The integration experiences of older Finnish re-migrants: ‘Embraced by the Swedes … but Finland is my home country’

Abstract

Why older people re-migrate is topic of interest in relation to both integration and return experiences. Despite an overall research interest for the older re-migrants, the oldest age groups (65 or older) are more sparsely studied. In this study, the case of older re-migrants are the Finns. Finland and Sweden are neighbouring countries and Sweden has for decades been a host society for labour migrants. Thus, Finnish people are a large body of immigrants to Sweden who often re-migrate to Finland, and they therefore offer an interesting group for studying questions of integration and re-migration. Our study explored and described how older Finns experienced integration while living in Sweden, as well as reasons for their re-migrating. Inductive qualitative content analysis was used to analyse data from 28 life-story interviews. Factors strengthening integration as well as counteracting integration were personal, social or economic. The same factors could be reasons for re-migrating. Some of them had re-migrated despite having enjoyed life and social relations in the host country. Others seemed to be “pure” labour migrants who were not in all aspects socially integrated. At least for those migrants the mission in the host society seemed to be completed when becoming a pensioner. However, not all of them had wished to return but felt they were forced to. Nor did all of them experience return as positive. It is important for policy makers to take all these factors into consideration when designing integration policies.