Across the world, an estimated 214 million people live outside their country of birth, 100 million of whom are labor migrants. Although the majority of migration takes place between developing countries, in today’s Europe immigration has grown to the point that of the European Union’s 380 million people, 70 million are immigrants. In the global context, at least 3% of the world’s population lives outside the country they were born in (IOM, 2010). In the context of economic globalization, the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century have witnessed increasing migration, especially for employment purposes.
Within Europe, increasing competition is seen between nation states trying to attract the most quali ied professionals. Changes are made to immigration policies, creating so called ‘fast track’ procedures through which professionals can enter foreign states more easily (Mahroum, 2001). However, not only are high skilled workers and professionals sought after and mobile; labor migration to European countries also involves the movement of unskilled immigrants. In fact, several European countries depend on the labor of unskilled foreign workers in signi icant sectors of their labor markets, such as agriculture, building and civil engineering and domestic service (Heikkilä, 2005). In addition to increasing labor mobility, natural disasters and poverty are driving people to search for safety in new locations (Lyytinen, 2007).
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Finland has traditionally been a country of emigration. Moreover, immigration to Finland never seriously took the form of of icial recruitment for labor purposes.
Rather, especially in the 1980s and 1990s most of the arrivals came either as UN refugees, asylum seekers, Ingrian Finns returning to Finland or persons com-ing through a family reuni ication program or havcom-ing married a Finn (Heikkilä, 2005). It was not until the 1980s that immigration surpassed emigration and it was as late as the 1990s when immigration to Finland began to increase rapidly.
In 2010, there were 167 000 national of other countries living in Finland, when in the year 1990 only 64 922 immigrants lived in Finland (Tilastokeskus, PX-Web-tietokannat; Migri, 2010).The largest immigrant groups in Finland originate from Russia, Estonia, Sweden, Somalia, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Germany, the UK, the US and Vietnam (Sisäasiainministeriö, 2010).
The number of immigrants has increased in Finland in the last two decades.
The reasons people move to Finland have also diversi ied, as more people come to Finland in search of educational and work opportunities, in addition to family and humanitarian protection reasons.
Today, approximately 4 per cent of the total Finnish population consists of persons whose native language is other than Finnish, Swedish or Same. Most of the newcomers have settled in the southern coastal region near the capital, Hel-sinki, making the total population of irst and second generation immigrants of the capital region approximately 7.5 per cent (Sisäasianministeriö, 2010).
In the 2000s, Finland has received approximately 1 500–4 000 asylum seek-ers per year, and of the residence permits granted each year, this group makes up approximately 10%. The rest of the residence permits are granted to employ-ment or educational purposes or for family reasons (Sisäasianministeriö, 2010).
The number of immigrants estimated to be part of the labor market in Finland is 55 000, or about 2% of the total population. Large sectorial differences exist in the numbers of immigrant workers, however. In the construction sector in the capital region, for example, Rakennusliitto (the Finnish construction union) estimates that a ifth of the workers are immigrants. Also, in the year 2008, the number of temporary migrants has been estimated to be around 40 000, although no-one knows the exact numbers because persons from the EU countries working on a temporary basis do not have to apply for a working permit (Kyntäjä, 2011).
States, like Finland, that adhere to the ideals of democracy typically state as their goal equality between citizens. The basic idea is that all citizens should be treated equally and have equal access to education, health-care, culture, labor markets and so on, regardless of their background, age, gender, religion and ethnic background. Research shows, however, that immigrants are not granted those rights and face substantial inequalities when it comes to labor markets (Johnsson & Wallette, 2001; Zorlu, 2001). A typical assumption in response to the above mentioned phenomenon is that with time the effect of ethnicity will be
diminished. In the EU-countries this assertion has been tested by looking at the case of the second generation and the results unfortunately do not look positive.
While the children of migrants are born and educated in the EU member states, their chances in the labor market are still far from equal to that of children from native parents (Kraal, Wrench, Roosblad & Simon, 2009).
Numerous reports have highlighted the direct and indirect discrimination which immigrants experience in European labor markets, including Finland (Craig, 2002; Heikkilä, 2005). Not only do recent immigrants experience drastically higher rates of unemployment, but when managing to ind employment their pay is often signi icantly lower than that of the white majority (Morissens & Sainsbury, 2005).
Also, problems - from rejection of quali ications acquired in the nation of origin to institutional racism - are common experiences among immigrant job seekers.
As a great majority of the welfare provisions in European countries are gained through a long-term and stable connection to the labor market, immigrants are in a particularly vulnerable position (Valtonen, 1999; Heikkilä, 2005; Pikkarainen, 2005; Forsander & Alitolppa-Niitamo, 2000).
In Finland, immigrants from especially developing countries face great dif-iculties in the labor market (Heikkilä, 2005). Some of the main barriers new comers from these areas face are “high unemployment rates in Finland, the low esteem attributed to foreign work experience by Finnish employers and inad-equate language skills” (Heikkilä, 2005, p. 485). Furthermore, issues related to ethnic discrimination of foreign-born job applicants are also evident in the Finn-ish labor market. Research by the FinnFinn-ish Institute of Migration has shown that while “foreigners tend to have multiple handicaps like lower educations, more extended family structures and less working experience. These factors can only partially explain their disadvantage in the labor market, with the much more fundamental problems remaining those associated with discriminatory practices linked to ethnic and cultural prejudices” (Heikkilä, 2005, p. 485). One of the main consequences of these discriminatory practices can be witnessed by the at times extremely high unemployment rates of immigrants from developing countries, at levels above 70% (Heikkilä & Jaakkola, 2000).
In the 2000s in Finland, the unemployment rates for migrants have been ap-proximately three times higher than the unemployment rates of Finns (Heikkilä &
Pikkarainen, 2008). In addition to experiencing higher rates of unemployment, im-migrants have a less secure labor market position than Finns. Among imim-migrants, the rates of temporary and part-time employment are higher than among native Finns (Sutela, 2005). Not even Finnish education has signi icantly improved the labor market status of the most vulnerable groups, like immigrants from Somalia.
In addition, immigrants from Somalia have experiences of discrimination in the Finnish labor markets, more than other groups (Joronen, 2005).
INTRODUCTION