Work and love have taken Finns to 172 different countries

“I have not regretted a single day”

Fanni Kantoniemi

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By Satu Helin and Inka Kovanen
     
      The beginning was actually rather typical. A 19-year-old girl finished her upper secondary education and decided to go for an adventure in Australia.
      Her returning back to Finland depended on whether she would land a place for further studies back home. And she did.
      ”On the last night before flying back home, however, I met the man of my dreams and I had to say a teary-eyed goodbye to him at the airport the following evening”, Fanni Kantoniemi explains in the new Terveisiä maailmalta (“Greetings from the World”) online service set up by Helsingin Sanomat.
      “I knew already then that I would have to come back, at any cost. I stayed in Finland for a month and even went to the college the first day - to ask if I could postpone my studies.”
     
Nowadays, between 8,000 and 10,000 Finns move abroad each year. And they go to all four corners of the world.
      The most popular destinations are still Sweden and North America, but Great Britain, Germany, and Spain are catching up.
      More than a hundred thousand registered Finnish citizens live in Sweden, some 17,000 in the United States, 13,000 in Germany, nearly 12,000 in Canada, and close to 10,000 in the U.K.
      Spain, Switzerland, and Norway all have more than 5,000 Finnish residents, and there are close to 7,000 down under in Australia.
      According to the Population Register Centre, the number of voting-age Finns living overseas is 230,000. They have spread to no less than 172 separate countries or administrative territories, including such unlikely destinations as St. Kitts & Nevis and Vanuatu.
      This means that there are local Finns in two-thirds of all the countries in the world.
     
But what do they do there? We called Fanni Kantoniemi to ask.
      “My fiancé and I live in Perth”, Fanni explains. ”At first I worked as a general construction worker and in July I was accepted in the environmental art programme at the local college. I have not regretted a single day”, Kantoniemi says, a year and a half after the life-changing encounter.
     
Some studies have been conducted into the reasons behind people moving abroad.
      The most common reasons are the usual suspects - love and work.
      ”The threshold to move abroad has lowered, but the educated section of the population does stand out”, explains research director Elli Heikkilä from the Institute of Migration.
      Going abroad for work is manifested by the fact that in addition to Sweden, Finns tend to move mostly into countries where one can get by with English.
      Furthermore, the most popular relocation destinations have a high standard of living.
     
The statistics do not tell everything, however. Many Finns simply fall through the cracks altogether.
      The number of expats who have passed away abroad is in the thousands. Many people simply forget to inform the authorities of their movements.
      Hence the declared 230,000 is only a rough ballpark estimate. In addition to those not registered, the figure also excludes the underage.
     
More and more Finns move abroad with the intention of staying there for the duration.
      “According to a questionnaire, around half of the expats are not planning on moving back to Finland”, Heikkilä says.
      The permanency of the move abroad is also manifested in the statistics: last year the number of the citizens moving abroad exceeded the number of those coming back by 1,400.
      Fanni Kantoniemi would like to return to Finland at some point.
      “At least for a year. I would like my fiancé to experience living in Finland properly, with the winter and all. At the moment the idea seems a bit scary, however, with the constant flow of gloomy news from Europe.”
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.12.2011

More on this subject:
 First Finnish emigrants moved to the forests of Sweden
 BACKGROUND: Finns easily vanish abroad

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Love, work, and passion for adventure cause Finns to move abroad (8.12.2011)

See also:
  Finnish expats stay in orbit (5.1.2010)
  Terveisiä maailmalta (Greetings from the World, hs.fi; to see where the Finns are living, click on "Selaa muiden kortteja" in the link below. The world map can be zoomed in for more detail.)

Links:
  Institute of Migration

SATU HELIN AND INKA KOVANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
satu.helin@hs.fi, inka.kovanen@hs.fi