Finland-Swedes and the Concept of National Minorities in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Finland-Swedes have not been recognised as a national minority in Sweden despite claims that they fulfil Sweden’s criteria for national minorities. This article discusses the concept of national minorities by examining Swedish political discourse on the position of Finland-Swedes: What kinds of arguments have been used when claiming or denying minority status? The article argues that political discussion previously centred on the significance of language as well as the practical aspects of minority policy but changed course after a 2017 governmental report, shifting the focus to the emergence and age of Finland-Swedish group identity.

Introduction

The objective of Sweden’s minority policy is to protect the national minorities, strengthen their power to influence and support the historical minority languages to keep alive. […] Common to the national minorities in Sweden is that they have all existed in Sweden for a very long time. Their languages and cultures are therefore part of the Swedish national heritage. (Regeringskansliet, 2007)

The above citation is from a fact sheet published by Sweden’s Ministry for Integration and Gender Equality. The fact sheet summarises the aims of the government’s minority policy. According to it, the protection of the rights of national minorities is an integral part of the international protection for human rights and it is vital that all children in Sweden learn about these groups’ history, culture, language, and religion; it further emphasises that national minorities have rich cultures of their own and enrich Swedish cultural life as a whole (Regeringskansliet, 2007). The text thus views national minorities as groups that are more or less different from the majority while at the same time viewing them as an important part of the Swedish nation, and the state is considered responsible for helping them maintain their distinctiveness.

However, not all possible minorities in Sweden are viewed as these kinds of groups in official discourse. While Sweden’s population comprises dozens of different minority ethnicities as well as a myriad of diverse groups with distinctive social, religious or other characteristics that differ from those of the majority of the population, only five groups—Jews, Roma, Sámi, Sweden-Finns and Tornedalians—are officially recognised as national minorities. What then makes a minority ‘national’ and its culture a part of the Swedish national heritage?

This article discusses the concept of national minorities by examining the case of Finland-Swedes. The term ‘Finland-Swede’ usually refers to those people in Finland whose native language is Swedish—a linguistic minority that constitutes approximately five per cent of Finland’s total population today. However, a relatively large number of Finland-Swedes have migrated to Sweden where they share a native language with the majority population. Whereas people with a Finnish-language background are recognised as one of Sweden’s national minorities, Finland-Swedes as a group do not have an official position in Sweden. Finlandssvenskarnas riksförbund i Sverige (FRIS), an ethno-political organisation dedicated to the promotion of the rights of Finland-Swedes living in Sweden, has been campaigning for minority status, and in 2017 the Swedish government decided to study the issue. The governmental report, SOU 2017:88, concluded that Finland-Swedes do not meet the criteria for national minorities, and they were thus not included in the revised minority law that entered into force in 2019. I explore here the discussion on the possible minority status of Finland-Swedes during the time period when their position was still an open question. On what grounds was minority status claimed, and what kind of arguments were used when denying this status? By studying the argumentation for and against the inclusion of Finland-Swedes as a national minority group, the article examines the role of different boundary markers in the discursive construction of the concept of national minorities in Sweden.

The primary data consist of political and legal discourse, such as initiatives by members of parliament, governmental reports that made suggestions and recommendations for Swedish minority policy, and government bills—texts that are connected to public authority and thus the exercise of power in society (see Potter, 1996). The analysed texts represent internal discourse in Sweden, while they also refer to international organs and conventions that provide a framework for minority policy at the national level. My reading of the data concentrates on the main arguments related to minority status, the justifications used for validating such arguments and the ways of referring to previous texts as sources of authority. The focus is on the level of discourse; the article does not aim to reach the underlying motives of participants or to evaluate the correctness of the presented arguments in relation to their subject.

Previous research on Swedish minority policies has explored the multicultural turn that preceded the establishment of recognised minorities (e.g. Borevi, 2012; Hansen, 2001; Wickström, 2015). Studies have also examined the history of minority policy by focusing on the conceptions and categorisations of particular minority groups (e.g. Montesino & Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015; Mörkenstam, 1999). The more recent official policy, based on the five recognised national minorities and minority languages, has been discussed in several overviews (Huss, 2001; Lainio, 2018; Spiliopoulou Åkermark & Huss, 2006). Studies focusing on Swedish minority policy have particularly paid attention to education policies, minority languages and the incomplete realisation of minority rights (see, e.g. Cabau, 2014; Helakorpi et al., 2020; Hult, 2004; Lainio, 2001; Öst, 2011). The previous research has thus mainly concentrated on the implementation and consequences of minority legislation, whereas the legal and political discourse related to this legislation remains less studied.

In the next section, the history of Finland-Swedes and their migration to Sweden will be briefly discussed. Thereafter, I explore the history of Swedish minority policy and the process of establishing officially recognised national minorities and minority languages. The fourth and fifth sections focus on the debate about the position of Finland-Swedes in society. The article then provides some concluding observations on the shift in arguments used for justifying inclusion and exclusion in minority discourse as well as the significance of different boundary markers in this process.

