Discursive Constructions of Whiteness, Non-White Cultural Others and Allies in Facebook Conversations of Estonians in Finland

Abstract

This chapter discusses how Estonian migrants in Finland craft their place in Finnish society by appropriating the idea that they as an ethnically and culturally marked group naturally belong to the privileged migrants in Finland, while many other migrants do not. We explore how Estonians in Finland engage in Facebook group discussions with other Estonian migrants and in this dialogical process construct their own whiteness in relation to majority Finns and their racialized others in Finland, imagined as culturally distant, harmful and unfitting in the European North. We show how the discussants, drawing situationally both from their Soviet past and transnational migrant life in Finland, place themselves in a “knower’s position” regarding racialized experiences both in Finnish and Estonian society, and through that aim at legitimizing their right to define and strictly delineate the boundaries of whiteness both in Finland and Estonia. In addition to that, we also observe the dynamics of whiteness with regard to Russian migrants in sorting out how ethnic/racial hierarchies are built in Estonians’ mind.