Daily Discrimination Stories | category

anonymous

May 2, 2025 / Race, At work, In public, Immigrant, At school/uni, Near home

As a middle eastern, I have been living in Finland, around Uusima, for about two years now. At first, I thought I was just being paranoid. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong or illegal, so why were people staring at me? Then it escalated to them even taking pictures. I started to wonder if I was dressing inappropriately, but having lived in many countries before, I knew my style wasn’t unusual. It was only after reading stories about even Finns who “stick out” in any way and face similar treatment that I realized this wasn’t just me.
Another problem arose at work: I was being excluded and disrespected. Suddenly, my boss accused me of being hostile. These things happened simultaneously, making me question my own sanity. The only reason I knew I wasn’t losing my mind was because I found others with similar stories. If you stand out, the collective society can be hostile. This is deeply troubling.

anonymous

May 2, 2025 / Race, At work, Immigrant, Online, Language

I work in customer service over chats. The company I am working for is not based in Finland but I was hired to do help cutomers in Finnish.
Before anyone enters the chat they provide some info about their request to the bot.
One particular customer was using English with the bot but I saw his name and recognised it as a Finnish one so I started communicating in Finnish.
He accused me of not being a real Finn and asked me who is the Finnish president so I can prove to him I am indeed a ”real Finn”.
Other times customers with impossible request accuse me of not understanding and switch to English even though the answer remains the same and I get anxious of losing my job.
I am a woman and use a very regular Finnish male’s name as my avatar.

anonymous

April 7, 2025 / Race, At work

I live in the center of Finland for 3 and half years now. I’m a PhD student here. I have been many times being called N words. This feeling is not really good. If we have been invited here as a working force or educational group to work in one of the highest institutions of a country which is university. Then why the government has not considered the infrastructure and cultural acceptance before accepting us?

If the people here do not accept and can not truly accept us that is totally fine, but my big concern and many of my friends is that if we are not accepted here then why In the first place these institutions give grants, admissions, and working scholarships to us to be part of their project for years while not even feeling a part of human being in society.

Someone

April 7, 2025 / Race, At work, In business, In public, Near home

Older women especially in my experience, almost most of the Tokmani shopping centers that I go to buy my daily groceries the older ladies who work in the counter look at us in a very exaggerated way. Narrowing their eyes and behaving in a sense that we are a piece of extra thing at the counter. But immediately after they do our job. They laugh smile and say with open face hello to the Finnish costumers. This feeling in a daily regular basis is so hard. I wonder if the managers of these big companies even pay attention to these things.

anonymous

November 6, 2024 / At work

I performed well at work, and my direct supervisor recommended me for promotion several times. But each time, my superior rejected my application. Yes, I don’t speak Finnish; then, the official language of our company is English; finally, our CEO doesn’t speak Finnish either.

Anonymous

March 23, 2024 / At work, In public, Immigrant, Uncategorized

I was recently attending an informal dinner before a seminar meant for about 30-40 people. During the dinner, a colleague that I have known for several years suddenly threw a very irrelevant question at me: “What is your socioeconomic status in your home country?”. I am the kind of person that wants to be approachable to my colleagues. So, keeping that in mind, I started explaining and even over explaining myself. Since the question from my Finnish colleague caught me off guard, l don’t know if I was able to give a satisfactory answer. Now, here’s my concern. Was this question asked just out of curiosity? Was it asked because this person thinks I am escaping my socioeconomic situation from my home country? Does this person somehow think lowly about me already?

After that day, I have been feeling very insecure in general. Of course, this incident wasn’t the only one I have faced in Finland. I’m still working out the best response to such questions in the future. Although, what worries me is that if I am too outspoken and straight with my replies, would that seem overly repulsive? Will my colleague think that I am being rude?