Finland-Swedes and the Migration to Sweden

As noted in the introduction, ‘Finland-Swede’ denotes a member of a linguistic minority in Finland, with Swedish being the native language. The history of Swedish-speaking settlement in the geographic area that today belongs to Finland dates back to the twelfth century or even earlier (e.g. Orrman, 2002; Tarkiainen, 2008). The Kingdom of Sweden gradually emerged during the Middle Ages, and by the end of the thirteenth century the areas that nowadays constitute Finland had become part of the kingdom (Lindkvist, 2002, pp. 41–42, 46). After the Finnish War (1808–1809), the eastern parts of Sweden—a little less than one third of the total kingdom—were ceded to the Russian Empire. Together with some earlier Russian conquests, this territory came to constitute the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.

The numerical majority of Finland’s population had Finnish as its mother tongue, while the language of administration and education was Swedish, which was spoken not only by the entire ruling class but also by common farmers and fishermen in coastal regions and the archipelago. Apart from the more or less similar native language, coastal peasants had little in common with urban elites, and there was no shared Finland-Swedish identity (see, e.g. Allardt & Starck, 1981; Engman, 2016; Lönnqvist, 2001). In the second half of the nineteenth century, partly as a response to the Finnish National Romantic movement and the gradually strengthening position of the Finnish language, a Swedish nationalist movement also emerged in Finland. Ethnic activists among the upper class needed the support of the common people, which led to attempts to unify Finland’s Swedish-speaking population and the establishment of many Swedish-language institutions. The Swedish term finlandssvensk (‘Finland-Swede’) was created in the early 1910s, and gradually the term gained more supporters (Mustelin, 1983; see also Engman, 2016, pp. 240–241). The term finne, which had previously often been used for Finns regardless of their native language, increasingly denoted only Finnish-speakers, and the concept of finländare (‘Finlandian’) was widely adopted to comprise both language groups in Swedish (Engman, 2016, pp. 236–240).

During the First World War, Finland became an independent state, and in 1922 both Finnish and Swedish were defined as its national languages. Formal equality between the two languages as well as a diverse range of Swedish-language institutions mean that Finland-Swedes have a rather unique position among the minorities of the world. However, in practice the domains of use for the Swedish language in Finland have shrunk over the years (Hedberg & Kepsu, 2003, p. 67) and Swedish-speakers are sometimes depicted as unwanted citizens (see Henriksson, 2021, p. 248; Sandell, 2022). Also, the percentage of native Swedish speakers has near constantly decreased—from representing 14.3% of Finland’s population in 1880 (Engman, 2016, p. 33) to approximately 5% today, although evidence exists of a certain shift in recent years (Meinander, 2016, p. 161).

The fact that practical opportunities to use Swedish are limited in many situations may have contributed to the willingness of some Finland-Swedes to migrate to Sweden. Finland’s western neighbour has been and continues to be the most important destination for Finnish-speaking emigrants as well, but the nation’s Swedish speakers have always had an even greater tendency to move to Sweden. They were overrepresented in the great labour migration of the 1960s and 1970s, and whereas the migration of Finnish speakers since then has continuously decreased, the willingness of Finland-Swedes to migrate has been relatively constant or even increased (Kepsu, 2006, p. 126; see also Hedberg, 2004; Henriksson, 2021; Kepsu, 2016; Kepsu & Henriksson, 2019). In addition to permanent migration, many Finland-Swedes move to Sweden for a few years for study or work. According to cultural geographer Charlotta Hedberg (2006, p. 161), the extent and continuity of migration indicates that Sweden is included in the Finland-Swedish cultural sphere; many Finland-Swedes feel that the distance to Sweden is shorter than the distance to monolingual Finnish areas in Finland. It has been estimated that approximately one fifth of all Finland-Swedes currently live in Sweden (Kepsu, 2006, p. 127), and Sweden has been called ‘the fifth region’ (e.g. Allardt Ljunggren, 1996, p. 215)—an expression that compares Sweden with Österbotten, Åboland, Nyland and Åland, which are considered the four main areas of Swedish-speaking settlement in Finland.

As native Swedish speakers with a partly shared cultural background with the Swedish majority population, Finland-Swedish immigrants in general have not encountered particular difficulties in Sweden. However, some of them have found it irritating that people around them do not realise that Swedish is their mother tongue or do not even know about the existence of Finland-Swedes (see Gyllingberg, 2011). Since the end of the 1960s, Finland-Swedes in Sweden have had their own organisation, FRIS (see Allardt Ljunggren, 1996, pp. 225–226; Jaakkola, 1983, pp. 65–80). The main goal of FRIS of late has been to achieve a minority status for Finland-Swedes in Sweden—either as part of the already established national minority of Sweden-Finns, from which Finland-Swedes are now excluded, or as a separate minority. According to FRIS, this goal is motivated by the aim ‘to reduce ignorance and prevent the forgetting of the group in different situations’¹ (Finlandssvenskarnas riksförbund i Sverige, n.d.).

