Helsinki: city of immigrants

Foreign-born residents now part of mainstream urban life - rural migrants had trouble integrating in decades past

print this

By Ritva Liisa Snellman
     
      “Do you have an S-Market advantage card?” asks the cashier at the Sörnäinen ABC service station.
      Manning the till is 23-year-old Patrick. He is from the Congo and is a good example of how the everyday lives of Helsinki residents in the 21st century has changed in a more cosmopolitan direction.
      Ordinary city-dwellers are increasingly encountering immigrants doing ordinary jobs. Without them, everyday life might be very much different.
      Usually little attention is paid any more to these encounters, but one can always try to be more observant.
     
My commute to work is along Helsinki’s most international street.
      Hämeentie is full of businesses owned by immigrants, whose services I rarely use. I do not need hair extensions, I do not buy Asian foods or Halal meat, I do not take Thai massages, nor do I send monetary remittances to foreign countries.
      In the morning it is more common to hear people speaking foreign languages than Finnish.
     
Estonian workers are clearing out an office building that is under renovation, while some of their compatriots are dropping snow from the roof of a building a block away.
      When I get to my job, chipboard is carried in. The coats that they are wearing have the name of the company they work for, Viikin rakennus, but the men are from Estonia.
      I walk to Sanoma House past a few Chinese restaurants, take the lift to the 8th floor, and sit at my desk, which has already been cleaned.
     
The work was done by Emmanuel Mensah, a sociologist from Ghana, who has a Finnish university degree and his own cleaning company.
      Mensah is a typical immigrant: overqualified for his work, and endlessly able to adapt.
      At the moment, his own company is dormant, and the entrepreneur himself is earning wages, but when the recession eases, the situation can change. If times do not improve, Mensah has a contingency plan: he will either start to work on a doctoral thesis, or move to Ghana with his family.
     
For immigrants with a poor knowledge of the language, cleaning work is a traditional entry job on the Finnish labour market.
      One in three cleaners in Helsinki speak some language other than Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue. More than 80 per cent of ship cleaners have a foreign background.
     
The salad bar at the workplace cafeteria was compiled by Aili Löhmus from Estonia. The fresh bread was also baked by her.
      Löhmus is a ship’s cook by profession. In Finland she began with a temp agency, filling in for people at restaurants. Last autumn she decided to look for a job herself.
      In February she had success. Löhmus got a steady job and is satisfied. The job is a good one, she has a good apartment, and her daughter will also move to Finland in the summer.
      Of the 3,800 people who work at restaurants of the Fazer Amica chain, about 200 are of a foreign background, who represent nearly ten nationalities.
     
The increasingly international nature of the staff became apparent about three years ago. Helping create a more cosmopolitan flavour were employees of temp agencies, brokered by companies such as HR House. The company has about 500 employees with immigrant backgrounds in the Helsinki region, representing 75 different nationalities.
      Alongside cleaning, jobs at hotels, restaurants, and cafés are traditional entry jobs for immigrants.
     
In the evening I try to calculate the net result after a couple of days. Patrick, Emmanuel, Aili, the Moroccan-born Lahussine brothers, in whose café I bought a small feta pizza as a snack, the Bangladeshi Nisar Kamali at the S-Market in the centre of the city. Then there was the cashier of a Thai restaurant, an Estonian salesperson, a Russian-speaking bus driver, an African-born cashier filling in at the local Siwa supermarket, the Irish bartender at the local pub...
      Some of the workers are too busy to stop and chat. Temp workers also tend to be difficult to meet more than once, as the next day’s job might be in another part of the city.
     
Many do not want to give their name, or they only give their first name.
      A shopkeeper who moved from Malaysia more than 30 years ago explains why this is the case. He has learned to keep a low profile, because he wants to keep the windscreen of his car intact.
     
At the end of 2007 there were 217,675 people in Finland with foreign backgrounds. One in four of them live in Helsinki.
      Finland accounts for a minimal proportion of the total world migration. In 2008 about 29,000 people moved to Finland from other countries. However, the structure of the migration is starting to resemble global patterns.
      Whereas Finns will emigrate to take on jobs requiring expertise, or in hopes of a more comfortable life, immigrants to Finland come here for a better life or to work as experts. Finland has no statistics on the educational backgrounds of immigrants.
     
A study by the World Bank from ten years back gives an impression on the education levels behind the migration flows. One in three who immigrate to the one of the 20 richest countries have at least a college degree.
      In Finland, IT professionals are the seventh-largest professional group among immigrants in Finland.
     
“Nowadays people talk about global cities where members of elite groups flow in from all over the world, as well as workers with a low educational level who produce the services that they need”, says Dr. Sirpa Wrede.
      “In the 21st century, the phenomenon became apparent in everyday life in Helsinki as well.
      Wrede and researcher Camilla Nordberg have edited Vieraita työssä (“Strangers at Work”), a book on the ethnic inequalities in work.
     
Inequalities are apparent at Finnish work places as well. The better-paid an employee is, the better he or she is taught about the culture that prevails at the workplace.
      Researchers have made note that there is much unwritten assumed information at workplaces, that is not talked about.
      Young people are given advice, while adults are often left on their own. If orientation for a job and the prevailing culture are inadequate, it is hard for an immigrant to gain a strong foothold on the labour market.
     
