Image: Marko Seuranen
Written by Atte Harjanne, original article in Finnish: Ilman maahanmuuttoa Suomi olisi köyhempi ja tyhjempi maa (verdelehti.fi)
The share and number of immigrants in Finland’s population has grown rapidly in the 2000s. This has helped the economy, but social change should never be seen only in terms of numbers, writes Atte Harjanne.
In order to escape a facade renovation, I lived for a while during the summer in Tikkurila, Vantaa. Walking through these old neighbourhoods of mine, I couldn’t help but think not just nostalgic thoughts, but also about social change and immigration.
Tikkurila is my childhood landscape, where I lived until my twenties. Memories of childhood stick in people’s minds in a special way, and perhaps that is why Vantaa is such a window to social change for me. When walking around, my brain is constantly comparing the present sights with a clear memory of the past.
My current home city, Helsinki, is constantly changing before my eyes, but it has always been an international, multicultural city in my imagination.
In Vantaa, the most striking changes since the 1990s are the structural development of the economy, the rise in material living standards and the dense construction projects. The soap factory has given way to apartment blocks and so on.
Immigration is also plainly visible. I meet many more people with an immigrant background on the street, and in shops, libraries and playgrounds than I did when I visited the same neighbourhoods in the 1990s.
This change is reflected in the statistics: more than one in four of Vantaa’s school-age children are now foreign-language speakers. Compare that to my primary school in the 90s, when I had few, if any, pupils with an immigrant background in my classes.
Increased immigration irritates some people to such an extent that, even without a coherent political agenda, you can become Finland’s second largest party simply by opposing it. The more cynical may even see a conspiracy of population replacement as the background to the rising numbers.
As such, I understand that there is opposition to immigration. Any kind of change will always arouse opposition, simply because it requires adaptation. Resistance to change is a universal and very common human trait.
I myself wonder what an alternative Vantaa or Finland without immigration would look like today. The mind can easily play tricks on you: in that world, there is no queue at the shop checkout, and instead of immigrants and their children, classrooms are full of soft and shining blond hair. The truth instead is there would be no one to replace those children.
This would have a direct impact on the economy and on the dependency ratio. This became clear also in my own case during the summer, when I ended up in hospital because of a heart condition. The treatment was excellent, and the professionals across the board were both very competent and kind. Judging by the names of the nurses and doctors in the whole care chain, about half were of non-Finnish backgrounds.
Without people coming from elsewhere, there would be an even more acute shortage of people in this sector. Waiting lists would be longer, and public service levels would be collapsed to an even greater extent.
Immigration is one factor in explaining why the Swedish economy has fared better than Finland’s. That is an important thing to remember while we are otherwise criticising the failures of integration in our western neighbour.
The priority of Orpo’s government is the economy. Despite this, it is a government working to reduce immigration. While the policies are worded to mean that only humanitarian immigration will be tightened up, in reality, people are moving to Finland primarily for work and study. Asylum seekers account for only a few thousand of the tens of thousands of immigrants, and it is this work- and study-based immigration that is truly being tightened up by the government.
Were it not for racism, opposing immigration would in principle be a political objective like any other. In pursuing it, it would then be honest to admit that without immigration Finland would be poorer and even more indebted, with a poorer outlook for the future, and a dependency ratio even further skewed. In practice, that means lower pensions after a longer working life, a poorer social welfare system and a drain in the flow of investment coming into the country.
Of course, increasing immigration is not without its challenges—no broad societal change ever is. A wide range of actions are needed to prevent these challenges, from inclusive urban planning to ensuring peaceful school environments and smooth labor markets. The importance of language in integrating into society is also crucial. At the same time, I believe that the greatest responsibility for integration lies, of course, with the immigrant themselves.
The worst recipe for Finland is to stifle immigration, while at the same time fostering a climate in which immigrants and their children who are already here are labelled as undesirable, or are made to understand that they are forever cast as second-class citizens.
After all, racism and prejudice are poison to the placing of roots in Finnish society, and there is still much work to be done to eradicate them. In addition to overt, misanthropic racism, we have to deal with the many forms of structural discrimination and, as the odd HSL advertising ploy reminded us, the fact that bad intentions are not required for people to be seen just by the colour of their skin.
It is also problematic to look at immigration only from the perspective of the economy, labour needs or the dependency ratio, as researcher Pasi Saukkonen has warned. The meeting of languages, cultures and different backgrounds does not just boil down well to the mathematics of macroeconomics.
In addition, immigration is not even a single phenomenon, but rather a bundle of phenomena. It is about people: choices, experiences, encounters, everyday lives. People move from one country to live in another, driven ultimately by the idea of a better life. For some it means an interesting career opportunity, for others it means a better standard of living, increased security, or love. There are as many stories as there are people moving from one country to another.
When I wipe the nostalgia from my eyes, I am quite sure that the everyday life in Vantaa’s Tikkurila in 2024 is better – freer, more equal and richer – than in 1994. Despite its challenges, immigration has been part of this development.
As for my own school days, we were also not purely original, native Vantaa citizens. Many of my classmates were children of immigrants, including myself. This too was a part of a huge social change. Like immigration, urbanisation has also been driven by the quest for a better life, and although it may not please everyone, it is a positive force for change, despite its challenges and tensions.