This doctoral dissertation examines Sweden-Finnish negotiations of identity and belonging in online ethnopolitical campaigns. Sweden-Finns have a complex position in Sweden as both immigrants and their descendants, and as a national minority. Sweden-Finns are generally defined as post-World War 2 Finnish migrants and their descendants in Sweden. However, in 2000, they were recognized as a national minority in Sweden, emphasizing the historical ties between Finland and Sweden as well as the historical presence of Finnish language in Sweden. Immigrants and national minorities are generally differentiated based on their voluntary and involuntary presence in a nation-state, meaning that international and national policies regarding national minorities are not aimed at immigrants or their descendants, but based on historical differences of language, religion or culture (see e.g. Kymlicka 1995, Kelly 2002).

Due to the ambiguity of the contemporary status and simultaneous identification of Sweden-Finns as both immigrants and national minority, the notion of Finnishness in Sweden is complex and unstable in relation to ethnic and national identities. After 2000, new symbolic and discursive practices have however been emerging with articulations for a specific minority identity as part of the Swedish nation-state, its multicultural history and collective memory (see Gröndahl 2007, Huss 2001, Silvén 2011). At the same time, representations of Sweden-Finnishness remain highly transnational due to many personal, cultural and political ties to Finland.

New digital media has provided Sweden-Finnish ethnopolitical actors new communicative spaces to negotiate belonging, strengthen the status of Finnish language, and empower a collective identity. While a body of research on history of Finns in Sweden exists (see e.g. Lainio 1997, Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000), due to the rapidly changing status of Finns in Sweden, their on-going integration process, language shift, generational shifts as well as emergence of new forms and channels of communication, earlier studies have only very briefly touched upon questions of collective identity and political projects of belonging in relation to different ethnic and national identities (cf. Latvalehto 2018, Snellman 2003, Weckström 2011, Ågren 2006).

The empirical focus of this study is on online campaigns implemented by Sweden-Finnish ethnopolitical actors in 2010s on Twitter and Instagram, and on two Instagram accounts that are run by Sweden-Finnish activist groups. The research is qualitative, and grounded in social constructivism with a critical approach to questions of ethnicity, culture, and identities. The data is analyzed by using critical discourse analysis (CDA). The research provides new information on contemporary cultural representations of Sweden-Finnishness and on how identity, belonging, and resistance are constructed and performed in the landscape of social media. In addition, it provides new perspectives on Finnish-Swedish as well as intra-Nordic mobility, and the consequent political and cultural projects of belonging. The research provides interdisciplinary and multidimensional perspectives on Finnishness in Sweden.

Tuire Liimatainen is a PhD Student, in Area and Cultural Studies/Centre for Nordic Studies CENS, at the University of Helsinki. During the spring 2019 she is a guest researcher at the department of Media and communication studies at Södertörn University.