Finnish expats stay in orbit
By Sami Sillanpää
First it was Latvia. Kirsi Ranin moved there, sent by Finnish Telecom in 1994. A couple of years later, her husband Martti Ranin got an interesting job offer from Nokia, and the couple moved to Singapore with their first child Kirre. Next their work took the family to Vietnam, which became the first country where their second child Milla lived.
during the past decade the Ranins moved to Singapore again, back to Finland for a couple of years, then back to Asia, and now on an autumn Saturday the family’s lunch is set on the table in the ample dining room of the detached house where they live in the Thai capital Bangkok.
“What I have learned here is that you can’t anticipate much in this kind of life”, says 49-year-old Kirsi Ranin. “It’s hard to say where we will be a year from now.”
The table is bulging with amazing-looking Thai dishes that the family’s housekeeper brings out of the kitchen. Milla and Kirre heap curry and pomelo salad onto their plates. These Finnish children like rice more than potatoes.
Finnish migration statistics show an interesting trend. Those leaving Finland are primarily Finns. Immigrants are mainly foreigners. Moving out of the country accelerated when Finland joined the EU. In the 21st century economic globalisation accelerated, and a new wave of internationalisation swept over Finnish companies. When a Finnish company moves its factory to China or establishes a sales office in Brazil, Finns are desired there as managers - at least at first.
Finnish expatriates sent abroad by the companies that they work for currently number between 20,000 and 30,000, says Anna Iskala, editor-in-chief of the journal Expatrium, aimed at Finns abroad.
Many Finns live abroad for other reasons as well. Some study, some do it for love. There are Finnish missionaries and there are beach bums. According to official estimates, about 250,000 Finnish citizens live outside of the country - nearly as many as there are Swedish-speakers living in Finland.
The number has grown with each consecutive year since 1992. In the past decade, about 10,000 Finnish citizens moved abroad each year, according to Statistics Finland. Between a few hundred and two thousand fewer have returned.
“I am concerned that educated people are staying abroad”, Iskala says. “They should be enticed to bring their know-how and their experience back here.”
During the meal the doorbell rings. Milla answers it and stays at the door talking to someone in English. The girl next door invited her to their home for a sleepover. Other foreigners and wealthy Thais live in the area where the Ranins have their home. The International School which the girls attend - a plush campus which includes a sports centre - has pupils from dozens of countries.
Their father Matti Ranin, 51, says that living abroad has the same appeal as living as an exchange student in the United States more than 30 years ago.
“I think that the best thing in this life is that one can learn and experience something new every day. It keeps a person stimulated and makes life interesting”, Ranin says.
Ranin’s work has had him crisscrossing Asia, setting up and managing businesses for Finnish technology companies. There are some impressive titles in his CV.
However, the fast-paced life meant that his wife Kirsi had to put her own career on hold for many years.
“I never believed that I would be a housewife”, Kirsi Ranin says. “At first it was psychologically difficult. But it is a privilege to have been able to be with my children and to do many other interesting things.
Finally, in Bangkok, Kirsi Ranin also got work, with the airline SAS.
Their lives are pleasant. The Ranins live on the outskirts of Bangkok, in the Nonthabur neighbourhood. The fenced-off residential area, with its shops, clinics, and churches is like a city on its own.
The other reality of Thailand starts right on the other side of the walls, where the shacks of the poorer local people are.
Under a canopy there is a golf cart and an SUV with a chauffeur waiting. The spacious rooms of the two-storey house are filled with furniture from around Asia. In the garden, the water of the swimming pool glitters.
“This is certainly a level of luxury that we could not attain in Finland”, Kirsi Ranin says. “But the other side is that of being alone in a foreign country. The kind of safety net that there is in Finland does not exist.”
Everyday life is largely similar in all of the places. The children need to be taken to school, shopping has to be done, work, the home, and the relationship have to be nurtured, and there never seems to be enough time. In a foreign country, everyday matters can be difficult.
There is always a traffic jam in the massive city of Bangkok. It is not possible to walk anywhere. There is the worry of how the air pollution might affect one’s health. Even bottled water might be dirty.
Things should be dealt with in Thai, whether it be renewing official permits, finding a plumber, or possibly dealing with a three-metre-long python that slithered into the yard.
And there are not necessarily any family or friends available when one needs someone to look after the children, or a shoulder to cry on. The Ranins’ housekeeper has become something of a surrogate relative and circle of friends. “She is like a grandmother”, says ten-year-old Milla Ranin.
The Ranins say that Vietnam was the country where they enjoyed life the most. They had good local friends there.
The temporary nature of life makes it difficult for expats to build friendships. Acquaintanceship does not necessarily get a chance to develop into friendship before it is time to pack up and leave again.
