Changing Cognitive Social Capital

The six social capital types consist of structural and relational social capital. The cognitive dimension affects bonding, bridging and linking social capital from the background. However, the multicultural social capital types contain less of the cognitive dimension than other social capital types. Those with bonding social capital or exclusive linking social capital have more in common.

Usually they have a shared language concerning multicultural issues instead of concrete actions. It

can be argued that the cognitive aspect of culturally cohesive social capital rises from bonding social capital, a common background and strong shared scheme of things.

For example, the cultural diversity was lacking from the interviewed work communities. Still, in the MORO! project context, the best example of the changing cognitive social capital was found among the work communities. From the cognitive point of view, the main obstacles for cultural diversity were the prevailing mentality and the stereotypes native-born people and immigrants may have of each others. The attitudes of original population usually include (hidden) negative attitudes, prejudices, fear or plain ignorance towards immigrants.

“There will always be discrimination in different forms, sometimes in a sophisticated form, sometimes it is difficult to diagnose, in between the lines, sometimes only in one look, in body language. Racism does not mean only fights and hits from the skinheads. No. Racism takes place also when an immigrant sits on the bus and the only free seat is next to him but no one wants to sit there. (...) People have to have readiness, society has to have prerequisites, basic infrastructure to battle against them [the discrimination]. Public officials, employers, work communities, ordinary people, you and me, all, immigrants who have studied the cultural competence are needed. “

(Project team member/2)

Employing native-born workers is secure and familiar for Finnish employers. Often, they simply lack the experience of immigrants as employees which would help to mould their attitudes. First contacts with immigrants may create insecurity among the work community members. The contacts can also start a common process inside a bonding type of work community and change attitudes so that bonding social capital possibly changes into bridging social capital as time goes by. New things like immigrants raise first resistance among the work community. Later, it becomes more normal.

Also, the experiences from the capital area advise that prevailing attitudes towards immigrants will not fade out without real experiences (Virtanen, Niinikoski, Karinen & Paananen, 2004, 42-43).

“When the first [immigrants] started to come, we surely were in tension as to how will we manage with them and everything, it raised up feelings, but of course there have been various opinions in the group and maybe they will never be faded out.”

(Work community member/2)

“It will be a starting point [for a multicultural work community] if the good guys are found from immigrants who will change the attitudes of work communities, managers and clients. There has to be someone who shows the direction (…) Our group has had different thoughts and opinions and I believe that the training occasions have generated those most. It has started a process, changed attitudes and brought new angles and tools for the work we do.”

(Work community member/3)

Still, it is wrong to think that all good and bad immigrants face comes from the original population. The interviewed immigrants said that sometimes there is more racism among

different immigrant groups than between immigrants and native-born people. In addition, immigrants have often prejudices on native-born people, which have roots for example in racism they have faced. More often than not media criminalises conflicts where immigrants are involved. Conflicts between natives and immigrants are emphasised in media, but conflicts among immigrants do not come into view. Oftentimes, the conflicts between immigrants bring more problems for immigrants who live in Finland than problems between immigrants and the original population.

One interesting angle for the cognitive dimension is that it could be seen as a substitute for the money spent in various immigrant projects. The immigrant authorities felt that instead of different immigrant projects and integration measures the locks connected to the integration would be solved rather by changes at cognitive level. The comment of an immigrant authority shows that many immigrant projects were quite ineffective. The reason for this was the lack of cognitive level social capital among the integration parties.

“It is true that huge sums of money are tied to all these development projects at the moment (…) but it is not only dependent on money. It is dependent also on the public sector actors, whether they are ready to be flexible or totally change their working model, if somewhere new models are developed that this is what should be done. It can often be done with the same amount of money. People can hide behind phrases like ‘we don’t have resources to do that even if it would not necessarily demand resources but a mental change (…) I would say that at the moment a lot of euros are spent in vain. “

(Immigrant authority/2)

In intercultural communication, native-born people and immigrants are like mirrors to each other that show are the possible prejudices true or false. Among multicultural communities like MORO!

team, where bridging social capital and inclusive linking social capital prevail, the systems of meaning, representations and codes are more plural. Connected to multicultural social capital, stable worldviews are replaced by changing ones, where shared systems of meaning are synergies of many different worldviews. In other words, multicultural communities consist of many voices. Later, multicultural communities start to create their own systems of meaning as they become more stable.

Even so, the common multicultural worldview is more flexible than the shared language of bonding groups.