Establishing National Minorities and Minority Languages

The recognised national minorities—five groups that ethnically differ from the Swedish majority population—and minority languages constitute an essential element of contemporary Swedish minority policy. However, the idea that certain ethnic groups should be regarded as national minorities whose special cultures enrich the whole of society is relatively recent: while Sweden has always been ethnically diverse, attitudes towards minorities and public policy related to diversity changed significantly during the second half of the twentieth century. This section explores the history of Swedish minority policy and the process of establishing national minorities and minority languages.

Sweden’s population before the Second World War was much more homogeneous than it is today. The country pursued an exclusionist immigration policy that was influenced by scientific racism (see Hammar, 1964). The welfare state established after the war has been considered an integration project, whose legitimacy was connected to the existence of a feeling of belonging among the country’s inhabitants. Welfare policies aimed at turning minority members into Swedes and making everyone adapt to a common national norm. In some cases, it was also considered necessary that minorities—such as Roma—to some extent assimilate into the majority to achieve greater social equality (Borevi, 2012, pp. 25–27). According to historian Mats Wickström (2013, p. 113), ethnic homogeneity was ‘a normative foundation for the welfare state’, and the idea of assimilation was deemed progressive.

The number of immigrants significantly increased in the 1960s along with labour migration. Later, many of the arrivals were either asylum seekers or family members of those who had already immigrated (see Borevi, 2012, pp. 33–47). The normative ideal of homogeneity that had still prevailed in the early 1960s gradually gave way to the idea of multiculturalism. Ethnic activists with Jewish, Finnish and Estonian backgrounds demanded the integration of minorities into society as groups, and during the course of the 1960s their arguments and claims became mainstream. Minority cultures were now viewed as worthy of respect and protection (Wickström, 2013). In 1975, Sweden officially became the first country in Europe to actively pursue multiculturalism when the parliament adopted a new immigrant and minority policy. The goal of the new policy was to promote immigrants’ integration into Swedish society but also to support their distinctive ethno-cultural identities (see, e.g. Borevi, 2012; Wickström, 2015).

However, in the 1980s the Swedish state scaled back its original multiculturalist ambitions to preserve minority cultures (Borevi, 2012, pp. 54–56). A report by the Immigration Policy Committee stated that Sweden’s measures for supporting immigrant and minority groups in maintaining their language and cultural distinctiveness were limited for various practical and economic reasons. The Committee also assumed that immigrant groups would not remain as distinct groups for more than a couple of generations and that they would not evolve into linguistic or national minorities. The report mentioned that Finnish had been spoken in Sweden’s capital for hundreds of years but that there had never been a genuine ‘domestic’ Finnish-language population in the capital, as the existence of the group had always depended on continuous migration. The Committee predicted that in the future, there would be ‘intercultural’ people rather than a ‘multicultural’ society with distinct minority groups and different languages and cultures (SOU 1984:58, pp. 58, 69, 71). According to the Swedish government, the concept of minority, as it was understood in international contexts, was not applicable to Sweden’s immigrant situation—in Sweden, the Sámi and Tornedalian Finns² could be considered minorities. Instead of trying to maintain the cultures of immigrant groups, the government stated that immigrant policy must aim to meet the needs of individuals (Regeringens proposition 1985/86:98).

From the 1990s onwards, international treaties have provided a framework for Sweden’s minority policy. The Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), adopted by the Committee of Ministers in 1994, was the first legally binding multilateral instrument for protecting national minorities worldwide (Malloy, 2013, p. 56). The convention prohibits discrimination against persons belonging to national minorities but also requires that states actively support minority members who try to preserve and develop their culture and traditions. Another important convention in this context is the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), adopted in 1992. The ECRML seeks to protect languages that are under threat of dying out, and it is considered to hold paramount force for national minorities (Malloy, 2013, pp. 61–62).

Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995. A Minority Language Committee, consisting of politicians, officials and representatives of several minority organisations, was then assigned the task of investigating whether and how Sweden should ratify the ECRML. In the following year, the Committee was also assigned the task of investigating the possible ratification of the FCNM and the measures Sweden must take in order to comply with the provisions. One of the Committee’s tasks was to suggest how the proposed measures would be financed without it affecting the public-sector budget (Spiliopoulou Åkermark & Huss, 2006, p. 554). Since the FCNM does not define a ‘national minority’, but instead leaves each party to the Convention a margin of appreciation to assess just what groups are covered by the Convention within its territory, the Committee also investigated what groups should be considered national minorities in Sweden.

