The purpose of this study has been to investigate how female Swedish Finns reflect upon their socialization and their social identity in the Swedish society. The main theoretical framework for this study originates from sociologists such as Goffman and Tajfel. Goffman describes social interaction in terms of theatrical performance and deviant role with the concept of stigma. Tajfel explains how social identity can be understood as the part of the individual's self-concept, which derives from their knowledge and pride of their membership of a social group. A web survey (n=78) and semi-structured interviews (n=7) were conducted with female Swedish Finns, who were born in the 1970’s. They were asked to reflect upon their socialization in the Swedish society, the term Swedish Finns and their current social identity. I found out that the women of this study felt their social identity as being mostly Finns. They showed pride of their origin and of being bilingual. The Finnish language keeps them tied to Finnish traditions, family and friends, which inhibits the socialization to the Swedish society. As time goes by these women gradually move away from other Finns to socializing more with the Swedes. The stories of the seven Swedish Finns implicate that normification takes place and the stigmatized Finn strives to appear as an ordinary Swede in social situations. However, these women recognize themselves mostly as Finns at heart, but also as Swedes depending on the social context. They can best be described as different kind of Swedish women.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-78149 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Gellert, Maria |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för samhällsstudier (SS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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