Pitfalls of belonging-work. The dialectics of belonging and exclusion in Finnish immigrant integration policies

Abstract

As participatory integration policies proliferate in Europe, it has become urgent to examine how the relational techniques of government they deploy condition migrants’ membership in their host societies. This article forges an interactive and intersectional approach to the analysis of integration policies with the intent of laying bare the complex dynamics of belonging and exclusion played out in their context. Based on an ethnographic study in Helsinki, the article shows how the intendedly inclusive and egalitarian “homey” mode of belonging promoted by welfare professionals engenders uneven conditions for immigrant women to partake in the local community and broader Finnish society. Premised on gendered, culturalized, and classed categories of citizenship and belonging the neighbourhood house provides positive recognition to “respectable” (immigrant) mothers but also perpetuates the division between natives and immigrants and requires more belonging work from them than their native peers.