Irmeli Tuomarla, Labour Market CounsellorEditor in chief

28.8.2007

In the 2nd June edition of Helsingin Sanomat Petteri Tuohinen writes in the Eyewitness column under the headline

“The European Union is white“ that, in fact, no other employees but white Europids, in other words, Caucasians, can be seen in the EU institutions, which doesn´t correspond to the European multicultural and multi-coloured reality. The visibility problem of minorities can only be estimated because no records are kept on the colour of skin or ethnic background of employees working for the Union.

In Finland only a few immigrants are employed in the public sector. Astrid Thors, Minister of Migration and European Affairs, suggests that the new immigration administration should show an example in the matter. The majority of immigrants of working age remain outside of the work force. The unemployment rate of those included in the labour is triple compared to the main population, even though it is rapidly coming down along with the shortage of labour.

Thors has vigorously taken on a big task to integrate immigration issues, which, for instance, the National Union of University Students in Finland SYL requested in their statement in July. SYL calls for employers to become active participants in immigration policy and benefit from the highly-educated workforce, already available in the country. Even though the need for labour has compelled companies to look for employees farther than ever, the foreign nationals who already live here can´t automatically be considered to accept "lousy jobs“. In spite of the fact that no employer confesses to be afraid of a black man, well-trained `Ahmed´ with good language skills still finds it hard to be employed in his own field.

Media work requires high-level language skills. The field has been awaiting the second generation of immigrants to appear whose Finnish skills are equal to those of a native speaker. Journalisti 11/2007 dealt with the topic in an article in which Jorma Pulkkinen, editor in chief of Aamulehti, Reetta Meriläinen, editor in chief of Helsingin Sanomat, Atte Jääskeläinen, editor in chief of YLE News and Jouni Kemppainen, head of YLE24 News, would in principle be prepared to employ an editor with an immigrant background. Each of them stuck to the fact that an editor would have to be able to work in Finnish. As such, none of them found a gender, age or being an immigrant a cause for being recruited. Erkki Laatikainen, editor in chief of Keskisuomalainen, wouldn´t be surprised if a share of immigrant editors corresponded to the immigrants´ share of the whole population in ten years. In the case of Helsingin Sanomat, Meriläinen thinks a profitable number could be between two and five. Foreign nationals living in Finland correspond to 2,3 percent of the whole population and the share of those whose native language is other than Finnish is 3 percent of the whole population, which means that reaching the corresponding figures in the media will take some effort. It has been difficult for immigrants to be appointed to permanent editorial posts.

Elina Paloheimo, a long-time veteran of YLE´s multicultural work and head of Cultural programmes tells us in this magazine how big a challenge it has been to make the immigrants follow the Finnish media and, on the other hand, for the company to employ them as editors.

It is delightful that for the first time in our country, a professional teacher training group began their studies in a programme targeted at immigrants at the HAMK University of Applied Sciences in Hämeenlinna. The study language is Finnish, instead of English, which was previously used. In school communities, teachers with an immigrant background are an important resource in crossing the language and cultural thresholds.