Accounting for a planned migration through ethnic identity talk

Abstract

Previous discursive research on ethnic identity has suggested the complex and multi-faceted nature of accomplishing membership in an ethnic group. In this paper, we explore how ethnic identity claims may be used as a resource in accounting for behavior seen as open to the group, namely a planned migration to one's ancestral homeland. A discursive psychological approach is used to analyze focus group data with potential ethnic return migrants, specifically, adults with Finnish roots who intend to migrate to Finland. Ethnic identity was accomplished in subtle ways by drawing on one's roots and a familiarity with Finnish culture, as well as by accomplishing a preference for Finland. Working up Finnish ethnic identity in these ways allowed participants to account for the planned migration, which was typically constructed as a natural, inevitable and/or long- and highly-desired action. The findings highlight the importance of considering the social action of ethnic identity talk, particularly in light of previous studies that have found ethnic return migrants' pre-migration ethnic identities to be pronounced.

Keywords

Discourse ethnic identity accounting preference pre-migration ethnic return migration Finland migrants

Discursive psychologists (e.g. Edwards & Potter, 1992; Wiggins & Potter, 2007) point to the multi-faceted, flexible and contradictory nature of social interaction, which has often been ignored by traditional or mainstream psychological literature. The main focus of this approach is on how actions and/or meanings are constructed in, and through, text and talk (Nikander, 2008). As Wiggins and Potter (2007) assert, the interest in discourse stems from seeing people as social and relational, rather than the result of mental processes within. Descriptions of the world are performative, in that ‘they offer one construction rather than another, produced in sequential and rhetorical contexts, where the specifics matter for the actions being done’ (Edwards & Potter, 2005: 243). This is what discursive psychologists call the action orientation of talk; that is, the social action such as justifying, blaming or complimenting, we accomplish (often indirectly) in text and talk. From this approach, the ways in which people describe the world are not taken to reflect their inner thoughts but are instead seen as a dynamic and intricate exercise, which is done and redone according to specific interactional goals and demands.

Previous discursive research suggests that ethnic identity talk is employed repeatedly by ethnic minority members in various social contexts, using a range of discursive tools. Merino and Tileagă (2011) see ethnic identity as descriptions that are actively and flexibly constructed as part of a specific interactional structure. In this vein, they are not set but rather can be accomplished in interaction in different ways by making claim to socially recognized aspects of group membership. Further, as Verkuyten and de Wolf (2002) assert, ethnic self-definitions are not necessarily obvious but often must be explained in interaction. They found three ways of accounting for one's ethnic identity (or lack of) in talk, each with different levels of determinism: being, where biological criteria are emphasized (e.g. I look a certain fixed way); feeling, where one's ‘inner’ sense of self is made relevant (e.g. I feel like a member of the group); and doing, where an attribute defined as typical of the group is claimed (e.g. I speak the language). Similarly, Varjonen, Arnold, and Jasinskaja-Lahti (2013) found three repertoires to explain one's belonging to ethnic and national groups. The biological repertoire used blood, roots, and genes—and particularly positive characteristics of the group passed down through generations—while the socialization repertoire built on cultural influence and learned behavior usually during one's formative years, and the repertoire of intergroup relations constructed one's group belonging as a matter decided by majority group members.

According to Potter and Wetherell (1987), “one powerful resource used in everyday reasoning is the idea of the category-boundedness of activity. People conventionally make inferences from categories to the activities of incumbents and, conversely, from activities to the category membership of actors” (p. 132). A hearer can, in other words, infer a category for themselves when certain kinds of characteristics are made available; for instance, describing a woman as wearing a short skirt as well as pulling up her skirt when looking at a man can be heard as depicting her character and motives as flirtatious without explicitly stating she is a flirt (Edwards & Potter, 2005). In the same way, ethnic categories do not always emerge in interaction explicitly; rather, they can be implied and understood by merely drawing on socially recognized, category-specific abilities such as speaking a language (Hansen, 2005). Categories can also remain invisible through common-sense understanding. As Whitehead and Lerner (2009) found, for example, explicitly describing individuals as black can highlight the implicit understanding of people as white, unless otherwise stated.