The Committee first gave a report related to the ECRML, suggesting the ratification of the Charter and proposing a number of measures to strengthen regional or minority languages in Sweden. According to the Committee, Sweden’s historical regional or minority languages were Sámi, Finnish and Romani Chib. When discussing those languages, the report mentioned different variants of them: South Sámi, Lule Sámi and North Sámi were designated variants of the Sámi language, whereas Meänkieli or Tornedal Finnish and standard Finnish were mentioned as variants of Finnish (SOU 1997:192, p. 9). The Committee’s suggestions did not satisfy some Sámi, Tornedalian and Jewish groups, as Sweden’s three Sámi languages were treated in the report as one language, Meänkieli was viewed as a subvariant of Finnish and Yiddish was not regarded as a historical language in Sweden. Moreover, the deaf community criticised the report for excluding Swedish sign language (Spiliopoulou Åkermark & Huss, 2006, pp. 555–556).

In the second report, the Committee proposed that Sweden ratify the FCNM. Ratifying the Convention would demonstrate that Sweden supports the work of enhancing the protection of human rights and freedoms; it would also imply recognition of Sweden’s multicultural history, ‘of which the national minorities have long been a part’ (SOU 1997:193, pp. 15–16). The report noted that the term minority had often been used for immigrant groups in legislation and political debate in Sweden. The Committee wanted to make clear that ratification of the FCNM only applied to those domestic minorities that have been in Sweden for a long time, and therefore, it suggested that those groups should be named in conjunction with the ratification process (SOU 1997:193, p. 26).³ The Committee’s report defined the criteria that should be fulfilled for a group to be regarded as a national minority in Sweden:

• it should be distinguished by a marked degree of cohesion and not have a dominant position in relation to the rest of the population;

• it should have a distinctive character in terms of religion, language, traditions and/or culture;

• it should have historical or longstanding ties with Sweden;

• self-identification: both the individual members and the group as a whole must be prepared to preserve its identity. (SOU 1997:193, p. 16)

According to the report, Sámi, Tornedalians, Sweden-Finns, Roma and Jews fulfil the criteria. Especially the view regarding Sweden-Finns had thus changed: as late as the 1980s they had been regarded as an immigrant group instead of a minority. The Committee argued that each of the named five groups fulfilled every criterion, but the report did not provide an exhaustive review of the ways in which the criteria were fulfilled in each case (SOU, 1997:193, p. 43). When describing the distinctive character of each minority group, the report referred to its history, organisation, language and culture (see SOU 1997:193, pp. 43–49).

After circulating the report for comment, the social democratic government made a proposition concerning the measures Sweden should take before ratifying the FCNM and the ECRML. According to the government bill, Sámi, Sweden-Finns, Tornedalians, Roma and Jews all belong to ethnic, religious or linguistic minority groups. All these groups have existed in Sweden for a long time, and ‘most people identify with the group they belong to’. The bill briefly described each minority in line with the Minority Language Committee’s report. In addition to depicting each group’s history, the government bill referred to the group’s contemporary situation as well as the cultural traits that made it distinct from other groups. It mentioned the religion of the Jews and certain special traditions of the Sámi and Tornedalians. When discussing Sweden-Finns and Roma, however, the bill only referred to their ‘culture’ or ‘traditions’ without specifying what made them distinctive. In those cases, the group’s own language—Finnish or Romani Chib—was the only cultural trait that the government bill explicitly mentioned (Regeringens proposition 1998/99:143).

While the government bill was mostly based on suggestions by the Minority Language Committee, some changes were made regarding the identification of minority languages. Instead of the three minority languages proposed by the Committee, the government recognised five languages: Sámi, Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani Chib and Yiddish. Finnish and Meänkieli were thus now considered two distinct languages, as several bodies issuing a statement had suggested, whereas North Sámi, Lule Sámi and South Sámi were still covered by the general label Sámi—a decision that may be difficult to justify on linguistic grounds.⁴ According to the government, treating these variants as separate languages would probably lead to a situation where the ECRML would not apply to those variants with the fewest speakers. The decision to include Yiddish even though it had probably not been regularly spoken in Sweden for some time was justified by referring to the coming of new groups of Yiddish speakers during different times as well as the ‘unnatural’ decrease in the number of Yiddish speakers as a consequence of the Holocaust and the need to support the language in order to keep it alive. Swedish sign language was not recognised as a minority language: according to the government, the ECRML is based on the connection between languages and ethnic groups and therefore does not cover sign language (Regeringens proposition 1998/99:143, p. 32; see also Huss, 2001, pp. 137–138).

Three of the recognised minority languages—Finnish, Sámi and Meänkieli—were considered to be regional languages. The bill only applied central minority language rights, such as the right to use the minority language when communicating with authorities, in court and at preschool and when receiving elderly care, to the three languages. The rights were regionally restricted, as the government found it excessively difficult and expensive to apply the ECRML in regions with few speakers of minority languages. The bill thus defined the so-called administrative areas for Finnish, Sámi and Meänkieli (Regeringens proposition 1998/99:143, pp. 39–42). Yiddish and Romani Chib, on the other hand, were identified as non-territorial languages, which meant that their speakers lacked such rights.

