Tourism work and immigrant integration : the case of Finland

Abstract

The tourism industry in Finland provides many employment opportunities, which is ideal for many immigrants seeking work in the country. Employment is one of the major factors that can affect their integration into local society, due to exposure to the local work culture, building relationships with coworkers, and learning. This paper aims to analyse how working in the tourism and hospitality sectors in Finland has affected immigrants’ integration process, as well as any opportunities for their career development.

Immigration is a very relevant topic, and as such has been widely studied in the past. The challenges immigrants face in their new society, whether social, economic, or health related have been documented thoroughly. The host society’s attitudes towards them as well as measures that have been taken to meet the needs of all parties have also been widely studied. In regards to integration processes when working in a specific field, such as tourism, not much discussion has been generated. It is thus important to analyse how the working environment of a specific sector can influence an immigrant’s integration into local society. This essentially means finding out how employers belonging to that sector (in the case of this paper, tourism and hospitality) approach the matter of integration via employment. This paper will focus on the tourism and hospitality sectors of Finland.

This paper will approach the subject based on the theory of the “two-way integration”. While there is no concrete definition for two-way integration, this theory largely suggests that proper integration of immigrants requires action from both them and the host society. It provides an excellent opportunity to look into how immigrants try to integrate via their work, while also showing what action employers take to satisfy such needs. The main research question is: How has working in the tourism sector in Finland helped immigrants with integration into society? Sub-questions include: What challenges did the immigrants face while working? How were those challenges addressed? In what ways do employers affect an immigrant’s experiences in the work environment?

Research was conducted by referring to previous literature on the subject and interviewing immigrants currently working or residing in Rovaniemi, Finland. The immigrants must be working or have worked in the tourism/hospitality sectors (or sufficiently related) in Finland. The interviews were conducted in April – June 2023.

It was found that immigrants’ experiences with their tourism jobs depended largely on how welcome their employer made them feel. Due to many jobs in the sector requiring close coordination with coworkers, some employers invested in teambuilding, which resulted in creating circles of trust between the immigrants and their coworkers. It also allowed them to work without the immediate need for learning the finnish language, although it is still a problem when job-hunting. One employee was left dissatisfied with the employer, but they managed to learn a lot of things about how Finland’s tourism sector operates. Overall, working in Finland’s tourism and hospitality sector proved to be beneficial for the interviewees’ integration, for the reasons just mentioned. The results of this research could be used as reference to what employers in the tourism industry can do to facilitate immigrant integration, and why such steps ar eimportant for tourism in particular.