Identifying as an ethnic group member often also involves authenticity, which can be worked up in talk by using relevant social comparison groups or switching languages to display intricate knowledge of group-specific characteristics (Sala, Dandy, & Rapley, 2010). Taking on an accent, for example, can also be used to resist certain identities and construct oneself (or others) as a member of one group over another (Alim, Lee, & Carris, 2011). When various identity claims are possible, one or more position(s) may be privileged depending on the immediate interactional and broader societal context (e.g. Ali & Sonn, 2010; Bélanger & Verkuyten, 2010; Malhi et al., 2009; Varjonen, Arnold, & Jasinskaja-Lahti, 2013). However, established ethnic affiliation is not final, in that other interpretations can threaten and undo it. Grancea (2010) found in his study of interethnic complaints that, despite the heavily ethnicized frame and just prior displays of ethnic affiliation, non-ethnic interpretations are sometimes brought forward when recipients deem ethnicity to be irrelevant, and these other interpretations can threaten and sometimes undo the previously accomplished ethnic solidarity. This again points to the situated and unfixed nature of group belonging when we consider it as a discursive accomplishment.

The ways in which people self-categorize matter not only because this process is an essential part of day-to-day social life, but also because of what this work can accomplish. Research drawing on Sacks's (1992) work on membership categorization has found, for instance, ethnic categorizations may be used as a resource to accomplish particular tasks, such as making a proposal, in interaction that others cannot (Hansen, 2005). Categories offer certain entitlements, in that a particular category of people may be treated as knowledgeable (Potter, 1996). Being ascribed a certain identity in interaction can also disqualify speakers from making particular claims (Antaki & Horowitz, 2000). In the same vein, categories are inference-rich, in that they are associated with particular activities or actions (Widdicombe, 1998). Thus, the categorization work done in talk has implications not only for who a speaker is understood to be but also the kinds of claims and actions open to them in interaction as (non-)members of a group.

In this study, rather than being concerned with how people perceive themselves or who they ‘really’ are, we focus on the social action of identity talk among potential ethnic return migrants; that is, what ethnic identity talk can achieve in interaction. We argue that taking this kind of approach particularly in certain contexts—such as that of the current study which will next be discussed—can help shed light on why ethnic identity is often found to be so pronounced among ethnic return migrants, namely, that it can be a useful resource in accounting for a planned migration to one's ethnic homeland.

Context and aims

Ethnic, or sometimes called ancestral, return migration has been defined as the ‘return’ of second- and later-generation descendants to their countries of ancestral origin after living outside their ethnic homelands for generations (Tsuda, 2009). At the heart of this phenomenon is a connection and identification, real or imagined, with the destination country already before the migration. For instance, Christou (2006a, 2006b) found that Greek-American migrants to Greece held idealized, essentialist conceptions of what the country was and what life there would be. Tsuda's (2003) anthropological study found that in Brazil, Japanese-Brazilians identified as and were considered ‘Japanese’; however, after their migration to Japan, they were seen as culturally ‘Brazilian’. Further, Wessendorf (2007) suggests that second-generation Italian migrants raised in Switzerland were able to construct Italy as their real ‘homeland’, a place to which they felt a pull through positive memories of visiting Italy and transnational practices; however, the reality of life after moving was ‘shocking and uprooting’ (p. 1098).

Social psychological studies on ethnic identity in the context of return migration have also recently recognized the pre-migration period as a distinct and important phase of the (re)migration process. These studies have consistently suggested that ethnic identity and a sense belonging to one's ethnic homeland before the migration are pronounced before one moves (e.g. Jasinskaja-Lahti, Mähönen, & Liebkind, 2012; Mähönen & Jasinskaja-Lahti, 2012; Tartakovsky, 2009). However, the discursive functions of ethnic identity claims in this context have not been explored. Indeed, even at the general level, as Hansen (2005) as well as Merino and Tileagă (2011) assert, what is missing in research is how ethnicity is discursively constructed in social interaction and to which interactional purposes it is used. To our best knowledge, there is only one study in the context of ethnic return migration that partly touches upon this issue, namely, Varjonen et al. (2013) study of how identity is constructed by ethnic migrants from Russia to Finland before and after migration. Even though their focus was not on the social action of ethnic identity talk, the researchers noticed that reducing Finnish identity to a matter of genes may help ethnic return migrants justify their migration as well as their positive expectations of life after the move. The current study builds on this premise and seeks to shed light on the social action of ethnic identity, specifically, how working up ethnic identity may be used as a resource to explain or justify ethnic migrants' intended migration. Thus, this study contributes several lines of research, including 1) the study of how ethnic identity can be used as a resource in talk, 2) how self-initiated ethnic return migrants legitimize their migration, and 3) more generally, the pre-migration phase of the migration process.