When the new minority policy was discussed in parliament, representatives of all parties expressed their satisfaction with the decision to officially recognise national minorities and minority languages. However, all opposition parties with the exception of the centre-right Moderate Party suggested some extensions of minority rights; for example, the administrative areas for Finnish and Sámi were considered to be too restricted. The minister responsible for minority issues, Social Democrat Ulrica Messing, emphasised that the new minority policy was only the first step and that further steps would be taken in the future (Riksdagens protokoll 1999/2000:38).

The FCNM and the ECRML were ratified by Sweden in 2000. A separate law on national minorities and minority languages (2009:724) entered into force in 2010 and was reformed in 2019 to further strengthen minority rights. The main elements of minority legislation have remained in place, while the administrative areas for Finnish, Meänkieli and Sámi have considerably expanded over the years (see, e.g. Lainio, 2018). No changes have been made regarding the number of recognised national minorities or minority languages, but official minority status has been claimed by members of some other groups as well: Finland-Swedes have been mentioned in official discussions as a possible minority group, whereas Elfdalian—a linguistic variant that is mainly spoken in the Älvdalen municipality in western Sweden—has been called a minority language. The following section focuses on political discussions about the position of Finland-Swedes and presents arguments used when asserting or denying their minority status.

The Significance of Language

The debate on the possible minority status of Sweden’s Finland-Swedes began already before ratification of the FCNM, even though they were not discussed in the Minority Language Committee’s report. As noted above, Sweden-Finns were one of the groups recognised as a national minority. The designation used for them in the report by the Minority Language Committee as well as in the government bill was sverigefinnar (‘Sweden-Finns’)—a term that refers to native Finnish speakers or their descendants in Sweden. Eight representatives of the Centre Party proposed an amendment to the proposition, suggesting that the term sverigefinnar be replaced with sverigefinländare (‘Sweden-Finlandians’) to make clear that even Finland-Swedes are included in the Sweden-Finnish minority (Motion 1999/2000:K11). However, the report by the Committee on the Constitution stated—following the formulation originally used by the Minority Language Committee (SOU 1997:193, p. 47)—that Sweden-Finns mainly differ from the Swedish majority population because of the language but that it is also possible to say that they possess a distinctive Sweden-Finnish culture. According to the report, this means that the Sweden-Finnish minority group does not refer to people with Swedish as a native language, and hence the amendment was not approved (Konstitutionsutskottets betänkande 1999/2000:KU6, p. 83).⁵

Approximately nine years after ratification of the FCNM and the ECRML, the Swedish government proposed a new law on national minorities and minority languages. Finland-Swedes were briefly discussed in the government bill, Från erkännande till egenmakt, but the government was not willing to include them as a group among Sweden’s national minorities. The government bill seems to imply that granting Finland-Swedes an official minority status would not have consequences in practice and was therefore unnecessary: Finland-Swedes’ status would not significantly change, as minority rights are primarily based on the Language Charter. The government also denied Elfdalian a minority language status and made it clear that it was currently not willing to recognise new national minorities or minority languages in the first place. This decision was justified by referring to the contemporary situation regarding recognised minority groups and languages: according to the government, the measures that had been taken had not been sufficient, and it was therefore necessary to focus on actively preserving the recognised minority languages and on protecting the recognised national minorities (Regeringens proposition 2008/09:158, p. 62).

Official discussion on the possible minority status of Finland-Swedes continued even after establishment of the minority law. In 2012 and 2014, a member of parliament, Kerstin Lundgren from the Centre Party, suggested conducting an inquiry into the position of Finland-Swedes (Motion 2012/13:K378; Motion 2014/15:539). The Committee on the Constitution rejected her motions; however, in its latter report the Committee stated that the position of Finland-Swedes ought to be examined in the future (Konstitutionsutskottets betänkande 2013/14:KU24; Konstitutionsutskottets betänkande 2014/15:KU16). In 2015, Lundgren submitted an interpellation asking Minister of Culture and Democracy Alice Bah Kuhnke from the Green Party whether she was ready to change the Sweden-Finnish minority’s designation from sverigefinnar to sverigefinländare or, alternatively, to grant Finland-Swedes a minority status of their own (Interpellation till statsråd 2015/16:193). In the interpellation debate, Lundgren stated that the FCNM is not about language only, but also about culture and self-identification. According to her, the Swedish majority in the parliament ‘does not see a large part of the Finlandian nation’ but takes the right to their own culture and history from them; the majority Swedes and Finland-Swedes may speak the same language, but they have a different culture, identity and self-experience. Lundgren also pointed out that language in this instance is not the crucial factor, as it is possible to belong to the minority group of Sweden-Finns without speaking Finnish if one is a descendant of a Finnish-speaking person (Interpellationsdebatt 2015/16:193).

Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke began her reply by referring to the FCNM and the ECRML, which constitute the foundations of Swedish minority policy. According to her, the Framework Convention requires that a minority differs from the majority population, and the factor that above all separates the Sweden-Finnish minority from the majority and is the foundation for their minority status is that of language; what is more, there is a distinct Sweden-Finnish culture. According to Minister Bah Kuhnke, the Swedish-speaking group lacks such grounds for difference. Although the distinctive character that separates a minority from the majority may be traditional, religious, ethnic or cultural, the language is ‘a terrifically important factor and a starting point’. She also brought forward the point that most minority rights are connected to language and that the law mainly aims at guaranteeing language rights (Interpellationsdebatt 2015/16:193).

Justifications for the exclusion of Finland-Swedes in the political discourse from the late 1990s to the mid-2010s are thus grounded in two main types of reasoning, both of them connected to native language. On the one hand, Finland-Swedes were denied minority status because they—as native Swedish speakers—were not considered distinctive enough, while on the other hand the lack of a language noticeably different from the majority language was also considered to mean that a minority status would not have consequences in practice.

However, the FCNM, which constitutes the basis of national minority policy, does not require that a minority has a language of its own. This fact was pointed out by Kerstin Lundgren in her motion proposing a supplementary directive to an inquiry into Sweden’s minority policy; Lundgren wanted Finland-Swedes’ status to be examined on the grounds of the FCNM, not the ECRML (Motion 2016/17:1961). Another member of parliament, Saila Quicklund from the Moderate Party, also suggested examining the possibility of recognising Finland-Swedes as a national minority (Motion 2016/17:2653). When these motions were under consideration in the Committee on the Constitution in 2017, seven out of eight parties supported the proposed inquiry. A minority opinion was added to the report by the Sweden Democrats, a nationalist and right-wing populist party, which views the Finland-Swedish minority as part of the Swedish nation (Konstitutionsutskottets betänkande 2016/2017:KU16).

Previously, in September 2016, the government had decided to appoint civil servant and politician Lennart Rohdin—the Liberal People’s Party representative in the Minority Language Committee in the 1990s—to examine the law on national minorities and minority languages and suggest improvements to strengthen the rights of national minorities. Rohdin’s report, Nästa steg? Förslag för en stärkt minoritetspolitik (SOU 2017:60), was published in June 2017. In line with Lundgren’s motion, Rohdin was given the supplementary task of investigating the position of Finland-Swedes in Sweden and considering whether they should be recognised as a national minority. This was one of the questions examined in the second part of Rohdin’s report, Nästa steg? Del 2. Förslag för en stärkt minoritetspolitik (SOU 2017:88), published in November 2017. The next section assesses the ways in which this report considers Finland-Swedes in relation to the criteria for national minorities in Sweden and shifts the focus of the discussion to the emergence and age of Finland-Swedish group identity.

The Temporal Aspect

The report entitled Nästa steg? Del 2 took the FCNM as well as Sweden’s criteria for national minorities—originally formulated by the Minority Language Committee in 1997—as its starting point. The report stated that it was neither necessary nor possible to change the four criteria that the parliament had validated in 1999. It also noted that changing the criteria had not been suggested by FRIS or others (SOU 2017:88, pp. 14, 35–37). When discussing the case of Finland-Swedes in relation to these criteria, the report stated that Finland-Swedes constitute a group that does not have a dominant position in relation to the rest of the population, and individual members as well as the group are willing to preserve their identity. What is more, it noted that Finland-Swedish culture had been influenced by its development in Finland during the last hundred years to the extent that it today significantly differs from the Swedish majority culture, which had developed separately during the same time period in Sweden. The report thus stated that Finland-Swedes meet three of the four criteria for national minorities (SOU 2017:88, pp. 14–15, 43–44).

The report concluded, however, that Finland-Swedes do not fulfil the fourth criterion. The fact that there were Swedish-speaking people originating from the eastern side of the Baltic Sea in pre-twentieth century Sweden is not, according to the report, evidence of the existence of a distinctive Finland-Swedish culture in Sweden by that time. Rather, the majority culture consisted of a variety of regional and local Swedish-language cultures, and those on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea cannot be considered essentially separate from, e.g. the cultures in Västerbåtten or Småland. According to the report, Finland-Swedish culture and identity is something that emerged in Finland after 1900, which means that Finland-Swedes lack ‘historical or longstanding ties with Sweden’ and therefore cannot be recognised as a national minority. However, the report suggested some measures that would improve the position of Finland-Swedes and increase knowledge about them in Sweden (SOU 2017:88, pp. 15, 44).

