anonymous

/ 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

/ Race, Immigrant, Language

I love this country, I do. I have a child here. I met my fiancé here. But after almost 20 years of struggle to secure job, not even talking about career towards which I have degree, I am done. Being black in Finland was always tough but as it progresses with my stay here it is getting worse. Companies to which you get into if you are “lucky” will exploit you by giving impossible times to clean places, they will cut the hours as you are staring at the schedule! They will call themselves friendly and respectful until you call them out on their own behaviors! They hardly question themselves but easy to judge and make it an immigrant issue.
I am tired, from failed healthcare system to no stability when it comes to job, through mistreatment from every corner – including fellow black people! Instead of helping each other they are making it even worse! Everyone acting hungry and thinking of how to use someone to their own benefit. I am exhausted of fighting this battle with the system. Many tried and failed many tried and moved nowhere in their lives. Finland will make sure to trap you in – if you are sane you will become insane. No pint of language will help you unless you are into coding, IT or gaming… but even with that you will always feel you are not enough.

RP

/ Immigrant, Online, Language

I was in a mini-schanuzer dog group in Facebook. Been active member sharing pictures and stories of our dog occasionally. I once shared a story about a dog of same breed looking for a home- and was instantly blocked. I reached out to the 4x admins, none of them responded. Then my Finnish spouse messaged the admins and got a response. I was reprimanded for “selling” or “advertising” a dog and it was against the group rules, and also I posted in English so it looked like spam. Makes sense?

Anonymous

/ In public, Immigrant, Language

I was visiting the eye department of the Helsinki Hospital (HUS) for an eye examination.

I kindly asked the nurse if we can speak English. She immediately showed me that she was not happy with this and she said “If you cannot speak Finnish, you can go back to your country.”.

I stayed silent and calm because I had to get the eye examination done. It was a very uncomfortable 30 minutes. I tried to talk as little as possible and I was afraid that she would make other racist comments.

I felt very sad.

I reported this incidence to HUS but I did not hear back.

Anonymous

/ Race, In public, Immigrant, Language, Government agency

When I gave birth (almost 10 years ago), we weren’t given a private room as requested. I had to share a room and my husband (Finnish) was only allowed to stay during visiting hours which was just a few hours per day. I basically had to fend for myself in a hospital where most of the nurses didn’t speak (or refused to speak) English. I wasn’t told that there were snacks available for new moms to help replenish the energy spent from breastfeeding. I was also never told how to check if my child was able to get milk from me.
A starving newborn and half starved new mother should never happen in a hospital.
Fortunately, towards the end of our 2nd day a nurse who spoke English was horrified when she checked in on me and the baby and gave us the nourishment we were badly needing.
Giving birth is already a traumatising experience. Recovery shouldn’t have these extra stress and discrimination.

Anonymous

/ Language, Government agency

Our son was born in Helsinki’s women’s hospital, during the whole labour and stay, most of the nurses talked only in Finnish to my wife (she’s Finnish, so all fine) and almost didn’t explain anything to me in English so I wasn’t able to follow and be completely aware in one of the most important days (and stressful) of my life.

From an inclusion perspective, it is already quite bad, but also it reaffirms old-school gender roles by not involving men properly.

Anonymous

/ Immigrant, Language, Government agency

I brought my son to neuvola in Kivenlahti for his one-year-old (or year-and-a-half) check-up, the nurse said that I should avoid using my mother tongue and speak Finnish to my son.

Anonymous

/ Immigrant, At school/uni, Language, Government agency

I have experienced a lot of racism because I am not from Finland. but more in health matters. they don’t give me permission to have an operation for my weight and they write on the personal page a bunch of lies like that I refuse to have the operation. they have been doing this here for 3 years, mocking me, giving me hope and then nothing. in education I have experienced racism from a teacher from Russia who taught Finnish, she zeroed in on me because I didn’t like her as a person. while I’m talking flirty, not good but I’m trying. she zeroed me out. My daughter also faces the same racism at daycare when a teacher who is in charge does the same or doesn’t deal with the child at all

Anonymous

/ Race, Sexual identity, In business, Immigrant, Language

Reading through other stories I am saddened at the amount of discrimination foreigners face in Finland… But I am not surprised!
1) Personal observation:
I am a non-EU foreigner in Finland. Before Finland I lived in another EU country which is kinda known for being racist and intolerant. It is unacceptable what foreigners and LGBTQ community face in there. BUT at least a lot of the instances of discrimination are open and manifested in the daily acts and interactions of locals. Pretty much “you get what you see”. Here in Finland it is relatively not as open. Locals tend to keep their true beliefs to themselves, and manifest it via closed doors, be it recruitment, elections or other decision-making instances. And when there is a report saying a substantial amount of voters do not want to elect Haavisto as president due to his sexual orientation, many people are shocked.

2) Personal experience:
I may not have faced confrontational discrimination like other foreigners do, but there was one very explicit instance. I have a very non-Finnish name. A couple of years back I applied for a job post for which I was qualified and it did not require Finnish language. We had a nice round one with the recruitment agency, but then I was told the hiring manager decided to pursue other candidates. No problem, moved on. But some time later I discover that a summer intern that I worked with got the same position. See, we had similar education level, but I had much more experience that the job clearly required. But somehow the hiring manager decided to skip my name and opted for a more “familiar” name. God bless them!

Still, I love Finland and it’s a wonderful place in many ways. But it’s important to bring awareness to the difficulties foreigners face here. Cheers!

Anonymous

/ Race, In business, Immigrant, Language

I once participated in an event aimed at international students that were seeking employment opportunities in Finland. The event was organized by city of Jyväskylä. Most of us understood this was a job fair, but no, basically it was just bunch of representatives of different companies telling us that they are currently not employing but they want to give advice on good ways to apply for a job in Finland. It was organized as a word café, so people could go around and talk to the representatives. I was standing at a table and there was a representative of one well-known company which I will not name. There was at least 10 of us immigrants standing at this table. He told us directly that they have no open positions at that moment. A few minutes later two Finnish students approached, they said they were looking for a job, and the guy handed them his business card and told them they might have something for them and told them to contact him. And then they continued the discussion in Finnish which at that time I did not understand. This felt like a slap in the face and like a clear message that we stand no chance as immigrants. 99% of participants were foreigners in this event. Another “fun” part of this event was that there was a panel discussion with 5 representatives (HR and similar roles), and they were giving advice on how to apply for a job in Finland. When they were asked about how many foreign employees they have, not a single representative had an answer to provide (e.g., some specific number, percentage, etc.)