Methodology

Data and participants

Part of a larger qualitative research study on ethnic return migrants in Finland, the data presented in this paper consists of two audio-recorded focus groups held with adults attending a paid, voluntary language and culture course. This privately-offered course is intended for people with Finnish roots and their spouses/family members who intend to migrate to Finland. Participants came to Helsinki from abroad (e.g. North America, Australia, Sweden and other EU countries) for the two-week course. Students were invited in advance by email to participate in the focus group held at the course venue to share their views on Finnish society a moving to Finland. All participants had Finnish roots through their parent(s) or grandparent(s), were born and raised abroad, and intended to move to Finland. The focus groups were held, and subsequently analyzed, in English, which was the working language of the course as determined by the organizers. The first focus group had seven participants (18–49 years old) and the recording lasted 1 h and 19 min, while the second had six participants (18–29 years old) and lasted 1 h and 7 min. A semi-structured question guide was used to guide the discussion, but participants were encouraged to speak freely and ask each other questions. The focus groups started by everyone introducing themselves, after which the moderator asked how participants had decided to move to Finland. Other questions included, for example, do you have any hopes or expectations of living in Finland? What does it mean to you to be Finnish? In the extracts, each participant is identified by a randomly assigned letter, while the first author is identified as MOD, that is, moderator.

Analytical approach

This paper uses principles of discursive social psychology (e.g. Antaki, Billig, Edwards, & Potter, 2003; Wiggins & Potter, 2007) as a guiding methodological and analytical framework. The first step of the current analysis was done by carefully reading through the transcripts and selecting all passages where accounts for the migration were offered by participants. The second stage of analysis was more in depth and looked at how participants constructed the intended migration in their accounts to make sense of and to justify this action and, since ethnic identity was made relevant in various ways, how these were accomplished particularly in relation to Finnishness. Thus, the analysis presented in this paper is centered on how participants account for their migration and, more specifically, how Finnish ethnic identity is used as a resource in these accounts.

It is acknowledged that the data corpus of this paper is relatively small-scale. However, following other recent discursive studies using small- or large-scale interview or focus group data (e.g. Goodman & Burke, 2011; Sala et al., 2010), the analysis does not capture all ways in which potential ethnic migrants to Finland, or elsewhere, may account for their migration, nor do these findings ‘represent’ this unique group of migrants. However, given the challenges in accessing migrants during the pre-migration period, the data presented is extremely valuable in that it allows an exploration of how individuals may use ethnic identity to account for a specific action—a subject that will likely be a relevant discussion topic in day-to-day life during the moving and settling period.

The study may also be criticized for its use of non-naturalistic data. Discursive psychologists have been moving away from using interviews and focus groups, due to various problems they see with the researcher-elicited nature of such data (see e.g. Potter & Hepburn, 2012). Naturally, the questions and other statements put forward by the moderator during the course of the sessions played a role in the interaction. This is not seen as a shortcoming but rather a natural aspect of this kind of data. To address the role of the researcher in the data collection and analysis, we have followed the view of the interview—or in this case, focus group—as a joint construction (e.g. De Fina, 2011; Modan & Shuman, 2011).

Analysis

The planned ‘return’ migration to Finland was mainly accounted for in the data by working up Finnish identity. This is not to say that other explanations were not given—indeed there were many reasons (e.g. studying, girlfriend or, in one case, seeking better opportunities more generally)—but rather that identity-related accounts were frequently offered during the discussion. Participants as well as the moderator referred to the group's Finnishness in various ways, directly (e.g. ‘my Finnish side’, ’I'm one hundred per cent Finn by blood’) and often indirectly by building a deep inner sense of Finnishness through calls to roots and familiarity as well as by constructing a preference for Finland. The current analysis focuses on the latter indirect cases, shedding light on the sometimes subtle ways in which ethnic identity talk was used in migration accounts.

Extract 1 occurs after talk about being (partly/fully) Finnish and the value of this identity. Here, Finnish ethnic identity is simultaneously worked up as something internal and pre-existing, as well as something to be developed.