Although Rohdin’s report referred to previous decisions and suggestions, it did not specify why it is essential that recognised minorities should have existed in Sweden before 1900. For a more detailed justification of the report’s opinion, it is necessary to consider again the Minority Language Committee’s report and the government bill from the late 1990s. The Minority Language Committee referred to what it called an ‘international understanding’ that the concept of minorities only applies to historical minorities. It mentioned that the United Nations Human Rights Committee had increasingly begun to highlight the desire of individuals to maintain their distinctiveness, making the temporal aspect less important. However, if Sweden was to adopt a minority concept without reference to how long a group had lived in the country, it would mean that the concept could apply to groups that had been in the country for hundreds of years as well as to new immigrant groups, which the Committee did not consider to be ‘reasonable’. The exclusion of new immigrant groups was justified by referring to the assimilation process they may undergo: according to the report, ‘history shows that when a group of people migrates to another country, it first holds together’, but then starts to gradually mix with the majority population, and ‘in many cases the assimilation is total after a few generations’. It is thus apparent, the reasoning continued, that a minority must have existed in a country for at least a few generations before it is possible to establish whether it is a viable, ‘surviving’ culture. The Committee concluded that only such groups whose minority cultures had existed in Sweden long before the Second World War could be considered national minorities, but it did not find it reasonable to draw an absolute boundary line measured in years (SOU 1997:193, pp. 39–40). This reasoning was replicated in the government bill concerning the ratifying of the FCNM and the ECRML. However, immediately after stating that drawing an absolute line to the past was not possible, the government defined a year that served as the dividing line: according to the bill, only those groups that had existed in Sweden before the turn of the twentieth century fulfil the criterion for historical or longstanding ties (Regeringens proposition 1998/99:143, p. 31).

As noted above, Lennart Rohdin’s report referred to this dividing line—the year 1900—when denying Finland-Swedes a minority status. It was also stated, without further explanation, that present-day immigrant groups ‘do not belong to this context’ (SOU 2017:88, p. 43)—although it may not currently be obvious why the FCNM should not apply to immigrant groups.⁶ The report’s central argument seems to find some support in research literature that dates the emergence of a distinct Finland-Swedish ethnicity to the early decades of the twentieth century (e.g. Åström, 2001, p. 38). However, the reasoning was criticised by Barbro Allardt Ljunggren and Sebastian Högnabba—a former chairperson and a former board member of FRIS, respectively—who were appointed as representatives of Finland-Swedes in the reference group for Rohdin’s report. According to their statement, the criterion about historical or longstanding ties had not been applied similarly when recognising other groups as national minorities in Sweden. The statement claimed that Rohdin anachronistically requires of Finland-Swedes a unitary culture during a time when those kinds of cultures did not exist and that the report does not take into account the fact that Finland-Swedes in Finland and Sweden largely share a general Finlandian culture with Finnish speakers. According to Allardt Ljunggren and Högnabba, distinctive cultural traits developed from the nineteenth century onwards, including the influence of the Russian cultural sphere, e.g. as regards food culture (SOU 2017:88, pp. 198–199).

During spring 2018, numerous municipalities and other referral bodies submitted their comments on Rohdin’s report, most of them without taking a stand on the position of Finland-Swedes. FRIS commented on the report by agreeing with and supplementing Allardt Ljunggren’s and Högnabba’s statement. On the subject of historical or longstanding ties, FRIS noted that the emergence of the term finlandssvensk in the early twentieth century does not mean that the group itself—Finlandians with Swedish as their native language—would only have come into existence at that time. Contrary to some earlier contributions to the discussion, FRIS’s comment highlighted not only linguistic but also cultural differences between Finland-Swedes and Finnish speakers. Lastly, the comment demanded a more comprehensive inquiry into the historical perspective before the twentieth century and a new decision on the position of Finland-Swedes in Sweden (Finlandssvenskarnas riksförbund i Sverige, 2018). A more thorough inquiry was also suggested by the Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen, 2018). However, this criticism did not lead to changes in Swedish minority policy regarding the number or designations of recognised national minorities, and Finland-Swedes were not discussed in the government bill En stärkt minoritetspolitik (Regeringens proposition 2017/18:199).

Conclusion

This article has assessed the history of Swedish minority policy and the political discussion on the possible minority status of Sweden’s Finland-Swedes. The institutional basis of argumentation in this discussion—a starting point that has been taken for granted by all participants—is the Council of Europe’s 1994 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. However, as the FCNM does not define national minorities, criteria formulated by the Minority Language Committee in 1997 and validated by the Swedish parliament in 1999 constitute the framework for claiming or denying minority status in Sweden. Political discussion has dealt with the fulfilment of these criteria, while the criteria themselves have not been questioned by any participant in the data used in this article.

However, a tension has existed between arguments explicitly based on the above-mentioned official criteria and those relying more on practical reasoning, resulting in a shift in the arguments presented. Before Rohdin’s 2017 report, denying Finland-Swedes minority status was sometimes justified by referring to the insignificance this status would have in practice or to a need to focus on protecting the already established minorities. In addition to practical arguments, the earlier discussion seems to be centred on the significance of language in relation to ethnic or cultural difference. Even though the FCNM and Sweden’s minority criteria do not require that a minority group have a language of its own, a distinctive language was presented as a crucial factor especially by Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke in 2015. Advocates of Finland-Swedes’ minority status, on the other hand, have highlighted cultural differences other than native language, a distinctive Finland-Swedish identity and the Finlandian history or culture that Finland-Swedes share with Finnish speakers.

