Text Kaija Matinheikki-Kokko, The writer is docent on multicultural education and guidance at Jyväskylä University. She works at Stadia as a senior teacher and is in charge of international research and development work.

Integration as a concept communicates an attempt to provide immigrants with the prerequisites to feel at home in a Finnish society. By means of integration measures, authorities aim to promote the immigrants´ equal, civic, cultural and social participation. An extensive consensus exists on the importance of the Finnish language and employment in promoting integration while the significance of the arrivals´ own culture is still in dispute.

In terms of concepts, the description of immigrants´ integration and how it has been facilitated varies according to times. The changed terminology describes a changing administration and activities from refugee welfare to the promotion of the immigrants´ integration.

The general operating principles highlighting the arrivals´ equality and contribution can be found in refugee welfare and reception and immigrants´ integration. Instead, principles relating to administration and practical measures, their priority, nature and extent have been under constant change.

In Finland civil servants have played a key role with the responsibility for immigration and integration policy. With political interest missing, authorities have leant on the information based on research and follow-up in their definitions of operating policy, produced by researchers applying the approach of administration and the world of science.

Concerning the work by authorities, the 1980s focused on composing a reception system for refugees. Abolishing special care and mainstreaming the services targeted at immigrants have characterised the efforts made by authorities since the 1990s. Immigration work crosses the boundaries of various administrative sectors, which explains the need for a constant negotiation on sharing the responsibility.

Refugee welfare and adaptation

I started my working career in 1979 when Finland received its first boat refugees from South-eastern Asia. The work which was launched by the central office of the Finnish Red Cross as first-hand welfare continued as a project on refugee welfare coordinated by the Ministry of Labour.

In those days refugee welfare was closely linked with practice, in other words, individual care for the arrivals selected as quota refugees. People went to Sweden and other Nordic countries to learn from their experience. The distance from practice to central administration was short. That´s why administrative decisions were often made according to an ad hoc principle on the basis of practical needs.

The committee report of 1980 by the refugee board provided the expected administrative framework for refugee work. Securing their adaptation, including the rights related to social security, housing, Finnish studies and employment, was then in focus.

The experiences were based on the welfare of refugees from Chile and Indochina. According to the board, refugee welfare highlighted humanitarian and social grounds instead of a labour political approach. That´s why the total responsibility for refugee welfare was transferred from the Ministry of Labour to the Ministry for Social Affairs and Health.

Refugee welfare takes a separate position

Until the late 1980s administering refugee welfare was concentrated in the social sector, which applied the principles of special care and secured the wellbeing of small refugee groups from Indochina. A refugee centre in the metropolitan area, primarily supervised by the National Board of Social Welfare, was in charge of practical operations which were regionally concentrated.

Because the work concentrated in the refugee centre, it provided the opportunity for professional, target group based development. As a result, special programmes on the training, day care as well as psychosocial adaptation and securing one´s subsistence were composed.

This work was characterised by comprehensiveness because the follow-up reports and a growing research interest in refugees produced information about the effectiveness of their adaptation process and welfare. However, their slow placement from a refugee centre to metropolitan municipalities proved to be a challenge.

The pressure on placing refugees in municipalities was increased by their growing number after 1988. Besides reception facilities in municipalities, citizens´ attitudes to foreigners and immigration policy came into focus.

Abolishing the special position

Based on the need to decentralise refugees, the Advisory Board on Refugee Affairs promoted contributional refugee policy in 1989, which, on one hand, emphasised the active role of refugees as municipal residents and, on the other hand, the activeness of municipalities to develop their own facilities to receive refugees on a voluntary basis.

In addition to information, funding was the key guiding instrument of state authorities. Instead of refugee welfare, the board used the concept of refugee reception, which communicated the periodic nature of the special state-funded measures.

In terms of social dimension, the need for measures against discrimination and racism was recognised as well as for good neighbourhood, tolerance and cultural diversity.

In the 1990s the number of refugees increased and their ethnic background became more and more varied. Supporting integration was extended to include other immigrants too. Besides Somali refugees, Finnish Ingrian return migrants were brought into the attention of the public.

Barriers preventing immigrants from being employed and their unemployment became the centre of attention in the late 1980s. The administrative coordination of immigrant issues was returned to the Ministry of Labour, but the social welfare sector has continued coordinating local integration services. The refugee centre became a network of regional reception centres.

Immigrants and integration

Immigrants´ flexible and efficient integration was entered as the basic objective of the first programme on immigration and refugee policy of 1997 by the Finnish Government.

As far as integration measures are concerned, individually built paths of working life and training and commitment to them have been emphasised. Integration has been extended to be a measure of special support and guidance which provides a challenge of multicultural professional skills for all the sectors and employees in society.

To a growing extent, practical integration work is done by various national and international networks which contribute to building a fragmentary picture of financial, social and cultural conditions of integration. The number of actors and the role of the third sector have increased with the project-based work.

Indeed, various actors and working methods are required because besides the sector-based organisation, integration work demands multi-professional action, in other words, a target group and phenomenon-based organisation of services (racism, discrimination) as well as organising work on the basis of age and region.

Employment-based immigration and integration

In terms of implementing the New Government programme on immigration policy (10/2006), building a connection between integration and immigration policy will be raised as a challenge.

By means of integration, Finland is provided with strategies on competitiveness in the global labour markets, in the face of a shortage of workforce. One of the central tasks of integration policy will be recognising and acknowledging professional skills of those coming from another culture both in the home country and the global labour markets. If successful, the integration of immigrants already residing in Finland creates the preconditions for an active employment-based immigration policy.

However, integration requires a holistic assessment of the immigrants´ wellbeing, which in addition to following their employment, covers training, social welfare and healthcare services and the follow-up of their effectiveness.

The aims of integration and immigration policy are not contradictory although unemployed immigrants residing in the country may feel that those entering Finland as employment-based immigrants pose a threat to them. Rather, it´s a question of intersecting development processes of different times.

Still, integration processes can be differentiated according to the arrival status of immigrants when their global and local labour markets are born.

What does integration conforming to global development require? On one hand, there are built-in contradictory expectations of settling down and making oneself at home and on the other had, moving flexibly after employment.