“My closest friends are still in Finland”, Kirsi Ranin says. Here one can meet many different kinds of wonderful people, but new acquaintanceships often end up being rather superficial.”
Assimilation into the local society is the most difficult in countries whose cultures or levels of development differ sharply from those in Finland. The biggest concentrations of expatriate Finns are in established immigrant countries such as Sweden, the United States, and Germany.
However, statistics from recent years reflect a change in the world economy: increasing numbers of Finns have moved to China, India, and other parts of Asia.
The foreign wanderings of Annika Oksanen began nearly 20 years ago in Zambia. Later the journey has continued, following her husband’s work, to Singapore, Thailand, and most recently, to China.
Oksanen feels that especially in developing countries, expat life often involves living in a parallel reality; expats live in areas populated by Westerners, spending time mainly with other expats, never learning the local language.
“The romanticised image that adapting means swimming into the local culture, is not true. In practice, it is the expat lifestyle, and the rules of that community, that need to be adapted to”, says Oksanen from her home in Shanghai.
Sending an employee abroad is expensive for a company, which is why much is demanded of them. The burden is often something quite different than it is in Finland: long days, weeks without time off, and constant travel.
Employees sent abroad are still mostly men.
“Companies extract everything from their men. The women deal with things at home. The woman can find herself in a situation in which her own life and her husband’s life are two different realities”, Oksanen says.
Oksanen has spent time as a “housewife” doing various things, including writing a doctoral dissertation. The thesis was about Finnish expat spouses in Singapore. The women in the study felt that their roles were psychologically taxing. They did not have jobs of their own, or money of their own. Many found it difficult to take on the identity of a wife at home, and to accept the idea that they need an assistant in dealing with everyday life.
All of this went against the Finnish way of thinking, which, as Oksanen puts it, includes “the ethos of self-reliance”.
Another factor affecting the identity of a Finn living abroad is the change that takes place in the relationship with Finland itself.
Expats are makers of globalisation. They are the human side in the world-changing story in which goods, capital, and services move more quickly across borders. Global companies have become detached from their home countries, and that is something that can happen to their employees as well. Being a Finn - or the citizen of any other country - is not necessarily the primary characteristic in a person’s identity.
After living abroad for 25 years, Michel Wendell says that when he left Finland he did not consider national feelings to be very important. However, he feels that in recent years he has noticed that the sense of being a Finn has grown inside himself.
As I have grown older, I have started to appreciate many things about Finland, like its nature and certain traditions. It is nice to see that at the cottage in the archipelago many things have not changed at all”, Wendell says by telephone from California.
Wendell worked in the field of technology in Sweden and France, and has lived for more than 10 years in Silicon Valley, where he now represents the capital investment firm Nexit Venture.
The Wendell family spends two months in Finland each summer; Wendell says that it is enough.
“We would never give up the Finnish slice of our lives, but as we don’t have to limit ourselves to one place in life, we do not aim to do so.
When Wendell left Finland in the 1980s, most of those who left were sent somewhere by a company. Nowadays Finns have better language skills and travel more. The threshold for leaving is lower. Some actually yearn for a life somewhere else.
Already as a student Tarja Turtia lived in the United States, Japan, and Denmark. “That left me with a yearning for faraway places”, Turtia says by telephone from Paris.
Turtia moved to France in 2002. She got a job for herself in the Freedom of Speech section of UNESCO. Her husband Antti Turtia got a job with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
The Turtias first planned to stay in Paris for a couple of years. Then something happened that happens to many. They liked living where they were, learned the language, and no longer constantly felt that they were foreigners.
Having children was an important reason to stay in Paris.
“We did not have the kind of Finnish notion that we should go back when the children are born, because everything was supposedly better in Finland. I do not think that it is true at all.”
The Turtias got triplets. They felt that as a large family in Finland, they would have to move to live hear the grandparents. In France, the social welfare system offered help. Now they have a housekeeper to help in their everyday tasks: thanks to public support, hiring an assistant is cheap.
“Here the state offers home help in a completely different way than is the case in Finland. And here there is no stigma to accepting it. In Finland you’re a bad mother if a cleaner or child minder comes to your home. Here everyone understands, and they also ask how I am doing.”
The Turtias say that as a family they have become more a part of their French community.
“The children bring us closer to life as it is here. In day care and at school, we meet new people. It is also easier to become acquainted with everyday life in our own neighbourhood.”
The Turtias are not planning to go back to Finland. Later they would like to move from France to some third country, but as long as their children are young, they plan to stay in Paris.
“Over the years the first expats whom we know have returned to Finland, and they have been replaced by French friends. It has been a milestone”, Turtia says.
The longer a person lives abroad, the harder it is to go back to Finland. It is not always possible to get back, even if one wants to. Big decisions concerning the life of an employee sent abroad depends on the decisions of the company.