The significance of language in Swedish minority policy may well have increased by establishing an equivalence between recognised national minorities and minority languages. Contrary to the original proposition by the Minority Language Committee, which suggested recognising only Finnish, Sámi and Romani Chib as minority languages, the government and parliament also chose to recognise Yiddish and Meänkieli. On the other hand, Elfdalian and the Swedish sign language have not been recognised as national minority languages, and different Sámi variants have not been treated as separate languages. Together, these decisions have led to a situation where each national minority is associated with a respective minority language: only such groups that can be considered to have their ‘own’ language—whether they are spoken by most members or not—have been recognised as national minorities, and only such languages that are connected to recognised national minorities have been recognised as minority languages. Consequently, language often acts as a symbol of a group’s ethnicity in public discourse, and the connection between ethno-cultural and linguistic distinctiveness may appear self-evident or natural. This may have contributed to the perception that Finland-Swedes lack the fundamental grounds for difference since their native language is shared with the majority population.

In the SOU 2017:88 report, however, discussion that had previously centred on the significance of language and the language-related practical aspects of minority policy changed course. The position of Finland-Swedes was now, for the first time, officially examined on the grounds of the FCNM and Sweden’s criteria for national minorities, which meant that their possible minority status could not be denied on account of their native language. Instead, the focus shifted to the history of the group. By referring to the fourth criterion for national minorities, which requires historical or longstanding ties with Sweden, and to its interpretation, according to which national minorities must have been present in Sweden before 1900, the report thus concluded that Finland-Swedes are a group whose distinct identity or culture is too recent to have these kinds of ties.

In concluding that Finland-Swedes do not fulfil this criterion, Rohdin’s report implicitly relied on previous arguments that can be viewed as leading to a somewhat paradoxical situation. The minority legislation is based on the perception that the state is responsible for helping minority members to maintain their distinctiveness; however, following the reasoning in the Minority Language Committee’s report, a minority first has to prove that it can preserve its culture and survive on its own, which can only be done by existing in the country for several generations, before it can be supported by the state. It is also interesting to note that reference to the year 1900, which the government originally justified by arguing that a minority should have been in Sweden for several generations, was approximately two decades later still being used as the dividing line. Using this criterion without re-evaluation in the future, too, would mean that it is not possible for any new groups to become national minorities in Sweden, regardless of the number of generations they have existed in the country. The boundary between immigrant groups and minorities, already highlighted in a governmental report in the early 1980s and later crossed by Sweden-Finns, who began to be viewed as a minority despite the fact that the group predominantly consists of twentieth-century labour migrants and their descendants, would not be possible to cross any more.

Two boundary markers can thus be distinguished that appear to have been significant in the political discourse related to Swedish minority policy. The association of a group with a minority language has been viewed as an indication of ethno-cultural distinctiveness that separates a minority from the Swedish majority population, and the concept of historical or longstanding ties has been used to justify the distinction between two kinds of minority ethnicities. Minorities that are considered to have been present in Sweden before 1900 are labelled ‘national’ and their cultures are seen as a valuable part of the Swedish national heritage—at least in official discourse, such as the fact sheet cited at the beginning of this article—whereas other groups’ cultures and traditions seem to remain outside the sphere of officially recognised national heritage.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland.

Notes

1 Quotations from texts written in Swedish have been translated by the author.

2 Tornedalian Finns, today generally called Tornedalians, have lived in the cross-border area of the Gulf of Bothnia for hundreds of years. They are viewed as distinct from Sweden-Finns in contemporary Swedish minority discourse, a group that mainly consists of twentieth-century labour migrants and their descendants.

3 This type of a closed list of national minorities has not been established, for example, in Finland (Spiliopoulou Åkermark, 2015, pp. 60–62; Myntti & Nuolijärvi, 2006).

4 According to linguist Mikael Parkvall (2009, p. 13), the differences between Finnish and Meänkieli are smaller than the differences between different variants of Sámi. Today, these Sámi variants are generally regarded as different languages.

5 Changing the designation to sverigefinländare was also supported by the Finnish-born Social Democrat Paavo Vallius, who stated that Finland-Swedes meet all minority criteria except for language, which means that the FCNM also applies to them. Despite being a member of the governing party, he therefore abstained from voting in favour of the government proposal with respect to the term sverigefinnar (Riksdagens protokoll 1999/2000:38).

6 While the European minority rights instruments were created to protect the rights of autochthonous minorities, the discussion on commonalities between ‘old’ and ‘new’ minorities began already in the 1990s and has recently gained more traction (Boulder et al., 2021, p. 2; see also, e.g. Eide, 2010; Medda-Windischer, 2010; Medda-Windischer et al., 2021). It has been suggested that the term ‘national minorities’ be redefined as an umbrella term for all ethno-cultural groups regardless of their historic presence in a state. According to Will Kymlicka, however, any attempt to explicitly include immigrants in the FCNM would almost certainly fail, as most states would oppose it (Kymlicka, 2007, pp. 217–218).