Abstract
Little is known about low-income earners in the Swedish-speaking community in Finland, and particularly how this ethno-linguistic group positioned itself as compared with the Finnish speakers during the severe economic recession in the 1990s. Relating to the ethno-linguistic English-speaking minority in Quebec, we set out to study whether also Swedish speakers experienced a worsening of their economic position. Using register data from 1987–1999, we find that they did not, but rather improved their relative situation as compared with the Finnish speakers, although they on average had a higher propensity for being low-income earners also after the recession. In contrast to the situation in Quebec, no unfavourable language acts or educational reforms were imposed on the Swedish speakers during the study period. We see the results as reflecting a well-functioning welfare state, in which language acts and constitutional rights have worked to protect both ethno-linguistic groups.
Highlights
An overall picture of the economic situation of many ethnic minority groups is that they are in a poorer position than people in the majority population (e.g. Gradín 2012; Kahanec, Zaiceva and Zimmermann 2010; Mnookin and Verbeke 2009; Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein 2009; Van Rie and Marx 2013)
Swedish is alongside Finnish one of the two official languages of the country, and as a consequence, Swedish speakers have equal constitutional rights as the Finnish speakers and an own parallel education system
We begin by providing the share of low-income earners among Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers, respectively, for each year and stratified by sex, age group and region
Summary
An overall picture of the economic situation of many ethnic minority groups is that they are in a poorer position than people in the majority population (e.g. Gradín 2012; Kahanec, Zaiceva and Zimmermann 2010; Mnookin and Verbeke 2009; Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein 2009; Van Rie and Marx 2013). An overall picture of the economic situation of many ethnic minority groups is that they are in a poorer position than people in the majority population Swedish speakers in Southern and Western Finland, who are the focal points of this paper, and Anglophones (English speakers) in the province of Quebec in Canada, who we relate to, constitute two striking exceptions. Swedish speakers in Finland constitute an indigenous group that amounts to 5.5 percent of the total population of five million persons. As many as 7.5 percent of the population of eight million persons has English as their mother tongue, and the proportion of people who speak English as their first official language is approximately 13.5 percent (Corbeil, Chavez and Pereira 2010; Government of Canada 2014; Statistics Canada 2011). Provincial legislation has delimited the language rights of Anglophones and the role of their institutions
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