Becoming 'more like a Finn': In-visibility and the struggle for belonging in Finland
Lefort, Bruno; Romashov, Vadim (2024-10-22)
Wiley-Blackwell
22.10.2024
Lefort, B., & Romashov, V. (2024). Becoming ‘more like a Finn’: In-visibility and the struggle for belonging in Finland. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12449.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
© 2024 The Author(s). Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism published by Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
© 2024 The Author(s). Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism published by Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202410316529
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202410316529
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
Nationalist practices and visionaries have a profound influence on those who are categorized as ‘foreign’ or ‘non-belonging’ to the nation. Based on ethnographic explorations among Russian-speakers and people with diverse Middle Eastern backgrounds in Finland, this article revisits the concept of in-visibility as one possible avenue to expose the everyday struggles for belonging that these populations experience. We explore how dynamics of exclusion and inclusion at work in the wider society engender specific identification patterns that ultimately reproduce and reshuffle hierarchies between people. We argue that in their struggle for belonging, people categorized as ‘foreign’ in the nationalist imagination develop responsive tactics of becoming visible and invisible to cast themselves as full members of the society. However, in doing so, they find themselves tangled into hierarchies and power dynamics of exclusion at the core of strategies of visioning embedded into the social structures of the securitizing racial welfare state.
Nationalist practices and visionaries have a profound influence on those who are categorized as ‘foreign’ or ‘non-belonging’ to the nation. Based on ethnographic explorations among Russian-speakers and people with diverse Middle Eastern backgrounds in Finland, this article revisits the concept of in-visibility as one possible avenue to expose the everyday struggles for belonging that these populations experience. We explore how dynamics of exclusion and inclusion at work in the wider society engender specific identification patterns that ultimately reproduce and reshuffle hierarchies between people. We argue that in their struggle for belonging, people categorized as ‘foreign’ in the nationalist imagination develop responsive tactics of becoming visible and invisible to cast themselves as full members of the society. However, in doing so, they find themselves tangled into hierarchies and power dynamics of exclusion at the core of strategies of visioning embedded into the social structures of the securitizing racial welfare state.
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