News

In many municipalities, immigrants are advised to seek information from online services or telephone services. In the current situation with the coronavirus outbreak, municipalities offer also advice by telephone in various languages. Some municipalities have published multilingual information on the coronavirus.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment has published a glossary of integration, which harmonises the use of concepts of the Integration Act and services specified by it. The complete glossary is currently available only in Finnish.  The publication of the glossary is a starting point to a broader evaluation of integration and immigration concepts. The discussions on concepts are to continue at events for different target groups in the autumn and with the reform of the Integration Act. 

The number of job seekers who are of foreign origin has not decreased at the same rate as the number of Finnish job seekers. The number of unemployed people with refugee backgrounds was higher in May than in the previous year, but unemployment among those under 25 has decreased notably.

New provisions of the Aliens Act will prevent exploitation of foreign labour and improve the legal status of victims. The legislative amendment aims to make it easier to detect cases of exploitation and to protect victims of exploitation.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment published a brochure on employees’ rights for those who come to work in Finland today. At the same time, the Ministry launched a multilingual counselling service for seasonal workers arriving from abroad.  

The website maintained by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment’s Centre of Expertise in Immigrant Integration has undergone a redesign. At the same time, the Finnish name of the website has changed to kotoutuminen.fi. In connection with the redesign, the visual image of the centre of expertise was also revised. Kotoutuminen.fi is to be published as a beta version.

According to the Employment Bulletin of May 2021 by the Centre of Expertise in Immigrant Integration, the number of unemployed foreign jobseekers has decreased compared to the previous month. A decrease can also be observed as compared to the corresponding figure a year ago, when the number of unemployed jobseekers was high due to the pandemic.

The Advisory Board for Ethnic Relations (ETNO) has published materials on the upcoming municipal elections in seven languages. The materials will be used to encourage multilingual municipal residents to participate in decision-making and vote in the municipal elections in June 2021.

As stated in Prime Minister Marin’s Government Programme, compulsory education will be extended in 2021. With the extension, the minimum school leaving age will be raised to 18 years and student guidance and welfare services will be improved.

The Integration partnership programme is building an open nationwide network of actors involved in the work related to integration and social inclusion. In a few months, more than 140 actors promoting integration, refugee reception and social inclusion have registered for the partnership programme. Registration is continuous on the kotouttaminen.fi website.

The integration partnership programme of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment builds a national network of operators involved in the work related to the integration and social inclusion.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment is preparing a partnership programme on the promotion of integration and the receptiveness of society. Different actors’ views on cooperation in promoting integration are examined in a survey conducted as part of the partnership programme.

The virtual Integration 2020 event will bring together those engaged in advancing immigrant integration and refugee reception on 25–26 November 2020. This major national integration event will be held for the second time and there are hopes to make it a permanent cooperation forum in the field of integration. The event programme has now been published.

A study called MigCOVID will research the impact of the coronavirus epidemic and related restrictive measures on people who were born abroad. The information collected during the study will support the development of services and the evaluation of social impacts. The study will be conducted by the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).

Materials published on the OSH website can be used in teaching, for example. An event to provide information on employees’ rights will be held in English in November.

The calls for applications for funding from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and the Internal Security Fund (ISF) have been opened. Allocations available for projects implementing the programmes under the funds amount to approximately EUR 12 million. In Finland, the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the calls for applications. Applications will be accepted until 30 October 2020 at 16.15.

Different regions and organisations have done a lot of valuable work to promote integration but it is not often that operators in the field get to meet each other. Because of this, they are not always able to share good practices for promoting integration in the most effective way possible. The Integration 2020 event will continue the work started during the first integration event in 2018 and strengthen partnerships between public authorities, the third sector and businesses.

A recent report proposes that ministries, together with the actors in the interpretation sector, should prepare national guidelines or recommendations for high-quality public service interpreting. The report focuses on public service interpreting in the context of immigrant integration.

According to a report by organisations, municipalities had very few and infrequent direct contacts with customers after the emergency conditions began. Despite this, the majority of those interviewed for the report felt that they had received sufficient information and instructions regarding the coronavirus. Elderly foreign-language speakers reported that they had coped independently in their everyday activities during the emergency conditions. The exceptional situation caused concerns and fears among those interviewed regarding the wellbeing of relatives and social isolation.

During the autumn, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment will provide opportunities to participate in the preparation of the report on integration. The first consultation on the role of organisations in the work to promote integration was held on Friday 11 September, and an event for researchers on Monday 14 September. Consultations are part of the inclusive preparation process for the report addressing the need for a reform in integration promotion services.