Browsing by Author "Saarikoski, Elina"

This research discusses how macro-level changes like the collapse of the Soviet Union and Estonia’s EU accession have influenced the experiences of Estonians’ living in Finland. The topic is approached with three main research questions. Firstly, have temporal and structural changes influenced Estonians’ lives in Finland. Secondly, what is the influence of the social position and various encounterings on one’s experiences and how one interprets them. Thirdly, how immigrant’s previous life in Estonia and his or her relations with family members and friends influence his or her current situation in the new country of residence. The main theoretical concepts of the study are ethnic identity, otherness, acculturation and transnationalism. The data collected for the study consists of eight interviews of Estonian women living in Finland. The interviews were semi-structured and emphasized informants’ own interpretations and conceptions of the past. The used method, oral history, is interested in the interpretations of the past and the meaning that the happenings have in the present situation and not only the actual happenings. Reminiscence of the past is a way to share experiences and compare them with those of the others’. It is a way to produce interpretations that supplement, comply and criticize public understandings of the past. Oral history and interviews bring forth new standpoints while they concentrate on informants’ own interpretations of the past. The informants have moved to Finland between 1990 and 2007 and their backgrounds and reasons to move vary. During the time frame of the research, there have been some practical changes that have influenced informants’ possibilities to move and to live in Finland. Residence permits, for example, are not needed anymore. In addition, the reasons to move have changed from returning migration to work based migration. At the same time, also attitudes among Finns towards Estonians have developed into a more tolerant direction. Immigration from Estonia to Finland is often temporary and movers do not necessarily have exact plans how long they are going to stay. This has become possible as crossing borders has eased since Estonia’s EU membership. Even though all the informants are women and Estonian, there are, however, differences in their experiences depending on, for instance, the time of the move, social position, occupation, family situation and personality. These variations influence the way in which they explain their experiences and construct their own identity in relation to the others. Besides, also conceptions of one’s own ethnic group and its past have an impact on the self-understanding. According to the interviews, Estonians seem to be a particular immigrant group in Finland that is regarded mainly positively. However, even though they, in general, speak fluent Finnish and there are similarities in the histories of the two countries, the acceptance of immigrants is always relative and depends on the other factors as well. According to this research, various factors influence the ways how informants experience their everyday life situations in Finland, how differently they explain their experiences and construct their own identities through them.