Rethinking Integration

What if we understood our social environment as regulating access to a variety of capitals? What if, as an academic community, we critically and routinely interrogated discourses of “society,” “community,” or “culture” in light of how they produce or maintain diff erence? What if we acknowledged the harm “integration” has caused, not as an “accident” but as an ideology doing the work it was designed to do? What if we had a space to grapple with these questions, and what if the ETMU book was providing such a space? With the goal of honoring experiences, activism, art, and scholarly work that stand against “integration,” this book invites the reader to rethink integration.

As we grapple with complex questions around discourses and policies of “integration” that shape our professional and personal lives, this book may help to learn and think about these complexities in new ways.

This book is written to celebrate ETMU’s 20-year anniversary.

1. Introduction: Thinking Integration Otherwise
Johanna Ennser-Kananen, Zeinab Karimi, Maria Petäjäniemi, Sepideh Sadatizarrini (Rahaa), Ameera Masoud & Ilkhom Khalimzoda

2. Playing with Integration: Understanding the Lived Experiences of Older Migrants
Anastasia Asikainen

3. “I Never Felt I Was a Member of the Society”: Trust and Social Connections Experienced by Racialized Women
Zeinab Karimi

4. “Am I a ‘Good’ Woman?”: Everyday Experiences of Non-White Women in a “Country of Gender Equality,” Finland
Zahra Edalati & Majid Imani

5. A Mission-Critical Task in Arts and Culture: How to Operate Meaningfully in a Culturally Pluralistic Society
Ceyda Berk-Söderblom

6. Categorization and Racialization in Integration Discourses: Who is Framed as “Needing” Integration in Regional and Local Newspaper Articles
Alyssa Marie Kvalvaag

7. From “Integration” to Creolization in Finnish Migration Research?: Romanian Roma Women’s Stories of Making Homes in Finland
Ioana Țîștea

8. Politics of Togetherness: Beyond the Integration Infrastructure of State and Institutional Apparatus
Ali Akbar Mehta