The immigrant “Other” and artistic expression: (de)bordering via festivals and social activism in Finland

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how cultural production and artistic activities can explain the social (de)construction of borders. The study looks at the soft, cultural aspects of bordering, encounters between the immigrants and their host societies, and the conscious and unintentional ways of altering their mental frames. The analysis focuses on the World Village Festival organised annually in Helsinki, and a young literary project titled “Sidelight – is this Finnish literature?” Based on these two case studies, associations between the concepts of bordering, liminality and translation are developed to enable a deeper understanding of the encounters between immigrant cultures and their host societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant artists
• Finland
• bordering
• identity
• liminality
• translation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ágnes Németh (MSc in Geography, Regional and Urban Development - ELTE Budapest, Hungary; MA in European Heritage, Digital Media and Information Society - University of Turku, Finland) is a project researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. She has been involved in European research projects (funded by the European Science Foundation and the FP7 Programme) in border studies focusing on cross-border cooperation processes and the social (de)construction of borders. Her doctoral thesis touched upon issues of regional policy, governance, and mega-events planning.

Notes

1. Victor Turner made a distinction between “liminal activities” that are ritualised performances of tribal and agrarian societies and “liminoid activities” that are less ritualised, more individualised performatory activities in modern societies, mostly related to leisure time.

2. A project called “Runokohtaus” co-operates closely with the Sivuvalo project and provides professional translation services for immigrant writers.

3. Originally, the cartonera movement started during Argentina’s economic crisis, aiming to publish books at low cost, and this was later used by other Latin American countries as an alternative form of low-budget publication. Nowadays several renowned Latin American authors publish this way and cartoneras even appear at book fairs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the EUBORDERSCAPES project funded by the European Commission FP7-SSH-2011-1 (290775).