I was recently attending an informal dinner before a seminar meant for about 30-40 people. During the dinner, a colleague that I have known for several years suddenly threw a very irrelevant question at me: “What is your socioeconomic status in your home country?”. I am the kind of person that wants to be approachable to my colleagues. So, keeping that in mind, I started explaining and even over explaining myself. Since the question from my Finnish colleague caught me off guard, l don’t know if I was able to give a satisfactory answer. Now, here’s my concern. Was this question asked just out of curiosity? Was it asked because this person thinks I am escaping my socioeconomic situation from my home country? Does this person somehow think lowly about me already? After that day, I have been feeling very insecure in general. Of course, this incident wasn’t the only one I have faced in Finland. I’m still working out the best response to such questions in the future. Although, what worries me is that if I am too outspoken and straight with my replies, would that seem overly repulsive? Will my colleague think that I am being rude? At this point, I am sick to my stomach trying to figure out how to process this. If my ethnicity, skin colour and pre-conceived notions about my socioeconomic status precedes me, then, will I ever feel fully accepted in this country?

When I gave birth (almost 10 years ago), we weren’t given a private room as requested. I had to share a room and my husband (Finnish) was only allowed to stay during visiting hours which was just a few hours per day. I basically had to fend for myself in a hospital where most of the nurses didn’t speak (or refused to speak) English. I wasn’t told that there were snacks available for new moms to help replenish the energy spent from breastfeeding. I was also never told how to check if my child was able to get milk from me. A starving newborn and half starved new mother should never happen in a hospital. Fortunately, towards the end of our 2nd day a nurse who spoke English was horrified when she checked in on me and the baby and gave us the nourishment we were badly needing. Giving birth is already a traumatising experience. Recovery shouldn’t have these extra stress and discrimination.

Our son was born in Helsinki’s women’s hospital, during the whole labour and stay, most of the nurses talked only in Finnish to my wife (she’s Finnish, so all fine) and almost didn’t explain anything to me in English so I wasn’t able to follow and be completely aware in one of the most important days (and stressful) of my life. From an inclusion perspective, it is already quite bad, but also it reaffirms old-school gender roles by not involving men properly.

I brought my son to neuvola in Kivenlahti for his one-year-old (or year-and-a-half) check-up, the nurse said that I should avoid using my mother tongue and speak Finnish to my son.

I have experienced a lot of racism because I am not from Finland. but more in health matters. they don’t give me permission to have an operation for my weight and they write on the personal page a bunch of lies like that I refuse to have the operation. they have been doing this here for 3 years, mocking me, giving me hope and then nothing. in education I have experienced racism from a teacher from Russia who taught Finnish, she zeroed in on me because I didn’t like her as a person. while I’m talking flirty, not good but I’m trying. she zeroed me out. My daughter also faces the same racism at daycare when a teacher who is in charge does the same or doesn’t deal with the child at all

Reading through other stories I am saddened at the amount of discrimination foreigners face in Finland… But I am not surprised! 1) Personal observation: I am a non-EU foreigner in Finland. Before Finland I lived in another EU country which is kinda known for being racist and intolerant. It is unacceptable what foreigners and LGBTQ community face in there. BUT at least a lot of the instances of discrimination are open and manifested in the daily acts and interactions of locals. Pretty much “you get what you see”. Here in Finland it is relatively not as open. Locals tend to keep their true beliefs to themselves, and manifest it via closed doors, be it recruitment, elections or other decision-making instances. And when there is a report saying a substantial amount of voters do not want to elect Haavisto as president due to his sexual orientation, many people are shocked. 2) Personal experience: I may not have faced confrontational discrimination like other foreigners do, but there was one very explicit instance. I have a very non-Finnish name. A couple of years back I applied for a job post for which I was qualified and it did not require Finnish language. We had a nice round one with the recruitment agency, but then I was told the hiring manager decided to pursue other candidates. No problem, moved on. But some time later I discover that a summer intern that I worked with got the same position. See, we had similar education level, but I had much more experience that the job clearly required. But somehow the hiring manager decided to skip my name and opted for a more “familiar” name. God bless them! Still, I love Finland and it’s a wonderful place in many ways. But it’s important to bring awareness to the difficulties foreigners face here. Cheers!

I once participated in an event aimed at international students that were seeking employment opportunities in Finland. The event was organized by city of Jyväskylä. Most of us understood this was a job fair, but no, basically it was just bunch of representatives of different companies telling us that they are currently not employing but they want to give advice on good ways to apply for a job in Finland. It was organized as a word café, so people could go around and talk to the representatives. I was standing at a table and there was a representative of one well-known company which I will not name. There was at least 10 of us immigrants standing at this table. He told us directly that they have no open positions at that moment. A few minutes later two Finnish students approached, they said they were looking for a job, and the guy handed them his business card and told them they might have something for them and told them to contact him. And then they continued the discussion in Finnish which at that time I did not understand. This felt like a slap in the face and like a clear message that we stand no chance as immigrants. 99% of participants were foreigners in this event. Another “fun” part of this event was that there was a panel discussion with 5 representatives (HR and similar roles), and they were giving advice on how to apply for a job in Finland. When they were asked about how many foreign employees they have, not a single representative had an answer to provide (e.g., some specific number, percentage, etc.)

I rented out my apartment to an Erasmus student who came originally from Germany and had begun her studies in Zurich Switzerland, my home town. She came to do her Erasmus at Aalto and was bad-mouthing Switzerland very much, how racist Swiss people are, which I do acknowledge since I grew up in a multicultural family in German-Speaking Switzerland. I told her that alas, she would most likely encounter similar experiences here in Finland, as I had been living in Helsinki for roughly 3 years at that time and gone through some very nasty things e.g. people spitting at me, telling me to speak Finnish not German (once I took a call from a Swiss friend in public, very bad decision). Of course people are entitled to their own oppinion, but I believe that nobody has the right to belittle other people’s experience and deny the fact that there are racist elements in Finnish society.