Browsing by Author "Ehnström, Emil Mattias"

The number of people belonging to a language minority in Finland is increasing and people are becoming more and more spatially mobile. This has also led to an increase in transnationals and higher rates of cross-border mobility. With new methods involving social media big data, we can map spatial mobility patterns in new ways and deepen the understanding of how people relate to space. Differences in spatial mobility can for example give us an indication of the rate of integration into society. Some claim that a more spatially mobile life is a sign of success, but can we see differences in spatial mobility between people in Finland? The three language minorities considered in this thesis are Swedish, Russian, and Estonian. The history and culture of these groups are different as well as their status in Finnish society. Swedish speakers, with a national language status, have a different role in society, but do this well integrated minority differ from the other ones spatially? By using Twitter data and looking at the spatial mobility within Finland, we see where differences occur between language groups. To understand how strong ties the language groups have with neighbouring countries, we look at cross-border mobility to Estonia, Russia, and Sweden. The results show that there are differences in the spatial mobility of language minorities in Finland. Estonian speakers most frequently visit Estonia, while at the same time they are less mobile within Finland. The variation was large for Russian speakers, with some visiting Russia often and others almost never. Swedish speakers seem to have relatively weak ties to Sweden, compared to the other language groups and have very similar spatial mobility to the majority Finnish speaking population.