At this point, I am sick to my stomach trying to figure out how to process this. If my ethnicity, skin colour and pre-conceived notions about my socioeconomic status precedes me, then, will I ever feel fully accepted in this country?

anonymous

February 8, 2024 / Race, At work, Language

I was working for a company in Finland. I only worked for one and half months and they terminated my contract. I was talking to my friend in my native language and they thought that I was leaking company secrets. My friend had an emergency and it was important for me to talk to him. I know it was some of my fault that I was talking in work premises, I should have gone outside the work place but I completely forgot about that because of the nature of emergency. When I was talking to my friend it was around 6 pm and they suspected that I was leaking the company’s work since it was past the normal working hours. As per my contract I have to work for 7:30 hrs per day but since I didn’t worked properly a day before so I was trying to work for the extra hours to make up for the unworked hours.

Next day I had a meeting with the hr and my senior and I explained them what happened. They heard my side of the story but they had already signed the contract termination letter.

I went into depression for a week, I stayed at home and eat nothing. I quit smoking at that time but I started it again and I was smoking 2 packs of cigs everyday.

Rowena Harri

November 30, 2023 / At work, Immigrant

I encountered racism firsthand in my workplace. Language barriers can be challenging, but they should never be a reason to question someone’s abilities or integrity. However, a family relative of one of our residents made hurtful remarks during a shift, insinuating that I couldn’t be trusted as a nurse because Finnish isn’t my first language. With other witnesses in sight, she even threatened to revoke my license by filing a report against me in Valvira, which to me, is a serious violation and an attempt to intimidate and undermine my professional standing. There was even more intention to intimidate by calling her other relatives to come to our workplace.
It’s incredibly disheartening to encounter such prejudice, especially when the only goal is to provide the best care possible to the people we care for. I firmly believe that any language skills, while not perfect, should never overshadow the compassion and commitment to delivering quality healthcare.
I wanted to share this experience to shed light on the ongoing challenges many foreigners( or, as the family member said, ”vitun maahanmuuttaja”) face due to their language skills in Finland. Let’s use this opportunity to start a conversation and work towards a more understanding and accepting society.

Anonymous

November 9, 2023 / Gender, Race, At work, Immigrant, At school/uni, Government agency

I work in Finland as a doctor since 2007. I got my right to specialize in Obstetrics & Gynecology from Helsinki University on March 2009. Imagine till now I still did not specialize…while all my Finnish colleagues, even the ones started after me became specialists and some of them became even “ylilääkäri”. I got the Finnish citizenship on 2008 and I do speak Finnish. May be I’m stupid, but is it fair to force me to leave my family and my kids in Finland and go to UK in order to finish my specialization to the end?! I can not even justify what happened to myself, there is no explanation other than DISCRIMINATION. What is shocking, is the fact that it happened in Helsinki University, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology….where people claim to be educated, professional and civilized as well.

Anonymous

October 8, 2023 / At work, Age

The restaurant that I started working in was full of young adults & teenagers (ages between 17 -22), I was 30 years old. Later I discovered that the restaurant manager has been saying to everyone before I started that I am 24 years old.. I knew that when I started meeting coworkers and getting to know each other the subject come to age and I say how old I am they are surprised and say well “……” she said that you’re 24…
I didn’t like it, but just corrected them and moved on.. later, a new restaurant manager came to work and he was hired by the old restaurant manager (the same one I was taking about).. when we asked about who is the new manager she told us about his background and experience and said he was 24 years old…. a month and a half after he started working, a conversation led to age and turned out that he was 30 as well! And that old restaurant manager did the same with him by telling everyone that he was younger than he really is… as if ut was a shame that we 30 years old people and we need to hide that!!
I don’t know why she chose the age 24 specifically in both cases, but it sure says a lot about her and her inner self worth. Cuz I never thought that I would at all be ashamed of how old I am, I love life and I think the 30 are the times when people make big accomplishments after spending their 20 trying out stuff and figuring themselves out. I was excited for my 30 since I was in the beginning of my 20s. But people like her believe that their self worth decline over time and when they reach a certain age they’ll be filled with self hate and insecurities.