An immigrated expert’s life in Finland strides two worlds. On one side is your new life, your new job or studies. Your new experiences, both good and bad. On the other is your own country and the thousand ways it has shaped you. With it are your family and friends, no less important to who you are despite the new friends, new experiences.
From the outside, it is too easy to focus only on that first world; the interactions with that new life. Managing a difficult job market and thriving in a new work culture. Learning the Finnish language. Making new friends and finding a sense of belonging. Whether at the workplace or when devising policy, the impacts the other world, the old life, are having are underappreciated, forgotten or ignored.
Global events place the flaws in that thinking into an ever-harsher light. Among TEK’s international members, Iranian is the fifth most common nationality, the 6% share representing hundreds of people. Can we really think of their situation here only through a Finnish lens? Can we expect them not to be affected?
Situations at home can also influence native Finnish workers. For immigrated experts, the potential of impacts is so much higher, simply because from both a geographical and political viewpoint, much of the world is less stable than Finland. For those without permanent residence, the consequences of job loss from your work ability being impacted are also potentially far more catastrophic.
Finland and Finnish employers can perhaps do little to change global events. What they can do is ensure the system here protects immigrated experts in situations when it is their previous world affecting them, not their life in Finland. That they are supported when their wellbeing or ability to work are hit. That those situations don’t lead to permanent consequences.
The easing of the requirements to fire workers together with three- or six-month unemployment periods leading to residence permit removal makes it unfortunately too easy to imagine the worst-case scenario. Potential significant cuts to many of the NGOs that support the wellbeing and employment of immigrated experts make these scenarios more likely still.
At a time when more empathy, understanding and flexibility in supporting immigrated experts is needed, we are instead moving in the opposite direction. From individual employers to the state, it is vital we change that.
Writer works at TEK as a Project Manager for International Experts
Instagram: @tekforall
