The Hidden Minority

Book excerpt: Looking at the Finnish–Russian borderland as a transnational space and claiming that there is a need to understand the long-term effects of migration – a continuing process spanning several generations – The Hidden Minority takes a multi-temporal perspective on mobility and belonging. The focus of this ethnographic study is the Russian minority in Finland, which is socially, economically, politically and culturally heterogeneous.The Russian minority in Finland is imbued with ’being hidden‘ or ’hiding oneself‘. The book explores informants’ reflections, together with the author, on the mental and physical crossing of national borders. Perceptions of belonging and/or Otherness and lived experience reveal a complex relationship of embodied memory, history, time and a multi-national social space.