Authors

• Weissenfelt, Kerttu (University of Lapland. Department of Social Work)

Keywords

asylum seekers, attitudes, evacuees, personality traits, right to political asylum

Abstract

The survey studied the attitudes of small municipality inhabitants to people from other cultures. Ruukki municipality (Finland) was selected for the study because it had received asylum seekers from the year 1993 onwards and, after the Second World War, had received evacuees from the region of Karelia which Finland had lost to the Soviet Union in the war.

Questions covered, for instance, whether the respondents had ever lived abroad, their and other people's attitudes towards asylum seekers, interaction with asylum seekers, knowledge of and interest in the issue, migration from Finland to other countries in the 1960s, acceptable reasons for seeking asylum, and knowledge of and attitudes to the Karelian evacuation. Views on the municipality and the impact of people moving in were surveyed. Further questions measured the degree of community solidarity and authoritarian personality.

Background variables included the respondent's age, gender, marital status, number of children, whether R had been born in Ruukki and if not, number of years of residence, basic and vocational education, job contract, language skills, R's and spouse's economic activity, and whether R or any other member of the family had been a Karelian evacuee.