Transit Migration: The Missing Link between Emigration and Settlement by Aspasia Papadopoulou-Kourkoula

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Work in the kebab economy

Immigrants from Turkey often end up as self-employed or employees in the fast-food and restaurant sector in Finland. The concept of ethnic economy describes the employment pattern in this particular economic sector. The article suggests that substantial state involvement is not necessarily in conflict with the existence of ethnic economies, and in some instances welfare state policies may even support the creation of ethnic economies. The article discusses both positive and negative consequences of an ethnic economy for the employees in the `kebab economy'. Since the Finnish general labour market is, for the most part, closed to immigrants, Turkish employees end up in a situation where they work under bad working conditions in kebab shops, hoping one day to be able to start their own business. The results of the study highlight the importance of the wider economic, institutional and social contexts in which immigrant businesses operate

Ethnic boundary making among Swedish migrants in Helsinki

This is a study of ethnic boundary-making strategies promoted by Swedish migrants in Finland. The results are based on interviews with a sample of migrants in Helsinki without previous personal connection to Finland. The interviewees can be considered privileged migrants, and the study provides new information on the strategies of ethnic boundary making promoted by members of privileged ethnic groups. In Helsinki, the migrants from Sweden navigate a social field with local ethnic boundaries, including an autochthonous Swedish-speaking minority. Despite social integration in Finnish society, the migrants choose the strategy of boundary blurring, whereby the interviewees wished to question the importance of ethnic and national belonging. This choice of strategy can be explained by the ambivalence they experience in navigating the local ethnic categories and language policies. Thus, the results describe how societal structures shape individual strategies of ethnic boundary making.Peer reviewe

Finnish Civil Servants on Harmonization in the Asylum System: A Study in Horizontal Europeanization

This article presents a Finnish perspective on harmonization within the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). The article analyses results from a study of the judgments and experiences of Finnish civil servants concerning the harmonization of the CEAS. The year 2015 constitutes a shift in asylum policies in many European countries, and a key question is how this shift has influenced the process of harmonization of asylum policies and practices. Senior civil servants working in the state administration of asylum and migration issues in Finland were interviewed anonymously as part of a comparative European research project (CEASEVAL). The interviews indicate that EU‐wide administrative cooperation has developed into a broad and diverse cooperation in recent years. The interviewees in Finland generally found harmonization of the asylum system to be necessary, which was connected to a need for greater predictability of the outcomes of the system. The results of the study suggest that Finnish asylum administration is developing toward harmonized practices involving transnational and supranational administrative cooperation in the field of asylum. The results support the conclusion of previous research that there is a process of horizontal Europeanization in which administrative practices develop organically within national asylum administration, independently of political disagreements at the EU level. This is relevant both to the framing of political issues and to research on Finnish migration and asylum policies, which need to take into account the ongoing European harmonization of policies and administrative practices.Peer reviewe

Combining Mixed Embeddedness and Transnationalism : The Utilization of Social Resources among Turkish Migrant Entrepreneurs

Peer reviewe

True Finns and Non-True Finns : The Minority Rights Discourse of Populist Politics in Finland

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The Transferability and Mobilisability of Transnational Resources : The case of Turkish entrepreneurs in Finland

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The Utilisation of Migrant Capital to Access the Labour Market : The Case of Swedish Migrants in Helsinki

Peer reviewe

Migrated from Sweden : A study of Swedish experiences in Helsinki

Antalet svenska medborgare som flyttar till Finland har stadigt ökat. Inflyttad från Sverige förklarar dynamiken i den nya svenska migrationen till Finland. Inflyttares erfarenheter analyseras med hjälp av teorier inom migrations- och etnicitetsforskningen. I boken presenteras en intervjustudie med svenska medborgare bosatta i Helsingfors. I fokus för studien står erfarenheter av sociala integrationsprocesser och etniska gränsdragningar i en lokal kontext. I Helsingfors utgör svenskspråkiga en språkminoritet. Analysen ger en förståelse för hur svenskar positionerar och orienterar sig i denna nya sociala och språkliga kontext. Boken är ett unikt bidrag till både invandringsforskningen i Finland och forskningen om utvandring från Sverige.Peer reviewe