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This multidisciplinary volume reflects the shifting experiences and framings of Finnishness and its relation to race and coloniality. The authors centre their investigations on whiteness and unravel the cultural myth of a normative Finnish (white) ethnicity. Rather than presenting a unified definition for whiteness, the book gives space to the different understandings and analyses of its authors. This collection of case-studies illuminates how Indigenous and ethnic minorities have participated in defining notions of Finnishness, how historical and recent processes of migration have challenged the traditional conceptualisations of the nation-state and its population, and how imperial relationships have contributed to a complex set of discourses on Finnish compliance and identity. With an aim to question and problematise what may seem self-evident aspects of Finnish life and Finnishness, expert voices join together to offer (counter) perspectives on how Finnishness is constructed and perceived. Scholars from cultural studies, history, sociology, linguistics, genetics, among others, address four main topics: 1) Imaginations of Finnishness, including perceived physical characteristics of Finnish people; 2) Constructions of whiteness, entailing studies of those who do and do not pass as white; 3) Representations of belonging and exclusion, making up of accounts of perceptions of what it means to be ‘Finnish’; and 4) Imperialism and colonisation, including what might be considered uncomfortable or even surprising accounts of inclusion and exclusion in the Finnish context. This volume takes a first step in opening up a complex set of realities that define Finland’s changing role in the world and as a home to diverse populations.

This chapter examines embodied representations of Finnishness and whiteness in Sweden where the collective notion of Sweden-Finnishness is situated in the nexus migrant and minority experiences. Based on material generated by individuals and activists as part of Sweden-Finnish social media campaigns in the 2010s, the chapter discusses the different ways in which Finnishness and whiteness are negotiated on an individual level and how they are situated in different social, political and historical contexts. By applying the analytical lens of in/visibility and drawing from both critical whiteness studies and intersectionally informed thinking, the study reveals how Finnishness can at the same time be invisible and visible due to the whiteness of the Finns, but also visible as minoritized and racialized others. The chapter provides novel insights into contemporary Sweden-Finnishness and experiences of non-white Sweden-Finns, as well as politicized and minoritized Sweden-Finnishness. In addition to highlighting the diversity of different Finnish experiences in Sweden, the study demonstrates that whiteness is a highly fluid, situational and contextual way of boundary-drawing.

In this article, I examine representations of Sweden Finnish authors Antti Jalava and Susanna Alakoski in Swedish literature reviews in the 1980s and 2000s. The study builds on constructivist views of ethnicity and identity in order to understand Sweden Finns' changing status in a multicultural Sweden. In addition, the article discusses Sweden Finnish literature in relation to recent studies and debates on immigrant literature in Sweden. Sweden Finns are a Finnish ethno-linguistic group, who were recognized as a national minority in Sweden in 2000. Immigrants and their descendants are generally excluded from minority policies. Although Finns and the Finnish language have a historical presence in Sweden, most present-day Finnish speakers in Sweden, or those identifying themselves as Sweden Finns, have their background in post-World War II labor migration or even in more recent migration. In addition to integration, Sweden Finns' status as a national minority derives from a growing awareness of Finnish history in Sweden, but also from a unique combination of national, bilateral Finnish Swedish politics as well as Nordic cooperation. Therefore, the rapid change in Sweden Finns' societal status from immigrants to a national minority in a few decades raises questions about how different ethnic and cultural boundaries are drawn and redrawn in different times. In order to examine these changing ethnic categories, I use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze how the Swedish majority media have portrayed authors with Finnish background at different times, and how these representations reflect Sweden Finns' changing societal status in Sweden. As material, eighteen literature reviews from Swedish newspapers regarding Antti Jalava's novel Asfaltblomman (1980) and Susanna Alakoski's novel Svinalängorna (2006) are analyzed with a focus on author representations and questions of ethnicity and authenticity. The results of the study show that author representations reflect Sweden Finns' integration into Swedish society. While Jalava was mostly depicted as an immigrant or as “neither Swedish nor Finnish” in the early 1980s, Alakoski was instead seen foremost as part of the Swedish literary canon through representation as a working-class author. However, despite Sweden Finns' recognition as a national minority, as well as Alakoski's own migrant background, she was represented neither as a Sweden Finn nor as someone with an immigrant background, although her Finnish background was implicitly acknowledged. Therefore, the study also contributes to contemporary studies of immigrant literature in Sweden by highlighting the exoticizing and racializing aspects of the contemporary discursive construction of “immigrant literature” and “immigrant author.”

Unlike immigrants, national minorities are awarded recognition based on their long historical presence in the nation-state. While the political boundary between national minorities and immigrants is governed on state level, minorities’ own agency is significant for constructing and contesting ethnic and political boundaries. This article shows how Sweden-Finns, recognized as a national minority in Sweden since 2000, have contested the immigrant/national minority dichotomy in their transition from stigmatized post-war migranthood to recognized national minority-ness. By asking how boundary-making between migranthood and minority-ness is expressed in Sweden-Finnish ethnopolitical campaigns from the 1980s to the 2010s, we bring attention to how shifts in the socio-political and media technological contexts of these decades have shaped their mobilization. Through an analysis of newspaper articles, campaign material, and interviews, we show how Sweden-Finnish ethnic activists discursively construct identity and draw boundaries of belonging during different time periods.

Teksti perustuu FT Tuire Liimataisen väitöskirjasta Finnishnesses in Sweden – The Discursive Construction of Ethnicity in the Landscape of Social Media (Ruotsin suomalaisuudet – Etnisyyden diskursiivinen rakentuminen sosiaalisessa mediassa) laadittuun lektioon, joka on esitetty väitöstilaisuudessa 3.9.2022 Helsingin yliopistossa.