members and voters differ from nationals, as well as how factors such as gender and age influence decisions to participate through party membership and voting. We rely on an administrative census of all registered voters from 2017 to 2020, which includes over 30 million observations-645,000 of which are foreign-born individuals. Our findings indicate that nationals are eight times more likely to be party members and vote 2.5 times more often than foreign-born residents. Among foreign-born individuals, party membership is more common among women and tends to lean more left politically. Among foreign-born party members, turnout is highest for those affiliated with right-wing parties (relative to centrist and left-wing parties).
In this article, we examine barriers to the social integration of highly skilled immigrants in Norway, drawing on qualitative interviews. Many participants described significant challenges in forming friendships with Norwegians. Responding to calls to de-migranticize integration research, we shift the analytical focus from the immigrants to the wider society to understand these challenges. Building on anthropological work-particularly Gullestad's notion of invisible fences-we argue that distinct cultural norms in Norway foster a sense of interpersonal austerity, in which social energy is treated as a scarce resource. Interpersonal austerity may help explain the integration paradox, i.e., that highly skilled immigrants tend to feel more detached from the host country than other immigrants. The combination of frequent interaction with the majority population and limited opportunities to form deeper relationships may heighten feelings of social exclusion. Moreover, immigrants with a cosmopolitan orientation may rely more on personal connections than on place-based belonging to feel anchored. While traditional migration theories emphasize economic austerity as a key motivator, our data suggest that interpersonal austerity can play a comparable role for some immigrants. Overall, our findings indicate that integration outcomes cannot be understood without critically examining the norms and gatekeeping practices of the majority population.
Highly skilled migrants in Sweden are at risk of exclusion from professions commensurate with their qualifications, particularly in regulated fields like nursing. In response, national policies and programmes have been introduced to facilitate the recognition of foreign qualifications and support the integration of skilled migrants. This paper explores how the competencies of internationally educated nurses (IENs) are constructed within bridging programmes, where professional regulators function as gatekeepers to professional re-entry. Drawing on the concept of a 'regime of skill', the study employs a qualitative approach to examine how university educators, administrators and supervisors in clinical training define and evaluate migrant competencies and how such constructions may enable or constrain the professional inclusion of IENs in the Swedish health care system. The analysis identifies two dominant constructions of skill and competency: IENs as an untapped resource and IENs as linguistically and professionally deficient. Both constructions position IENs as 'others', contrasting them with Swedish-trained nurses and reinforcing boundaries around professional belonging, albeit not exclusively through exclusionary practices. This paper argues for the importance of examining sector-specific skill regimes to better understand migrant inclusion or exclusion into the labour market.
The article uses the concepts of social wage and lifestyle migration to discuss the motivators of working-class migrants from Estonia to Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden). The present research challenges the long-standing tradition of depicting working-class migrants as strict income-maximizers, who are merely motivated by obtaining higher wages, regardless of the broader aspects of social well-being (including public welfare) and of lifestyle. Our analysis indicated that working-class migrants possess hybrid motivation for migration: their motivators are connected with social wages as well as lifestyle but in different degrees. Both quantitative data and interview data show that distinguishing different types of migration is problematic and, as suggested, we should move from differentiating between lifestyle and welfare migrants to talking about lifestyle and welfare in migration. The article is based on data from survey 'Estonians in Finland 2019' as well as 30 interviews with Estonian migrants in Sweden and Finland.
This article examines how adult migrants in Finland experience belonging through the social networks they form within and beyond institutional contexts. Drawing on ethnographic research, including interviews with 29 adult migrant students and participant observations in two adult education institutions, the present study explores how adult migrants build, sustain and navigate social ties in their everyday lives. It pays particular attention to how education and employment settings influence these connections. The findings show that structural arrangements in adult education and the labour market often limit opportunities for interaction with the majority population, reinforcing racialised and classed segregation. Institutional logics intended to promote integration may, in practice, reproduce social separation. The emotional experience of belonging is also shaped through everyday encounters, where many participants reported feeling misrecognised or excluded due to racialisation. Intersecting dynamics of race, class and nationality influence who connects with whom, under what conditions and with what consequences. By foregrounding how institutional and everyday practices shape social ties, the article contributes to debates on integration and social inclusion. It argues that belonging is not simply about participation but instead is a deeply political and affective process shaped by power relations embedded in social life.
