Immigration to Finland has not been very numerous until the early 1980’s, when things started to change. In the 1990’s the number of foreigners living in Finland quadrupled.

In the year 1990 the number of foreigners in Finland was 21,000, at the beginning of the year 2001 it was more than 90,000. The number of foreigners is 1,7 % of the whole population. They represent 156 nationalities.

The biggest group are the Russians (more than 18,000), followed by Estonians, Swedes, Somali and people from former Yugoslavia.

During the whole of the 1970’s the Finnish citizenship was granted only to a couple of hundred of foreigners. In the year 1999 the citizenship was given to nearly 5,000 people.

Reasons for immigration

Working life is in change because working life is becoming more international and people move more easily from one country to an other after work.

In Finland and elsewhere in Europe we are in a situation where the average age is rising and the the proportion of younger age groups is decreasing. It has been estimated that the shortage of labour will grow with about 20,000 persons a year in Finland in the near future. This means that Finland will have to accept the immigration of foreign labour force to the country.

Racism

The word “racism” has been given many different definitions. It’s because racism is a historical phenomenon and that’s why it changes along with national, social and political situations.

The kind of ideas which claim that differences in appearance, physical features or “national character” are important are considered racist. Certain groups consider other people better or worse on this basis.

Racism is also the kind of ways of acting in community structures which lead to discrimination.

These days racism in Finland is easily connected with only skinheads and single violent acts against emigrants.On the whole we’d like to say, however, that open racism does not fit in Finland.