Features
Ghanaian migrants, civic participation and inclusion in Finland
Attention on migrant inclusion is increasing at various levels in Finland and other European countries.
Participation occurs at many different levels—social, economic, political, etc.
Most migrants participate in social activities. Studies have also shown that most migrants are gainfully employed.
They may work either as paid workers or as self-employed entrepreneurs although they often have unstable or marginal positions in the Finnish labour market as cleaners, waitresses, and bouncers in pubs.
In electoral or voting participation of African migrants, for example, this has been quite low as compared with other groups in Finland. However, interest in participation is gradually increasing.
Efforts for integration and inclusion
In Finland, a number of studies have examined migrants’ lives in general. In recent years, surveys and other research studies have focused on the integration of African migrants into the Finnish society.
As scholars of migration or Diaspora studies have pointed out, migrants live their lives simultaneously across different nation-states and cultures–being both ‘here’ and ‘there’ across geographical and political boundaries.
That is, migrants make efforts to integrate into the society they live in (here, in Finland), although they also try to portray the culture of their original countries (or regions).
Civic participation and migrant associations
Reports indicate that civic participation of migrants in Finland is generally considered to be low but it has been increasing over the years, especially from the 1990s onwards.
Cooperation projects and migrants’ participation in the planning of issues concerning migrants themselves are seen as one of the efficient ways to improve the inclusion of migrants in the Finnish society.
There are forms of civic participation at the municipality level.
At the same time, migrant associations and other organisations have also been engaging in activities to help migrants to integrate into the Finnish society.
Interest in politics
The interest of African migrants in voting is increasing. Many of them are looking forward to voting in the upcoming municipal elections across the country next month.
Moreover, a number of migrants are standing as candidates in the Finnish municipal elections.
Actually, interest seems to be increasing among the main political parties in Finland to recruit migrant candidates. There are a number of African migrant candidates.
There are also a few Ghanaian migrant candidates seeking to be elected in next month’s municipal elections. This has even slightly increased compared with the picture in the 1990s.
This, undoubtedly, is a step forward. If it is a positive sign of integration and inclusion of Ghanaian/African migrants into the Finnish society, then that’s it. Thank you.
GHANA MATTERS COLUMN
With Dr Perpetual Crentsil
The writer is a lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Finland
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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