From Guest-Workers to Settlers

Abstract

Focusing on theatre, the article reveals how issues regarding Sweden-Finnish migrants’ agency and representation became politicised, problematised and reworked in the beginning of the 1970s. In the popular emotional representation of the early 1970s’ Finnish theatre, the migrant worker was seen as a tragic human casualty of inhuman capitalism. The representation was emotionally relevant both to the radical left with its strong anti-capitalist sentiments and to the rural population in northern and eastern Finland that had been affected by structural change and migration. The tragic migrant characters and the pessimistic view of migration, predominant in Finnish drama, was problematised by the Finnish immigrants to Sweden who did not want to be victimised as exploited guest-workers oppressed by capitalism. As the Sweden-Finnish institutions strengthened in the beginning of the 1970s, active cultural politics sought to increase the immigrants’ agency and their participation in society, politics and culture. It was crucial to replace the negative representation of a passive and resigned guest-worker with a positive image of an active and sociable settler. Mirroring a larger shift in the more nuanced understanding of migration processes and in the Swedish minority politics, the new and positive self-representation was to evolve from community-based cultural activity. The local Sweden-Finnish societies were encouraged to launch spontaneous cultural creation, including collective performances based on their everyday migrant experiences.