The good, the bad and the advantageous : Migrants’ attitudes towards other migrants

Abstract

There is a growing number of various ethnic groups in Finland. The attitudes and categorizations that host country nationals have and make regarding migrants is frequently researched. The attitudes that migrants have towards other migrants has, however, been much less researched. This paper provides an in-depth analysis that considers what factors are behind the attitudes that migrants form of other migrants and how these impact categorizations and hierarchies. The empirical research material of this study is based on 77 qualitative interviews with migrants living in Finland, carried out in 2018–2019. In the analysis, various theories of minority relations are applied.

The research finds that migrants evaluate other migrants according to their perceived advantageousness and, based on these evaluations, they form hierarchies, which are to some extent ethnic. Perceived advantageousness is based on being integrated (especially in economic terms), hard-working, non-threatening, pliable, similar to Finns (or an ideal of perceived Finnishness), “white”, and not being dependent on welfare benefits. As a fear of being lumped together and then discriminated against, migrants emphasise their distinctiveness from other migrant groups in a subjugating manner. Certain characteristics tend to be ascribed to certain backgrounds and ethnicities and, thus, migrant groups become categorized according to their positions in a hierarchy. Not being advantageous is attributed to personal shortcomings and even ‘racial’ attributes. A shared commonness of the majority population is presumed and functions as the underlying assumption which guides the idea of how and what people should be like in order to fit in.