The Apple Never Falls Far from the Tree—Or does It? Finnish Female Migrant Transnational Generations on the Swedish Labor Market

Abstract

Migration from Finland to Sweden has taken place throughout times, yet the Westward migration reached its peak during the 1960s and 1970s: half a million Finns migrated to Sweden, predominately motivated by employment opportunities. This article is about Finnish female labor migrants, their daily experiences in the Swedish labor market, and the experiences of these labor migrants' transnational generations. We studied the education, career choices, and occupational opportunities of both groups and found that little upward mobility can be detected. This, however, does not translate to dissatisfaction in the women we studied; on the contrary, both generations were content with their careers. In our data, the experience of the Finnish language as a burden in a professional setting seems to have carried over to the next generation, as only a few spoke of their bilingualism as a real asset.

Echoing Ideas in Discourse on Poetics: From Lowth's parallelismus membrorum to Porthan's rhythmus sensus

“…For an easier traceability of the background of a person, I have introduced a naming system similar to that used by Hanna Snellman in her research on Finns in Gothenburg (2003; see also Snellman and Weckström 2017). I use pseudonyms starting with four different letters.…”