The anti-immigration program of the True Finns party attracted criticism from around the world even before the party received 19% of the votes in a recent general election in Finland. Yet, the current integration policies in Finland seem picture-perfect. This year’s Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) that was released last month positioned Finland in the fourth place among 31 countries in Europe and North America. Still, average unemployment among immigrants in Finland is almost 20%, while among Finnish citizen it’s barely 9%. A large number of the unemployed migrants are refugees from Somalia, Sudan and Iraq. The Finnish government has allocates a sizable amount of money to fix this situation. Last year it spent 35 million Euros on integration. This is more than ten times what the Czech Republic is willing to spend on integration efforts this year, while the number of migrants living in Finland is about half of those living in this country.
To get more of an insider view of the integration policies in Finland, Czech NGO and MIPEX Partner "People in Need" asked a Finnish expert on migration, Prakash Dhakal...
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Interview with Finnish expert Prakash Dhakal
Thomas Huddleston
Policy Analyst, Migration Policy Group
Thomas Huddleston is a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Group, a European think-and-do-tank. He coordinates MPG’s research for European cooperation on national integration policies, including the second and third editions of the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) (published in February 2011) and the third edition of the European Commission’s Handbook on Integration.
