Paper Titles & Abstracts

In 2007, the first groups of Eastern European Roma migrants were noted on the streets of Helsinki. Their arrival, along with the activities they were engaging in (primarily the begging) raised a wave of media attention and social uproar. Authority interventions were also responding in somewhat unwelcoming ways, through recurrent camp evictions among the migrants. Unsurprisingly perhaps, these actions were seen by social activists as examples of anti-Gypsy sentiments and as revealing presumably hidden prejudiced views within what is often deemed an equalitarian welfare state.Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the ways in which individual members of Finnish society (local citizens, residents of Helsinki) interact and engage with the Roma migrants or how they reflect on those interactions. In my paper, I analyse the contexts in which local inhabitants of Helsinki come to the aid of individual Roma migrants. I look at the two sided relation between the parties involved: those who are offered shelter/support (i.e. the migrants) and those who offer that shelter (the 'locals') and the discourse they evoke. By analysing such encounters, and the reasons behind them, I argue that- while the 'ethnicization' of Roma migration may very well be noticeable at the level of national authorities (and even local NGOs)-, it may very well be less pervasive (or straight-forward) within everyday interactions of migrants and 'locals'.