Municipalities play a key role in the promotion of immigrant integration and they mainly do this by ensuring comprehensive basic public services. Like all other residents, immigrants also need education and training services. Housing and leisure services are also important to immigrants integrating into Finnish society.
Under the Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration, municipalities are primarily responsible for the following tasks:
- coordination of responsibility for the development, planning and monitoring of integration at local level;
- ensuring that municipal services also suit the needs of the immigrants;
- ensuring that the measures and services referred to in the act are arranged in accordance with the demand for them in the municipality; and
- ensuring the development of the expertise of their own personnel as part of integration.
In local government pilots, municipalities are partly responsible for providing employment services (TE services) in their area. The target group also includes immigrants and foreign-language speakers who either are unemployed or participate in employment services offered by TE Offices.
Read more:
Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration (finlex.fi)
Services promoting integration