Extract One

Mod: So (..) I asked you about how you made the decision to move here but I didn't ask you heh actually heh heh (.) when (..) has it something- has it been something that has come up recently for you (..) or

(3s)

O: I think I've always (.) kind of considered it (.) just to even go back for a summer (..) to kind of get back to (..) and learn more about my (.) roots but (..) now that I'm (.) And every time I visit it gets stronger but now I'm here and really kind of (..) living here for a little bit and getting a real taste for what it would be like (.) to be able to (.) you know travel (.) and having to speak it on a regular basis that (.) it's really getting stronger and I (.) can (.) really visualize myself here in the future (…) for a longer period of time

Mod: but it's always been something that you've thought about?

O: yeah con- (.) just considered you know never really (..) you know (.) made a certain (.) deadline or but I always thought I would (.) come back

Following the moderator's question about when participants decided to move to Finland, O constructs the move to Finland as something she has ‘always’ considered or wanted to do, creating a sense of length and permanence of this desire. This kind of construction is inherently tied to who the speakers ‘are’ or which identity, namely Finnish identity, they work up in this particular situation. Verkuyten and de Wolf (2002) found that people can account for their ethnic minority group membership, for example, by ‘being’ biologically ethnic and ‘doing’ aspects of one's ethnic culture, such as speaking the language. While the category of Finnish is not explicitly stated here, it is clear that the speaker is constructing and explaining a deeply imbedded sense of Finnishness. This is in line with the return to Finland and Finnish culture stressed by repeating ‘go back’ to Finland, ‘get back to’ my roots, ‘come back’. Such formulations assume a pre-existing connection, since a person cannot return to something that is unknown. At the same time, distance is mobilized by stating she would ‘learn more about my roots’ by being in Finland. The implication, however, is that the speaker would simply be developing—rather than establishing—her Finnishness.

Notably, the moderator offers the possibility that the decision to migrate was made some time ago in her initial question (by stating ‘or’ at the end of the question) and, later, picks up O's description of the migration and asks if ‘it's always been something’ she has thought about. O's account then can be seen in light of this, in particular that ‘it’, assumably her desire to migrate to Finland, grows stronger every time she visits the country. In this vein, the speakers together construct the move as being long-held but also as a strong yearning that grows. Further, while O explains that she has not made a concrete plans to move, she is able to still work up a sense that she will migrate through emphasizing her long-standing intention to do so.

The speaker also attends to the reasonability of the migration by emphasizing that during the current course/trip to Finland, she is ‘getting a real taste for what it would be like’ through being there at the time of the discussion. By repeating ‘here’, P appears to have first-hand knowledge of what it means to be in the country. Such calls to place function as a rhetorical and ideological resource (Dixon & Durheim, 2000) by working up a sense of belonging to the country, as well as a naturalness of being there (Taylor, 2010). Overall, participants most often constructed their planned migration as a natural, inevitable or pre-destined event, and a deep-seeded, life-long desire, working up a sense of destiny or fulfilment rooted in their ethnic belonging.

While there were many instances in the data of ethnic self-descriptions as seen in the excerpt above, it was also very common for speakers to work up a preference for Finland, often in relation to their home country. Extract 2 follows talk about the positive attributes of Finland, which was given in response to the moderator's question of when participants made the decision to move to the country, thus following Extract 1. As in the previous example, N begins her turn by stating that it, that is moving to Finland, has long-been (‘always’) been a thought. Using vivid details, such as the seventh grade, the teacher's subject, that bring forward a sense of certainty about the memory, N begins a narrative sequence which very effectively constructs a long-lasting preference for Finland. The relevance of this work lies in how it is used to differentiate the speaker from the teacher. In the narrative when the teacher states that the USA is the best country in the world and asks students if anyone knows of a better country, N suggests Finland. While there are no explicit references to N being Finnish or the teacher being American, the claims of which country is best work up these categories in the telling. Indeed, if we dismiss the categories of Finnish and American as being irrelevant, the story does not make much sense; it is through the implication of who would make these kinds of claims that we understand that the speakers belong to these groups.

Extract Two

N: I guess it's always been like a thought (..) I mean (.) ‘cause I remember (..) I was in (..) seventh grade (.) and my health teacher was talking about ohhh America's the best country in the world does anybody know any country better (..) and I said Finland

Mod: heh

N: he looked at me and he's like noo (..) and I was just like- oh he asked me why and I just was like (..) uhh I like shrunk in my seat ‘cause I didn't know what to say but I- (.) it goes back to the governmental structure definitely

Further, according to Holt (2000), reported speech allows tellers to convey accuracy of the story while also providing an assessment of the claim. The difference between N and the teacher—not only in opinion but also how this reflects who they are—is reinforced by using the teacher's voice to disagree with N's assertion, placing them in opposition. While the speaker concludes the narrative by explaining again in vivid terms she did not know how to reply to the teacher, she offers an explanation that Finland being a better country ‘comes back to governmental structure, definitely.’ This not only implies that are there objective reasons why Finland is a better country, but it also demonstrates at least now, as an adult, N is able to articulate why Finland is better. Calling on tangible, out-there knowledge (Potter, 1996) works here to construct the speaker as someone who has a true and well-founded belief that Finland is the better country.

