This article explores the terms by which racial difference is articulated and constructed in the everyday life of young people in Finland, by analysing interviews with children and adolescents who have one parent with an immigrant or foreign background, or who have been adopted from other countries. In addition to the categories that clearly arise from the discourses of race, expressions that in other contexts may have nothing to do with racism are also sometimes put to use for racializing categorization, especially ethnic labels and colour terms. Even though many categorizations which are used among young Finns can be found in other societies too, the analysis shows differences not only between different societies, but also between children and young people, which highlights the problems in using racial categories as analytical tools. The article also explores the conditions for the construction of racialized identities, by examining how individuals negotiate categories available to them, and how they themselves express their positionings in racialized social relations. The analysis of how these are intertwined is suggested here as a method that can reveal special characteristics of racism in a given society. It also highlights the tensions and contradictions that set bounds for the agency of those who are subordinated in racialized social relations.

No abstract

No abstract

This article explores connections between music and anti-racism. Based on our analyses of recent anti-racist demonstrations and musical media productions, we have constructed an ethnographic description of musicians' involvement in anti-racism in Finland. Our study makes visible how in predominantly white societies, individual musicians' own relations to (anti-)racism, as well as different articulations and meanings of race in general, have become issues that an increasing number of musicians must negotiate. By relying on a multidisciplinary theoretical framework, our study provides different approaches to the complexity and the multidimensionality of the meanings of race, racism, and antiracism in music.

This special issue explores spaces where identifications with the African diaspora become articulated, (re)negotiated and, as demonstrated by many articles in this issue, established as a field of the collective agency with transformative power in European societies. The African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals’ engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. In this introduction, we discuss the empirical studies presented in this special issue as examples of academic, political and artistic spaces of African and black diasporic agency. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe. They also challenge methodological nationalism as well as essentialising discourses of race and ethnicity by acknowledging the global circulation of African and black diaspora cultures and the meanings of the transnational connections for diaspora communities.