Egharevba, Stephen, Faculty of
Law, University of Turku, Rhetoric in race relations in Finland: Rebuilding
trust among immigrant minority of the police in Turku
Immigrant minority’s perception of public
officials in Finland are characterised by lack of detained understanding of the
courses of these phenomenon in the country. As a result of this uncertainty,
one understudied, but critical area in ethnic relations is the relations
between immigrant/police relations where there seems to be hostile reactions.
Hence, understanding the cultural dimension to African immigrants’ perception
has received less empirical attention. This present paper is an attempt to draw
attention to this aspect by exploring the major influence of cultural
misunderstanding between immigrants and the police in Finland. The author
intend to use the experiences of
thirty-five volunteered African immigrants, who have resided in Finland
for at least six years prior to the data collection in Turku as the basis for
the understanding of this phenomenon that tends to have developed within this
process. Furthermore, an attempt is also made to look into the extent to which
the differences in culture and traditional values have impacted on African
immigrants’ perception of the law enforcement in this city; as African
immigrants seem to have less confidence in the police in general, as my
research finding among African immigrants tends to suggest. There is also some
indications that the police act in discriminating manner towards African immigrants’
in Finland because of these misunderstandings.
Finally, we will be exploring the concept of culture by focusing on
African immigrants’ traditional and cultural habits in Turku. It is hoped that
this inquiry might serve to increase awareness on the part of the police and
the citizens in their future interactions thereby diffusing the
misunderstanding which is so rampant between these two groups in this city.