Doctoral Researcher Abdin Zain Ul

30150 €

Migration for whose benefit? Pakistani and Indian migrant communities’ remittance sending behaviour and integration in Finland and Sweden

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Yksivuotinen

Three students, Ajmal, Vikram, and Aadi, from South Asian countries, enter Finland in 2012 and start their Master’s education in an Information Technology Programme at a Finnish university on a one-year limited scholarship basis. All three of them finish their coursework and IT projects in their first year. Starting from the second year, not being bound to personally attend the classes at the university anymore and with the scholarship period finished, Ajmal moves to another bigger city and starts delivering newspapers in the early morning to be able to afford living expenses. Vikram manages to get funding for the Master’s thesis at the university, whilst Aadi decides to move to another city to start work at a restaurant. At night-time, Ajmal delivers papers and in the day, devotes the bulk of time to learning Finnish and applying for IT jobs. Aadi, who is the only one married, works full-time to be able to support his family back home. After almost nine years (2021), Ajmal and Vikram are working as senior developers in reputable IT firms after successfully finishing their Master’s degrees in 2015 and 2017 while Aadi is working as a chef (previously assistant) at a new restaurant without ever being able to finish his studies. This doctoral research explores contemporary migration and remittance sending behaviours and their impacts on the socio-professional integration of student migrants from Pakistan and India in Finland and Sweden. The collected data supports that distinct groups of migrants carry dissimilar cultural obligations upon migration. Those who are not pushed to work longer hours in unskilled jobs to remit larger amounts of money can dedicate more time to finishing their university degrees, learning the language, and eventually become an entrepreneur or acquire a professional job. The empirical data was collected through participant observations and semi-structured interviews from Helsinki and Turku in Finland and Göteborg and Stockholm in Sweden.