I recently had the opportunity to interview a french young man called Jérémy, a young 26 year old man now working as a volunteer in Finland. I got in touch with Jérémy trough a community called Warmshowers. This community is something like couch surfing, but for bicycle travelers. We can seek or offer accommodation, help and tips or just meet with local people. I hosted Jérémy while he was traveling back to his home region in France.
Jérémy was kind enough to share with me his story of how he came to Finland. He had had the opportunity to come to Finland as a volunteer worker. To get to Finland he cycled all the way from France. He came to work for a farm in Central Finland, near the city of Kajaani. He was working there as a volunteer for one year and was now heading home to his home region Pons in France. His plan was to come back after a few months of vacation.
Jérémy explained to me how he has enjoyed the silence and peace in Finland. Compared to Central Europe Finland felt empty and quiet. To him this did not seem like a problem, although he mentioned that anyone else he knows would feel isolated and lonely in the same kind of situation. The farm work is quite lonely and isolated and there are only a handful of people working.
What Jérémy loves the most is being around Finnish people: he thinks that it is worth the wait to get to know them. It takes time but after a while he has formed deep and meaningful relationships with people around him. Unfortunately In the beginning it was quite hard. There were only a handful of workers at the farm and it took time to make friends outside the farm.
Language has been the hardest part to grasp. Finnish language is still a mystery after one year. In his point of view Finnish people do communicate in English but they switch to Finnish the first moment they get. Jérémy has not been on any courses to improve his Finnish language skills yet. Language has been a barrier when trying to figure out some bureaucracy: in his perspective lots of older people do not speak english that well which made communication nearly impossible in the beginning.
When asked if Jérémy feels at home in FInland he goes silent for a while. He starts hesitantly describing all the beauty of Finland's nature, politeness and open-heartedness of Finnish people and support of the community and government. But in the end he has to say that his home is in France and it will always be there. World is full of places and adventures but France is where he feels the most at home. His family, culture are there and closest friends are in France.
After the interview I thought about What kind of measures would support the integration of different immigrants. Especially accessible language courses with professional teachers would be crucial. Ways to integrate and include immigrants in the community would be most effective to make them feel part of the society. Whether this is courses organized by schools, universities or cities it should be something to encourage the communication between immigrants and local residents. Also support with public administration could be relevant for some.
In conclusion, Jérémys journey to integrate in Finnish society is still ongoing. Integrating in the local communities has been hard but rewarding. His time in Finland has left a permanent mark though. Jérémy has made huge progress in cultural adaptation especially in customs and traditions e.g. sauna culture. He is coming back after a few months and from his speech I picked up some aspects of cultural preservation: Next time he is going to bring his cooking book and make some snails to his co-workers at the farm.