The KEMU team organized two different focus group interviews in Kemi –Tornio and in Rovaniemi for women and young male immigrants interested in establishing a business. Individual interviews of successful immigrant entrepreneurs in the region were conducted as well. My task was to organize group discussions and to do a literature review on best practices in Nordic countries. At the beginning I assumed that it was an easy task to organize focus group interviews. However, the experience says something different than I thought, and I faced a number of challenges. We had to put a holistic approach to our focus group who had been frustrated on the Finnish societal system and quite critical towards development projects for integrating immigrants in the society since, according to them, they are a deprived group in the Lappish society.I knew that reaching people for interviewing is a tough job. Thus, I tried to avoid sending emails and rather communicated with interviewees over telephone. I preferred to go closer and meet physically with interviewees and explain my tasks and potential information of my work.

The first assumption of some immigrants about the KEMU interview was positive; they had been waiting for such type of a project. Yet some others had negative presuppositions about the project since they were frustrated about the low interaction between immigrants and Finnish society. They reacted negatively since they did not see projects as a fruitful means of development. “Projects come, interview us [immigrants], write a report about our problems and finally projects end; afterwards no changes, no jobs, no development in our life”- said one interviewed immigrant. The objections and hesitations of their voices came out, which were sensitive enough. Before giving my illustrations about KEMU to them, interviewees felt that they were used as an object to carry out the project. According to some immigrant interviewees, project workers ask for the immigrant’s opinions only for writing a good report, nothing for a fruitful exploration of the theme of conversation and for the real agenda. Thus they had poor faith about the benefits and the result of agreeing to be interviewed which is, according to some of them, just a waste of their time.

It is difficult to interview unemployed immigrants on self-employment since they believe that they are discriminated and eliminated from the Lappish labor market. Being interviewed as sources of information also places them at a somewhat awkward situation - which I realized as an interviewer. Somehow, it is hard if some of the interviewees believe that they are just a matter of simple statistics-to-be and a matter of collecting data.

 During the interviews I felt that I sometimes faced intercultural insensitivity, hostility and negative feelings towards me as a peer from different categories. Some immigrants from Europe felt that they are discriminated against, and yet on the other hand they treated me as someone inferior to them. They thought there are no jobs for immigrants in Lapland so they became apprehensive to me for having a job. Some even tried to ridicule me by criticizing our interviewing system. Some of them, who showed superiority of ethnic hierarchy by ignoring other immigrants from outside Europe, criticized the project’s decision to have separate focus group interviews for young males and women. One European interviewee even expressed that I might make this separate event for different genders in order to emphasize my own Islamic culture (gender discrimination) although the design of the events were decided by our entire team. Immigrants lack a common voice – there are negative attitudes and biases towards other groups of immigrants as it has been studied before. Some European immigrants feel that they are discriminated by Finns whereas some non-Europeans feel discriminated by Finns and other immigrants of European origin and vice versa. This increases the number of people who feel discriminated against. Although all immigrants are not similar in nature, race and culture, however, they should not believe that one group is superior to others.

 Nevertheless, I have learnt a lot and would like to learn more. During the KEMU project I gathered experiences and would like to gather more. Besides, KEMU was a rather successful project: we expected around 5-7 interviewees for each event. However, we exceeded this number and interviewed about 20-25 people in each event in Rovaniemi and average 10 people in Kemi-Tornio. KEMU and the project team would like to overcome the future challenges as well.

The project was led by Monica Tennberg and the team included two researchers - Saara Koikkalainen and Nafisa Yeasmin. The research aimed at finding new ways in which the cultural and social capital of immigrants can be used as a resource in the business life of Lapland. The project report raises questions on how to modify Finnish society and change the circumstances to be more favorable for entrepreneurship. For example, how can we create services that help both the prospective entrepreneurs be they native or have an immigrant background, how to encourage interaction between immigrants and the native population for sustainable entrepreneurship through joint activities and how to increase business contacts through networking. As the report states, immigrant entrepreneurship issues and themes do not fall within the responsibility of any single authority. All the official and organizational actors need to change attitudes and encourage positive interaction, so that immigrants can play a fruitful role in future societal and economic construction. Also immigrants' entrepreneurial attitudes can be improved. The local business associations could be a more active player and offer informal and low-threshold services to complement the work done by the relevant authorities.

 More information in KEMU report (in Finnish): http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-484-726-1

Text by Nafisa Yeasmin