This article examines contemporary immigration discourses in Finland using experiences of immigrants originating from the United States as a case study. This research shows that the notion of an "immigrant" (maahanmuuttaja) is a highly racialized and class-based category in Finland. The difficulties of finding work that fits Americans' educational qualifications and their discouraging experiences of speaking "broken Finnish" reveal the fluidity of the division between foreigners who are seen as immigrants and those who are not. A specific lens through which these questions are tackled is immigrant visibility, which is defined not only in visual terms but also in audible terms through language use and as "non-sensorial" visibility at the level of discourses. The study argues that the politics of visibility is an important mechanism of labeling foreigners as "immigrants" in Finland.

This paper estimates and interprets empirical shifts in the gender composition of immigrants to add to scholarship about the gendering of international migrations over time. We map shifts in gender ratios using micro-level data that permit us to create age-standardized estimates among adult foreign born stock living in the United States since 1850 and in 26 other nations worldwide since 1960. We examine regional and national variations in these shifts, and ask whether and how the gendered composition of foreigners from diverse origins in the United States – the nation that has received the largest populations of migrants for over a century – differs from other nations that receive large numbers of immigrants. We also examine recent variations in gender ratios among immigrants living in six regional destination countries. Results show substantial variation in the gender composition of foreign-born populations, and they offer a starting point for examining causes and consequences in future research.

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