The Hidden Minority: Perceptions of Belonging and Otherness in the Finnish - Russian Borderland

Looking at the Finnish-Russian borderland as a transnational space and claiming that there is a need to understand the long-term effects of migration - a continuing process spanning several generations - The Hidden Minority takes a multi-temporal perspective on mobility and belonging. The focus of this ethnographic study is the Russian minority in Finland, which is socially, economically, politically and culturally heterogeneous.The Russian minority in Finland is imbued with ’being hidden’ or ’hiding oneself’. The book explores informants’ reflections, together with the author, on the mental and physical crossing of national borders. Perceptions of belonging and/or Otherness and lived experience reveal a complex relationship of embodied memory, history, time and a multi-national social space.

Helena Jerman is affiliated to the Faculty of Social Sciences, Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, where she has taught and worked as a university researcher and later as an experienced researcher of the Kone Foundation. She was a member of the board of the Finnish Oral History Network (FOHN) for several years and is a founding member of the Finnish Anthropological Society and the Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration.