Claims to whiteness: Young unemployed Russian-speakers’ declassificatory struggles in Finland

Abstract

This article analyses the position of young unemployed Russian-speaking migrants in Finland as being both racialised and racialising Others. Young Russian-speakers' claims to whiteness are analysed against the backdrop of their racialised position as well as the neoliberal reshaping of class relations in Finland. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on young Russian-speakers' employment in Helsinki, the article shows that young Russian-speakers' racialisation of Others is a modality through which their own racialised class position is lived and narrated. Through such boundary-making processes young Russian-speakers resist being classified as 'welfare abusers', the unemployed and low-skilled workers. The article argues that young Russian-speakers' efforts to be recognised as white should be understood as a struggle against classification, through which they generate alternative value as deserving citizens and respectable workers.

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

“…This story also foregrounds whiteness as a contingent hierarchy, as Andrey was both racialized as a foreigner and a "Russian", and himself racialized nonwhite Others to make a claim to whiteness (Krivonos 2018). In defending himself against the racial stigma, Andrey himself reproduced racism by referring to other non-white subjects, mobilizing Black/Muslim racialization to ascend the hierarchy of whiteness.…”

“…Within this logic, it is possible to become "international"or in fact properly European and Westernby picking a white Swedish surname. As recent research has argued, white Swedish migrants' racial and class privilege enables and facilitates their global mobility, and their whiteness is recognized globally (Lundström 2014), unlike the experience of Russian-speaking migrants who lose their white privilege after migration (Krivonos 2018). My research participants' efforts can thus be understood as individual tactics of the non-powerful to adapt because they are unable to capitalize on their positioning (De Certeau 1984).…”

“…Existing research draws attention to how Eastern European migrants' whiteness is not given, but must be performed and claimed, often unsuccessfully (Moroşanu and Fox 2013;Krivonos 2018). Feminist migration research demonstrates that such efforts are also gendered, as Eastern European migrant women struggle to resist stigmatization, racialization and sexualization (Diatlova 2019; Krivonos and Diatlova forthcoming).…”

“…Young Russian speakers' struggles for whiteness take place in the context of particular histories between Finland and Russia and the subsequent racialization of Russians as Finland's Eastern Other, which nevertheless point to connections with European structures of race and whiteness. The historical legacy of relations between Finland and the Russian Empire/Soviet Union, such as Finland being part of the Russian Empire until 1917, Finland's Civil War and World War II, has led to Russian-speaking migrants and minorities being racialized as the Other to the normative whiteness of Finland (Krivonos 2018). As a result, many Russian-speaking migrants whom I interviewed had had to move to positions of lower social status or unemployment in Finland.…”

“…Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2014 and 2016 in Helsinki, I analyse these migrants' attempts to inhabit whiteness through tactics of passing, such as changing their surnames, working on their accents, and adjusting how they dress. Russian speakers are the largest migrant group in Finland, racialized as Finland's Eastern Other, whose claims to whiteness are not always recognized (Krivonos 2018). I argue that their tactics of passing should be understood as attempts to gain proximity to the signifier of normative Europeanness (Hesse 2007), with reference to which Eastern Europe is positioned as the Other, or Europe's "incomplete self", to borrow Todorova's (1997) terms.…”