The Integration Experiences of Cameroonian Immigrants in Helsinki
Maloinehdoh, Toh Ebennezar; Yunga, Tassi (2024)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202404237440
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202404237440
Tiivistelmä
Finland has witnessed an uptick in migration into the country from the 1990s up to current times. For varied reasons, more migrants are making Finland their new home and the Cameroonian immigrant constitute part of the migrant community mostly settled in the Helsinki area. Like other immigrant groups the Cameroonian immigrants grapple with issues of integration into their new host society.
The purpose of our study is to explore the integration experiences of adult Cameroonian immigrants in Helsinki. We aim to shed light on the challenges adult Cameroonian immigrants face as they integrate to Finnish society and propose recommendations to ease their integration. These proposed recommendations can be useful to immigrant integration policy makers and organisations working with immigrants.
To capture these experiences we employed a qualitative research method. Four adult Cameroonian immigrants were selected for the research and we conducted individual interview with each participant. We used semi-structured interview questions to collect data for the research and analysed the data using thematic analysis.
The results from our research point to challenges with desired employment, language barrier, and stereotyping of immigrant roles as the challenges faced by adult Cameroonian immigrants in Helsinki. To assuage these challenges, possible solution were to harmonize and streamline various integration schemes, to make language courses more accessible for the immigrants and for the Finnish society to be responsive to the Cameroonian immigrants integration efforts by giving them more opportunities to thrive.
Keywords: Immigrant, Immigrant integration, integration challenges
The purpose of our study is to explore the integration experiences of adult Cameroonian immigrants in Helsinki. We aim to shed light on the challenges adult Cameroonian immigrants face as they integrate to Finnish society and propose recommendations to ease their integration. These proposed recommendations can be useful to immigrant integration policy makers and organisations working with immigrants.
To capture these experiences we employed a qualitative research method. Four adult Cameroonian immigrants were selected for the research and we conducted individual interview with each participant. We used semi-structured interview questions to collect data for the research and analysed the data using thematic analysis.
The results from our research point to challenges with desired employment, language barrier, and stereotyping of immigrant roles as the challenges faced by adult Cameroonian immigrants in Helsinki. To assuage these challenges, possible solution were to harmonize and streamline various integration schemes, to make language courses more accessible for the immigrants and for the Finnish society to be responsive to the Cameroonian immigrants integration efforts by giving them more opportunities to thrive.
Keywords: Immigrant, Immigrant integration, integration challenges