Help from across the Gulf of Finland

Avely Parve

Maia Lillepöld

Raimo Aas

Mari Palgi

Kaur Alu

Eve Tuhkanen

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By Anssi Miettinen
     
      Maia Lillepöld has already established a reputation at the Kustaankartano home for the elderly in Helsinki for diligence. The 60-year-old nurse, an immigrant from Estonia, seemingly cannot get enough of it. It actually upsets her that she has to take one day off each week.
      “Work won’t kill you. Not working is deadly. Then I get nervous”, Lillepöld says.
      There is another reason why Lillepöld is bored on her days off: she would rather spend them at home on the Estonian island of Saaremaa.
     
Typically she will work for three or four weeks in Finland, and then go to Estonia for a week.
      “The trip from door to door takes ten hours. Going there for the weekend is difficult.”
     
In 2004 Maia Lillepöld worked as the director of a dairy in Kuressaare, the capital of Saaremaa.
      She was in charge of about 100 subordinates. The dairy, which was established in the Soviet period, had not been profitable for a long time, and it was closed down. Lillepöld was left jobless at the age of 53.
      She decided to get a new profession. She had had enough of being a boss.
     
A nursing school was ultimately the natural choice. Lillepöld had been preparing her whole life to help her mother in her old age, as had always been done in her family. However, her mother died in 1994 after an illness lasting just four days.’
      Lillepöld felt a yearning, and even an obligation to take care of the elderly. “Now there are other grandmothers who are being taken care of”, she says.
     
Maia Lillepöld has been working in Helsinki for three years. The reason for coming is the same as with most Estonians who have come to Finland.
      In Estonia she would earn two euros and hour in elderly care. In Finland she gets more than ten euros, in addition to various extras.
      “I don’t understand how Estonians manage with those wages.”
     
Many don’t manage, which is why the number of Estonians working in Finland, and especially the Helsinki region, has grown.
      However, this has happened behind the scenes. Estonians are not easy to pick out in a crowd in Finland, and many of them speak excellent Finnish. At construction sites, in buses, and in cleaning firms there are significant numbers of Estonians: and in hospitals as well. With increasing frequency Estonians can be seen driving taxis, or working in restaurants and shops. Highly educated Estonians have also applied for positions in Finland requiring expertise.
     
There are no precise statistics on Estonians working in Finland. Some of them live in the country on a more or less temporary basis. In construction especially there are many itinerant labourers who come to work from Tallinn every week and get their pay from an Estonian company.
      This kind of back-and-forth traffic is impossible to record in statistics, says Rolle Alho, who has studied the use of temporary foreign labour.
      However, the statistics do point to general trends.
     
From the beginning of this year the Estonians have been the largest group of foreigners living in Finland on a permanent basis. According to the Population Register Centre, there were 29,080 Estonians living in Finland on a permanent basis – slightly more than the number of Russians. The number has more than doubled since 2004, and in recent years the trend has accelerated.
      However, permanent residents are only a small number of all of the Estonians in Finland.
      Tarmo Punnik, consul at the Estonian Embassy in Helsinki, estimates that about 50,000 Estonians are living in Finland now, not counting the temporary labourers. The wildest estimates put the number as high as 100,000, but Puunik says that this is an exaggeration.
      In any case the number is getting to be considerable, considering that Estonia’s population is only 1.3 million.
      When recession and unemployment hit Estonia in 2008, Estonians started looking for work north of the Gulf of Finland in increasing numbers.
     
For instance, lorry driver Kaur Alu, 40, was out of work in Estonia for two years before he grew tired of idleness and started looking for work in Finland along with his wife.
      The family has now lived in Finland for a year and a half. They like it so much that they intend to stay. “Finland is the best place. Social services work, and nature is beautiful. I really like the parks”, says Alu, who lives in the Karakallio neighbourhood of Espoo.
      Alu has attended language lessons, and speaks fluent Finnish. He has a job at a haulage company and has joined the labour union. Alu is also pleased that his 13-year-old son has Finnish friends now.
     
Also planning to stay in Finland is 22-year-old builder and painter Raimo Aas.
      “There are many things that work here. Social benefits are better and people are nicer. Work will not run out in Finland, that’s for sure.”
      And then there are the wages, which can be as much as four times the level in the construction industry in Estonia.
      Aas, like many of his compatriots, moved to Finland on the basis of a tip that he got from a friend. It seems that the immigration trend is self-reinforcing.
     