Extract Three

V: uh for me (.) because it's on the opposite side of the world almost completely (..) there's some intrigue that it's (.) really different and something really different from what I'm used to (..) um (..) obviously I grew up with a lot of Finnish (.) customs (.) Christmas (..) food things like that (…) hearing the language my mum speaks um and (..) I've always wanted to learn I don't know how to speak another language but I always thought that if I were to learn to speak one other language it would be (.) Finnish and just coming here and just really seeing it properly for the first time (..) just (.) uh I've just kind of fallen in love with it.

Another example can be found in Extract 3, where a preference for Finland is mobilized by calling on the country's newness as well as familiarity. The extract follows the first reply to the moderator's question of why participants wanted to move to Finland, in which the previous speaker stated her Finnish background and emphasized a love of Finland and the Finnish language, and a sense of tiredness of her home country. In this piece, V constructs physical distance between her home country and Finland, implying a more essential difference through claiming its intrigue. At the same time she works up a sense of familiarity and comfort with aspects of Finnish culture through customs and language, orienting towards the preceding response of a deep love and appreciation of the country.

It seems it is not enough to explain that Finland would be an interesting place; rather the speaker must explain her own interest in moving to the country through her own connections. Membership of an ethnic group can be established by claiming possession of an attribute defined as typical of the group (Varjonen et al., 2013). In this case, V's claims of doing cultural activities or at least being exposed to the language work towards showing how she ‘does’ aspects of Finnish culture, following Verkuyten and de Wolf's (2002) accounts. However, the authenticity of her Finnishness is made relevant. As Sala, Dandy, and Rapley (2011) assert, language plays an integral role in demonstrating one's authenticity as an ethnic group member. There is interesting discursive work here in that, although V acknowledges she cannot speak Finnish, she is able to convey—not a one-off, random desire—but a naturalness to the idea that she could know the language. She continues to construct her preference for Finland in the last sentence, when V states that she has ‘fallen in love’ with the country. Moreover, as in Extract 2, V orients to the reasonability of the action. In addition to claiming familiarity with customs, she also claims that she is ‘seeing it properly for the first time’, V implies that she has a true—and not unfounded or biased—love of Finland, which can be seen as a further justification for the migration.

Discussion and conclusions

Discursive psychologists argue that people do not possess innate or set identities, but rather identities need to be worked up and established in talk (Merino & Tileagă, 2011). However, little research has looked at how ethnicity is used as a resource in social interaction (Hansen, 2005; Merino & Tileagă, 2011). In this study, we were particularly interested in the social action of ethnic identity; namely, we have explored how it can be used as a resource to explain or justify a planned ‘return’ migration to one's ethnic homeland.

In our data, Finnish ethnic identity was not a take-for-granted fact but rather was something that had to be worked up and explained throughout the discussions. This is in line with previous discursive research on the construction of ethnic minority identity that suggests the multiplicity, complexity and situated nature of claiming membership in a particular minority group (Merino & Tileagă, 2011; Sala et al., 2010). While in some cases participants in our focus groups as well as the moderator explicitly referred to being Finnish, much of the identity work was more subtle. In our analysis, calls to roots and cultural habits (which have been used to explain one's belonging in an ethnic group, see e.g. Varjonen et al., 2013; Verkuyten & de Wolf, 2002), as well as working up a preference for Finland were used as means of constructing Finnish identity and, further, of accounting for the intended migration.

