Precarious Transnationality in Family Relations on the Finnish-Russian Border during the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods

Pirjo Pöllänen,Olga Davydova-Minguet

doi:10.3390/genealogy5040092

Pirjo Pöllänen, Olga Davydova-Minguet

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5040092

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Abstract

The article develops the view of transnational familyhood as an affect of precarity. Transnationality itself is viewed as being defined by state actors and border regimes which make transnational connections fragile and vulnerable. The precarity is compared here with “the lease that is not in your pocket”. The text assembles the authors’ ethnographic work in Finnish-Russian border areas from two decades. Using the methodology of narrative ethnography, the study creates a picture of the atmosphere and affects in which transnational familyhood has been kept alive from the early 1920s until today. The historical context of transnational familyhood is divided into four periods: the period of confrontation and wars, 1920s–1940s; the period of friendly cooperation and a selectively open border, 1950s–1980s; the post-Soviet period of a conditionally open border and migration, 1990s–2010s; and the post-Crimean period of rebordering and the securitization of the transnational everyday since 2014. The everyday reality of transnational familyhood is portrayed through the constructed figures of “Aili” and “Vera”, who represent women belonging to transnational families from different generations.

Highlights

Introduction the Soviet and PostSoviet Periods.The transnational everyday of Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland has been precarious and vulnerable throughout the Soviet period
The historical context of transnational familyhood is divided into four periods: the period of confrontation and wars, 1920s–1940s; the period of friendly cooperation and a selectively open border, 1950s–1980s; the post-Soviet period of a conditionally open border and migration, 1990s–2010s; and the post-Crimean period of rebordering and the securitization of the transnational everyday since 2014
The conceptual frame of this article is inspired by the discussion of precarization and precarity, which we develop as diachronically intertwined with transnational family relations in the Finnish-Russian border area, spanning several decades from approximately the 1920s until today

Summary

Introduction

The transnational everyday of Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland has been precarious and vulnerable throughout the Soviet period. The geopolitical tensions, namely the conflict between the “West” and Russia that followed the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the beginning of the war in Eastern Ukraine, have had consequences in Russian-speaking immigrants’ lives in Finland as well. This geopolitical change has brought back the sensation of threat and vulnerability to the lives of people who have transnational family and care obligations on the other side of the border. This study contributes to the research of transnational familyhood in the post-Soviet migratory context from the perspective of the Finnish-Russian border (Davydova-Minguet and Pöllänen 2020; Assmuth et al 2018; Davydova-Minguet and Pöllänen 2017; Siim 2016; Pöllänen 2013; Tiaynen 2013; Zechner 2008; Hyvönen 2007; Saarinen 2007; Zechner 2006)

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