The "secularization" and ethnicization of migration discourse

The Ingrian Finnish Right to Return in Finnish politics

Bibliographic Data

ID3000617
AuthorsNicholas Prindiville (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, London, UK, corresponding author), T Hjelm (0000-0003-4678-7374, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, London, UK)
Year2018
Volume41
Issue9
Pages1574-1593
Publication date2018-07-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnic and Racial Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9870 • E-ISSN: 1466-4356
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01419870.2017.1312011
OpenAlexW2607209100
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited19

Finland's Right to Return policy for Ingrian Finns (1990-2010) presented Russian and Estonian citizens who qualified as having Finnish ancestry the legal means to resettle in Finland. The policy was initially driven by Finnish President Mauno Koivisto, who spoke publicly of his belief that the Ingrian Finnish minority in Russia was Finnish because it was Lutheran rather than Orthodox. However, Finnish politicians increasingly abandoned the view of a common Lutheran identity between Ingrian Finns and Finland, and shifted the discussion to language, ancestry and historical memory, which were used to both endorse and disendorse Ingrian Finns' Finnishness. We argue that the disappearance of religion from the Right to Return discourse was a strategic - if not necessarily conscious - choice that emphasized the more primordial aspects of Finnish identity (and the Ingrian Finns' lack of those), which in turn enabled stricter restrictions and, ultimately, the discontinuation of the policy

Estonian · Identity (music · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Secularization · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Law · Philippine History and Culture

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