Experiences from within the ‘Migrant Hierarchy': Imposed Categorizations As Definers of Social Identity for Highly-Skilled Migrants in Finland

Studies of ethnic hierarchies in Finland show varying levels of prejudice towards immigrants based on their nationality and ethnicity. Levels of acceptance are also tied to the role of the immigrants in the economy and labour market (i.e. class standards). In the intersection of these value judgements an overall ‘migrant hierarchy’ is formed. At the bottom of this hierarchy are ‘unwanted’ humanitarian migrants from less familiar cultures, while at the top end are the ‘migrant elite’: ‘wanted’, highly-skilled, and preferably Western, migrants.

I study this hierarchy as a form of categorization that creates a social structure. This structure has an effect on the construction of migrants’ self-defined social group identities; although these categorisations stem from the Finnish society and its views on immigrants, I believe that they are recognised and to certain extent internalised also by the migrants. Drawing from ethnographic and interview data emphasising lived experience and everyday life of skilled migrants in Finland, I will discuss how the imposed categories become strategies that can be used also by the migrants themselves in identity negotiations and to represent value judgements. As such they also point to possible problems with integration: in (re)drawing their group boundaries within this new social structure, skilled migrants in Finland are defining their identities not only as who they are, but also as who they are not: not ‘unwanted’ humanitarian migrants, but also not Finns.