Fragility of leisure ties between ethnic minority and majority youth – an empirical case from Finland

Abstract

This paper explores social integration of ethnic minority youth in the context of micro-level leisure interaction in Finland. The aim of the study is to disentangle the types of ties that are formed between ethnic minority and majority youth. Moreover, the article will examine how these ties build bridges across group boundaries in the form of providing new leisure resources for ethnic minority youth. The qualitative data of the study consists of multi-sited ethnography conducted in the context of youth work and distinct interview data of ethnic minority youth (n = 38). Strong interethnic ties in the form of close friendships are rare in the data. Instead, many weak ties in the form of distant acquaintances are maintained. However, because of manifold micro-level elements, these weak ties are often too fragile to function as bridges accumulating the leisure resources of ethnic minority youth. Strong interethnic ties seem to have more bridging qualities. Thus, the conceptual distinction of weak/bridging and strong/bonding ties originally formulated in the framework of the labour market may not be applicable in the fields of youth leisure.

本文探讨芬兰少数民族青少年在微观层面社会融合背景下的休闲互动。该研究的目的是为了分清少数民族和多数民族青年之间的关系类型。此外，本文将探讨这些关系是如何在组群之间搭建桥梁来为少数民族青年提供休闲设施。这项研究用定性的研究方法研究了包括在年轻工作者背景下的多种人种，并且是对少数民族青年（N = 38 ）进行特殊访谈的数据。形成亲密友谊的强烈关系带在数据中是很少见的。强烈的关系带似乎有更多的桥接作用。因此，原来在劳动市场上形成的弱/桥接和强/粘接在概念上的区别或许不适用于青少年休闲领域。

Keywords:

• ethnicity
• youth
• leisure
• bridging
• interethnic ties

关键词::

• 少数民族
• 青少年
• 休闲
• 桥接
• 不同种族之间的关系

Notes

1. In this paper, the notion of ethnic minority refers to foreign born people and their descendants. The boundaries between ethnic majority and minorities are more or less artificial and porous. These boundaries and their (re)formulations are the essential objects of this study, not the minority and majority groups as such (Barth, 1996).

2. Interviewees were 13–19 years old and consisted of eight girls and five boys. Six of them had migrated fairly recently (within 2–4 years) to Finland, and the rest were majority youth.

3. Interviews of ethnic minority youth were conducted as part of the project Multicultural young people, leisure and civic participation (2004–2007) coordinated by Finnish Youth Research Network.

4. Municipal youth work reaches approximately one quarter of the young population in Finland (Myllyniemi, 2008, p. 78) while the number of ethnic minority youth reached seems to be significantly lower (see Harinen et al., 2012, p. 182). A wide variety of NGOs (often sport clubs), for their part, have approximately 45% of youth as their members (Myllyniemi, 2009, p. 35). Contrary to municipal youth work, some NGOs seem to reach ethnic minority youth little better (Harinen et al., 2012, p. 183). Because of the lack of nationally representative data in the case of ethnic minority youth and some variance between questionnaires and age cohorts, these statistics are not directly comparable.

5. Reception centres for asylum seekers are traditionally located in non-urban areas, and rural municipalities in particular have been encouraged (with economic incentives) to accommodate refugees. After settling down, migrant people tend to move to the few large cities in Southern and Western Finland.

6. This does not mean, however, that explicit racism has ceased to exist in Finland. It seems quite obvious that voluntarily gathering multi-ethnic groups are not the most likely spaces where severe racism can be observed.

7. ‘Foreigners’ is often a positive self-definition of immigrant youth. The term works as a counterforce against the rather assimilative and, at the same time, exclusive notion of ‘Finnishness’. When using the word ‘foreigners’, youth refer to open-minded persons and display solidarity regardless of national and cultural boundaries.