Aleksi Nyman was planning to return to Finland with his wife and three children. The family had lived for four and a half years in the Chinese capital Beijing, where Nyman worked with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).
Their oldest child Elias had lived in China half of his life, their second child Siiri had been there nearly all of her childhood, and their third, Arttu, was born in Beijing.
“We wanted to come to Finland, especially for the sake of the children. We wanted the children to learn to know the Finnish school system and society, and to be familiar with what it is like to live in Finland”, says the children’s mother Aino alavesa-Nyman.
The Nymans travelled to Finland to make preparations. They sold their old small apartment, and looked for a larger place to live. School arrangements were made for the children. All that was left to find out was what work Nyman would be doing for NSN in Finland.
There was a global financial crisis in the world. People were being laid off in Finland.
It turned out that there was no work in Finland for Nyman. NSN could offer him work in Singapore - maybe.
“I had to reorient my thoughts. The most difficult thing was to say what could be promised to the children, when there was no certainty about anything”, Aleksi Nyman says.
With only two months to go to their departure from Beijing, Nyman’s work arrangements finally began to take shape. The Nymans went to Singapore to look at places. Nine-year-old Elias looked at the tall buildings of the modern city state and said that he could live here.
The Nymans are enjoying life in Singapore now. The children sometimes miss their “home in Beijing”, but they have been helped in their adaptation by the fact that they already speak Chinese and English, key languages in Singapore.
“Now we are trying to enjoy life here. I think that it is wonderful for the children that they get an international foundation for their lives”, Alavesa-Nyman says.
The family has started creating a new circle of friends from scratch. Elias got a good friend from the son of a Finnish family, but he had to move to Australia because of his father’s work.
As an expat one has to accept that people disappear. However, this teaches social skills, says Alavesa-Nyman. One learns to get to know new people and to tolerate uncertainty.
The Nymans will live in Singapore at least until next summer.
“After that, we don’t know at all.”
There are plenty of stories in expat circles about sudden life changes. A container full of the family’s household items might be on its way back to Finland, when the company asks the expat to stay.
In large companies of tens of thousands of employees, one person is no more than a pawn. And even though the companies have Finnish roots, they are global corporations. Most of the jobs of companies like Nokia or Stora Enso are somewhere other than Finland.
If an employee spends several years abroad, the world can change. When one wants to come back, it is possible that the industrial sector in question has withered away in Finland.
Finding work can also be difficult because the person who returns might lack the needed social networks. Few want to go back to their previous jobs.
“Working abroad is interesting because the pace is fast and there is plenty of responsibility. Working days are long, but the work itself is motivating. One would like to do something similar in Finland as well - to find a job with responsibility, where one’s experiences can be utilised”, Aleksi Nyman says.
In expat chat rooms many complain that their international experience is not appreciated in Finland.
While abroad, the expatriate has amassed language skills, contacts, a broader world view, and the skill to function with different kinds of people. Still some employers look at years abroad as if they were a hole in their working careers.
Finland can also start looking different when viewed from abroad.
The message board of Expatrium has more than 15,000 registered Finnish language participants from 112 countries.
One clear group among them are those who with bitter feelings toward Finland. For them, their home country seems stagnant, backward, and dull.
For another group, Finland is a paradise: there is space, people are honest, the environment is clean, and life is safe.
Such perceptions are confirmed in the expats’ mind when they visit Finland while on holiday - usually in the summer. That is when there is light, people are cheerful, and street life in the cities is lively. Friends invite them over for a barbeque, and grandmothers hold children in their lap.
Real life back at home can be different.
Someone coming back can be shocked by the public intoxication, by how rude people can be, or by the behaviour of state or municipal officials. The children have to learn new habits, such as wearing socks, for instance.
Returning to Finland can be a greater shock for many than moving away ever was. Finland has changed, one has changed one’s self, and the former life is no more.
“You go back home, to a foreign country”, says Iskala of Expatrium.
The former emigrant has become an immigrant. Not everyone can adapt to that.
Now Martti Ranin and his family, who have lived in Bangkok, face the Finland shock. Life changed quickly when the Finnish company Ascomp was sold to the Chinese. Ranin lost a job, and with it, went many important benefits. Expats often do not have access to public services in the countries where they live, and consequently the employers usually pay for insurance and school fees.
A year in the International School in Bangkok costs EUR 10,000 per child. As new work was not found in Thailand, the Ranins returned to Finland shortly before Christmas. The first child in the family, 13-year-old Kirre, changed countries for a sixth time.
In Espoo the children are attending English-language schools. Because you never know, Kirsi Ranin says.
“We might go back into Earth orbit some day.”
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.1.2010 >
SAMI SILLANPÄÄ / Helsingin Sanomat
sami.sillanpaa@hs.fi
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| 5.1.2010 - THIS WEEK |
 Finnish expats stay in orbit |
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