Refugees often face psychological strain related to war trauma, uncertain legal status, and unfamiliar societal expectations. Health challenges may further hinder their ability to engage in employment, education, and civic life. This qualitative study draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugees in Norway (9 men, 11 women), conducted between February and May 2023. Two overarching themes were identified: (1) the critical role of general practitioners (GPs) through continuity of care, co-negotiation with institutions, and serving as a physical anchor and (2) the importance of self-determination, including the right to change GPs, which supported participants’ sense of agency and resilience. A recurring pattern in the analysis concerns the unintended consequences of compulsory integration programme attendance. For those with physical or mental health challenges, requirements could lead to financial penalties. In this context, GPs served as a counterweight, helping mitigate their negative health and social consequences. While GPs are formally gatekeepers within the healthcare system, this study highlights their broader potential to enhance refugee resilience and integration. When GPs are accessible; trusted; and provide person-centred, continuous care, they help patients navigate both health and welfare systems. However, this expanded role may place unrealistic expectations on primary care services. The results highlight the importance of cross-sectoral collaboration to ensure that the complex needs of refugee populations are addressed in a coordinated and sustainable manner.
This study examines how the Ivoirian reggae musician Tiken Jah Fakoly critically engages with issues of African migration, displacement, and postcolonial identity through his music. Drawing on detailed analyses of five selected songs: 'Le Descendant' (1996), 'O & ugrave; veux-tu quej'aille?' (2004), 'Ouvrez les fronti & egrave;res' (2007), 'O & ugrave; est-ce que tu vas?' (2022), and 'Africain & agrave; Paris' (2007), the article argues that Fakoly's artistic practice serves as musical site of intervention, resistance, and reflection on the complexities of African mobility. Fakoly's lyrical compositions engage the entangled tensions of historical rootedness, structural injustice, existential displacement, and diasporic alienation, thereby contesting dominant narratives that reduce African migration to simplistic or stereotypical frames. In addition to postcolonial lens, the study draws on African epistemologies and cultural knowledge systems to foreground how Fakoly's music reflects indigenous logics of identity, belonging, and resistance, and its analysis reveals that Fakoly's songs articulate a nuanced critique of contemporary border regimes, exclusionary politics, and structural inequalities inherited from colonialism. This study contributes to scholarship in migration studies, African popular music, indigenous knowledge systems, and postcolonial critique by positioning Fakoly's songs as important cultural texts that reimagine migration as both historical consciousness and political praxis.
This article examines how a foreign partner's deportability influences Finnish women. The concept of 'experiential migrantisation' offers particular utility for this analysis in that it elucidates the negative impacts of immigration regimes that these citizens had believed to be applicable only to migrants. Thus, the paper contributes to advancing deportee-focused studies of deportability by examining how deportability and deportations affect citizens-in this case, Finnish female partners, alongside their children. Enquiry proceeding from 12 in-depth interviews and informal observations with eight Finnish women, whose spouses had first sought asylum and then residence permits based on a family tie, lays bare how these citizen women experienced and lived out the threat of their foreign spouse's deportation. In my analysis of experiential migrantisation, I group the experiences of my participants into three broader themes: adopting new roles and questioning one's citizenship, experiencing discrimination and racism, and feeling a lack of temporal or spatial control. The work highlights that, though one must be critically minded when considering experiential migrantisation, it offers a valuable tool for investigating the deep effects of a partner's deportability on spouses and their children.
This article explores the interplay between hope and hopelessness among refugees in Sweden who have been denied asylum and live under the threat of deportation. Based on ethnographic research conducted in a rural municipality in central Sweden (2017-2018), it examines how individuals oscillate between hope and hopelessness under conditions of social and legal precarity, shaping both their thoughts and actions. While hope is often associated with agency and resilience, this study highlights its ambivalent nature-it can sustain individuals in difficult situations but also trap them in cycles of waiting and vulnerability. Hope can be painful when repeatedly dashed, and even used as a means of manipulation. Conversely, hopelessness is not merely a state of passivity or resignation but can foster decisive action and drive change at both personal and societal levels. Recognizing the dual nature of both hope and hopelessness, as well as their interconnection, is essential for understanding the lived experiences of deportable refugees and for developing more humane approaches to migration governance and reception. Building on the findings, the article contributes to the affective turn within the social sciences by proposing a complement to Miyazaki's method of hope (2004) by acknowledging the productive aspects of hopelessness.