Inequalities have increased in the work itself. Researchers into ethnic work speak about “dirty jobs”, involving washing, cleaning, unpleasant working hours, physically strenuous work, a need for flexibility, and low pay.
      On the other hand, there is nothing new to inequality in working life. The masses of job seekers have always been treated badly.
     
When landless people from rural areas moved to Helsinki in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was politically correct to look down on the newcomers. The educated classes feared disorder on the streets and were concerned about the maintenance of moral standards. In the 1960s people would laugh at the country folk who took part in the big wave of urban migration. Now there is widespread fear of outsiders living on social welfare, and complaints about the costs incurred from settling refugees.
      “People do not change. Power, the use of power, and its many forms - for instance, the negative attitudes taken toward different groups of workers - live and change”, Wrede says. “In working life, people are capable of talking about difficult matters, but immigrants have been pushed apart from the rest of working life.”
     
In the afternoon I stop off at the Kiasma café to eat.
      The plaice is prepared by a Dutch chef, but the food is brought to the table by a German waiter, Thomas Leutbecher, who came to Finland to study ten years ago and stay here.
      He started out in the traditional manner, washing dishes at a restaurant.
      “I got my jobs through my own networks, not from the mol.fi website”, Leutbecher says.
      A friend told me that the restaurant at the Finnish National Opera needed a dishwasher. Leutbecher got the job and learned the basic vocabulary used in restaurants, thanks to a helpful staff.
      “They liked me, and when I learned to say ‘white wine or red wine, and anything else?’ I got to work at the bar.”
     
Leutbecher feels that Finns make a mistake when they speak English to newcomers. People don’t do that in other countries, as it slows down the learning process of the new language.
      And knowledge of Finnish is needed in order to get work. It is important to learn how to interpret language, and expressions - or the lack of them.
      Even a grunt can mean something that in another country would require several minutes of explanation.
      Leutbecher says that his background actually helps him. Employees are more forgiving to a boss who is a foreigner. He also knows how to instruct temp workers and explain why something in Finland is done the way that it is.
     
The input of immigrants is increasingly apparent in customer service - the kinds of jobs that are done by people with name tags on their shirts. The career path has moved from behind a cleaner’s cart to a job where there is a perception of better possibilities for advancement.
      Advancement at work also correlates with how old the immigrant was when coming to Finland. For instance, young Somali refugees who came from Moscow in 1990 have studied, and have received good jobs as engineers, nurses, and midwives. The employment situation of those who came later has long been weaker.
     
Sales clerks comprise the second-largest professional group among those of foreign background. For instance, every tenth member of staff at the Sokos department store has a foreign language as his or her mother tongue.
      One of these is Shady Bahir.
      She came from Northern Iraq to Finland seven years ago, tenaciously studied the Finnish language, and worked at bars and in kitchens. However, she wanted a real “Finnish” job.
      She sent applications, learned to write a CV so that the first thing that emerges are her knowledge, skills, and experience, and not her former country of residence.
      Finally Bahir applied to Sokos as for a traineeship. This was all that was needed. In January she got a job as a sales clerk.
      “I like this work. I am studying business administration, and I want to move forward in the field. I just wish I could work more hours in a week.
     
However, much of the work that makes our everyday lives function correctly takes place out of sight.
      I call Itella and ask who it is that delivers my newspaper.
      It might well be an immigrant, as one in five of those working in early distribution of newspapers has a foreign background.
      My morning paper is delivered by a Finn, as is my daily mail.
     
However, my mail is probably handled by someone who was not born in Finland - for instance, Kristina, who has moved here from Ethiopia. The sorting machine under her supervision is putting second class letters onto the conveyor belt - the kind that all of us get.
      The Itella post and logistics centre for the Helsinki region has 800 employees who were born outside Finland.
      The internationalisation that began in the mid 1980s has been rapid.
      In 1989 there were employees from 20 different countries, and now the number of employees with a foreign background has increased 20-fold, and the number of nationalities has risen to 71.
     
The logistics centre in Vantaa, which handles parcel post and magazines, is even more international - one in three employees are immigrants.
      Omar Jama has become familiar with work in Finland in the 17 years that he has been here.
      “People do not talk much on the job, they are distant and cautious, but when confidence is established, it stays.
      Distribution and warehouse work have become entry jobs for immigrants all over the world, but they also allow for career advancement.
      Jama has advanced in his career from mail sorting to a supervisory position. Now he is substituting for his boss, who is on paternity leave.
     
What is the end result this week of observation?
      It is not possible to calculate an immigrant coefficient for everyday life nowadays.
      On the other hand, can a person who has lived his or her entire adult life in Finland, learned the language, and acquired Finnish citizenship be called an immigrant any more?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 28.2.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Apprenticeships - latest weapon against Helsinki bus driver shortage (26.10.2008)
  Higher employment level for immigrants would save Helsinki millions (3.10.2008)
  President of National Coalition Party Youth Arm criticises Finnish immigration policy (23.2.2010)
  Vanhanen: Finland needs immigration despite present economic problems (18.3.2009)
  Immigrant youths´ hopes and dreams are similar to those of native-born Finns (14.10.2009)

Links:
  Finnish Immigration Service

RITVA LIISA SNELLMAN / Helsingin Sanomat
ritva.liisa.snellman@hs.fi