In the current analysis, we demonstrated in detail how speakers worked up a deep, inner sense of Finnishness while also making an undeniable aspect of oneself—one's roots—relevant. As Varjonen et al. (2013) posit in their discursive study, biologically-based constructions of ethnic identity could be useful in legitimizing ethnic return migration. Indeed, such constructions of ethnic identity coincide very well with formulations of the migration as natural, long-desired and/or pre-destined, as it was commonly described in our data (see, in particular, Extracts 1 and 2). In their study, Verkuyten and de Wolf (2002) suggested that biological accounts of ethnic identity were beyond discussion or personal responsibility. Such constructions are difficult to deny or reject, thus, more deterministic versions of ethnic identity could be strong resources when explaining one's move to his or her ethnic homeland as a matter of inevitability or destiny—as opposed to one of individual choice. Bamberg, De Fina, and Schiffrin (2011) made a similar point: constructing identity using repertoires that result in low agency can work up positions with less influence and responsibility. This is an interesting finding considering the individuals in our study who, unlike those moving from less developed to more developed countries or through a specific migration program such as in Varjonen et al.'s (2013) study, have themselves initiated the move to Finland.

Another, perhaps more indirect, way of mobilizing Finnish identity in the accounts was by working up a preference for Finland. Key here was a long-lasting or natural love of the country. In our data, accomplishing a preference for Finland was predicated on who would, or could, make such claims. As seen particularly in Extract 2, it could not only be used as a clear means of self-categorizing as a Finn but also drawing fundamental difference between oneself and others. Preference may also be a feature of how migrants in general (can) talk about the destination society. For example, in their study among asylum seekers and refugees, Kirkwood, McKinlay, and McVittie (2013) found that constructions of countries of origin as dangerous, and of host society as relatively problem-free, can work to legitimize and justify one's place in the new country. According to Dixon and Durrheim (2000), constructions of place and place-identity perform social actions including building a sense of belonging. In this sense, constructing Finland as a preferable place implies it is open to the speaker, where he or she can or does belong—even before the migration has occurred. Certainly this function also fits our findings, so, it seems that preference talk has at least two functions. First, it has implications on who the speaker is understood to be and, thus, is a means of working up ethnic identity; secondly, it works to legitimize one's (future) belonging to the new society. This function of preference talk has not been explicitly explored in the discursive research on ethnic identity.

It is worth noting that participants were asked to explain why they planned to move to Finland to the moderator as well to the other potential migrants present in the session. Certainly, the questions posed and responses offered made certain accounts more or less possible. The study context also plays a role; participants were recruited from a course specifically for people with Finnish roots intending to move to Finland, so in some ways it is not surprising that ethnic identity, in various forms, was a useful resource in accounting for the planned migration. Nonetheless, there was discursive work to address the reasonability of the move. We saw this accomplished in part through the working up preference of Finland over other places, as well as by calling on what Potter (1996) out-there-ness, that is, ‘objective’ characteristics of the country, which were typically put into positive terms. The treatment of the topic overall, though, suggests that the reasonability of the migration is not evident but rather, seeing as the move is voluntary, it requires further justification.

The discussion to this point has dealt with our study's contribution to the literature on the social action of ethnic identity, that is, how it can be worked up and used a resource in interaction. Our study also adds to the literature on ethnic return migration, particularly to the recent line of research concerning the importance of ethnic identity during the pre-migration period, as well as why there often seems to be disappointment in the post-migration period (e.g. Christou, 2006a, 2006b; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2012; Mähönen & Jasinskaja-Lahti, 2012; Tartakovsky, 2009; Wessendorf, 2007)). While we take a discursive approach, which emphasizes the flexible nature of talk in any given situation according to local demands—and thus we do not seek to make broader generalizations—it may be that some previous research results can be explained by the social action of identity claims. That is, claims of high identification with one's ethnic group in interviews or surveys may not simply be a reflection of how these migrants ‘really’ feel but rather (also) a means of justifying the migration itself. Thus, future research conducted from more traditional socio-cognitive approaches should take into account the social functions of ethnic identity claims in this context when attempting to study the role of identification over the course of the migration process.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Miira Niska for her kind feedback on previous versions of this manuscript. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual conferences of the British Psychology Society, Social Psychology Section (August 2012, St. Andrews, Scotland) and the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists (April 2013, Cairns, Australia).

Funding

The study received funding in the form of a personal grant for the first author, Katrina Jurva, from the Research Foundation of the University of Helsinki.

Author Biographies

Katrina Jurva is a doctoral candidate of Social Psychology at the University of Helsinki. Her doctoral dissertation concerns the discursive construction of ethnic identity and belonging in the context of ethnic return migration. Email: katrina.jurva@helsinki.fi

Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti is Professor of Social Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. She has done extensive research on intergroup relations in Finland and immigrant integration and published widely in international scholarly journals. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. Email: inga.jasinskaja@helsinki.fi

Appendix

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