The Recognition of War Refugees: Lapland, Love, and Care

Abstract

Abstract According to Honneth, the mutual recognition essential for individual autonomy and a just society divides into three forms—love in primary relationships, rights in legal relationships, and solidarity in the community of value. Such recognition has three corresponding forms of disrespect—abuse, exclusion, and denigration, all of which can raise struggles for recognition. An analysis of empirical data—in this case, oral-history reports from Finnish evacuees to Sweden during the Lapland War (1944–1945)—within this framework of recognition reveals detailed information about the refugees’ wartime experiences, particularly those that they deemed significant enough to be remembered decades after the event.