Somalis in Finland 20 years: Difficult road to paid work

Language skills and good education not always enough

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By Milka Sauvala
     
      The evening shift at at the dementia ward of the Kustannkartano centre for the elderly begins with coffee. The cups have been put on the table, and pulla is ready.
      Nurse Nasro Yusuf helps the silent residents to the table, pours coffee, offers sugar, spoon-feeds yoghurt to a man sitting in a wheelchair, and tries to persuade him to eat just a little bit more.
      Nasro Yusuf, who is 28 years old, got her nurse’s qualifications last year. She had been in Kustaankartano as an apprentice for three years and was offered a job at the same ward.
      “Patients will touch my hand and say ‘beautiful tan; where did you sunbathe?” Yusuf says with a laugh.
      “I always tell them that I was born in Africa, but dementia patients cannot necessarily visualise that.”
     
Yusuf lived her childhood in Mogadishu, Somalia. The war kept her out of school, but her older sister taught her to read and write. In 1996 part of the family fled the war to Ethiopia.
      She came to Finland in the summer of 1998, and after a few months’ wait, she went to school for the first time in her life.
     
A somewhat similar story is that of 30-year-old Adan Mohamud, who came to Finland a year earlier. In Somalia, the war stopped his schooling, but in Finland he has studied all the more.
      Mohamud, who spends time at the Entresse Library in Espoo, takes out a pile of education certificates from his backpack. There are language courses, preparatory training for immigrants, and an electrician’s papers.
      “I applied for the profession when I thought that it would be easier to find work. At the time there was a shortage of people who could do it.”
     
The recession turned a labour shortage into high unemployment. Adan Mohamud had work in his profession for a year, but that did not continue. He got a couple of short-term jobs in social work for the City of Espoo.
      Now he has been unemployed for about five months. “Any job will do for me”, he says.
      Mohamud has not wanted to stay inside complaining.
      “You get bored and nervous there. When I go into the city, if feels like going to work in my heart.”
      That is why he rises early each morning and gets on the move, to the library to read newspapers, to look for work on the Internet, and to meet people in various associations. He is the chairman of the Somali association Gannaane and is active in KEPA, the Service Centre for Devleopment Cooperation.
      He does not get home before the early evening, after his “day of work”.
     
Of all immigrants to Finland, Somalis have perhaps found it most difficult to get work. Even with language skills and a profession, a real job is hard to come by.
     
Adan Mohamud knows university graduates who drive taxis. Some have finally left Finland for Britain, for instance, where getting a job is easier.
      On the other hand, everyone in the family of Nasron Yusuf have jobs.
      Yusuf describes Kustaankartano as her “second home”. She likes working with people. There are no conflicts over cultural background or religion, and she does not want to make an issue of having to feed pork to the patients.
      “It is part of the work.”
      Soon one of the patients is to be washed and taken to the sauna. Then some supper and possibly television.
     
Yusuf’s evening shift ends at 9:00 PM. Usually she would hop on a train to Koivukylä where she and her husband live, but now she is rushing off to a hospital to see her sister’s newborn son.
      Do you plan to stay at work if you get children yourself?
      “Yes, I will. I am not used to sitting at home.”
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.4.2010

More on this subject:
 Somalis’ employment situation improving steadily

Previously in HS International Edition:
  A new generation at the mosque (11.4.2010)
  Rami Sipilä does not like Somalis (15.2.2009)
  Huge differences in employment rates among immigrants from various countries (14.3.2005)

MILKA SAUVALA / Helsingin Sanomat
milka.sauvala@hs.fi