Estonians find it relatively easy to find work in Finland for a number of reasons. They have proven to be diligent workers, they are happy to earn wages that are at the lower end of the Finnish pay scale, they learn the language quickly, and they don’t suffer from culture shock.
      It is also easier for linguistic relatives to learn to know Finns.
      “People in Finland have treated us well. I have never experienced xenophobia. Sometimes they forget that I’m not a Finn”, says Mari Palgi, a researcher in molecular biology who moved to Finland in 1990.
     
Maia Lillepöld says that she has been accepted into Finland with open arms.
      “I never would have believed that I would live this well.” When Lillepöld had difficulties in finding an apartment, her colleague Riitta asked her to move in with her, and she is still living with Riitta.
      “I got such a big gift. I got such a good friend – like a sister.”
      Lillepöld says that there are few actual differences between Finns and Estonians. “We like the sauna, summer cabins, the countryside, and sauna beer. There’s only one difference; Finns don’t eat sauerkraut.”
     
But it isn’t always this harmonious. Construction worker Raimo Aas sometimes hears xenophobic comments from drunks.
      Eve Tuhkanen, who sells clothing, and who has lived in Finland for 12 years, speaks almost perfect Finnish, and at work she does not emphasise her Estonian background.
      “Sometimes I want to portray myself as a Finn because attitudes toward Estonians can sometimes vary.” On the other hand, in Finland she only has Finnish friends and a Finnish husband.
     
The Helsinki region especially has grown to be somewhat dependent on Estonian labour.
      Would Helsinki function if the Estonians were suddenly to leave?
      “Probably it wouldn’t function. Things might not actually grind to a halt, but there would be difficulties in certain fields”, says Timo Cantell, head of research at the City of Helsinki Urban Facts centre.
     
Bus traffic in Helsinki would be badly hit without its Estonian drivers. Cleaning services would also suffer.
      Many construction sites are completely occupied by Estonians, and construction companies do not have to complain about a shortage of labour.
      On the other hand, undocumented Estonian labour at construction sites is a big problem. Finnish construction workers complain that the flood of Estonian workers pushes down wages in the field.
     
Finnish society seems to be counting on the availability of foreign labour in the caring professions, as the population ages. Estonians, who either speak Finnish already, or who can learn it easily, are important in this plan, even though this is not said out loud.
      For Estonia, the emigration trend is a more complicated issue. There are ambivalent feelings about it, as Finland attracts people who are of the best working age.
      On the other hand, the Finnish labour market has been a safety valve for Estonians in difficult times. Without the Finns, unemployment would have hit the Estonian economy much worse than it has done so far. Many Estonian families have managed through the worst times with the help of money earned in Finland.
     
Last spring Rein Sikk, a journalist for the newspaper Eesti Päevaleht wrote a series of articles about Estonians living in Finland.
      The first part of the series had a somewhat provocative headline: “Are Estonians in Finland traitors or ambassadors?”
      In his article Sikk leaned toward the latter.
     
After living in Finland for about 20 years, molecular biologist Mari Palgi does not see herself in either category, and she considers the whole question to be silly. “Each person has his or her own life, and each one makes his or her own decisions.”
      In fact, Palgi and her scientist husband currently face a big decision. The two have never lived in Estonia during its independence. Now that the children are getting to be grown up, they are considering moving back.
      “A person’s own home is always the best. My parents are getting to be quite old. There’s also the thought that perhaps we might be more useful in Estonia than here.”
     
Former dairy director and current nurse Maia Lillepöld also plans to move back home to Saaremaa in four years. That is when she plans to retire. “Nobody leaves their home unless they have to.”
      Lillepöld has always had a clear plan. She moved to Finland because she needed money to fix her house. She has an old log building in the centre of Kuressaare, which is 110 years old. It will fit her children and grandchildren as well. “it has a large porch where we sit in the summer.
      The house is in such bad shape that it almost had to be torn down completely. Now only the walls are still up.
     
“I’m saving all my money for the repairs. I’m going home. The house needs to be put into shape.”
      The project will give work to at least a few Estonian construction workers – in their own country this time.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.9.2011
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Estonian immigrants in Finland to stay (19.9.2011)
  Estonians now Finland’s largest immigrant group (28.2.2011)

ANSSI MIETTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anssi.miettinen@hs.fi