Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Settler Colonial Mentality in Narratives of Finnish Migrants in Brazil: Exploring Gender and Race Identifications

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender

  • 1822 Accesses

Abstract

Until very recently settler colonialism was not a relevant consideration for Nordic trans-Atlantic migration. Drawing on archival data, this article explores migration from Finland to Brazil in the early to mid-twentieth century. A large proportion of the small number of Finnish migrants to Brazil were part of establishing, or living in, a utopian community in the small town of Penedo. In this chapter a decolonially informed approach is used to explore Finnish migrants’ understandings of race and gender in mid-twentieth century Brazil. The chapter shows how a white Finnish middle-class migrant in the 1950s already understands “equal gender relations” as a Finnish and European feature, and as a marker of modernity, illustrating “settler colonial mentalities”.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Finland declared itself independent in 1917 and the period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were marked by strong nation-building.

  2. 2.

    Siiri's letters form a private archive, and the larger archive is located at the University of Turku migration history archives. There is rich material mainly of the community in Penedo. The archive was created on the basis of research by Olavi Lähteenmäki and consists of material by Finnish migrant communities in Brazil, Argentina and Dominican Republic (Lähteenmäki 1989).

  3. 3.

    To my knowledge, there is upcoming research by Liisa Korhonen on a utopian community in Argentina and Laura Hollsten’s and my research on Finnish colony in the Dominican Republic that view transatlantic migration from Finland as settler colonial endeavours. In addition Samira Saramo (2018b) uses the concept of landscape nationalism in her research on Canadian Finns in which the displacement of Indigeneous people is included in the analysis of migrant experiences.

  4. 4.

    The leader of the Penedo project, a farmer and landscape architect Toivo Uuskallio, wrote to the Finnish vegetarians in 1927 about “relocation of European orphans” (my translation): “As the European people are in a state where most of its population need necessities for living from the colonies, and there are millions of unemployed and orphans to be helped, it is only natural that they are allowed to be placed where their material help comes from. It is odd that population density in the nutritionally poor civilized nations of Europe is 30–50 times bigger than in the fertile colonies that they govern. They could sensibly populated support a much larger population than that of current Europe. Where land well cultivated can produce even 150 000 kg delicious bananas per hectare, where a few breadfruit trees can support a whole family and where fig, date and nut forests offer strongest nutrition there is for people, there can the needy of Europe be taken care of”. He continues to write about Europeans' bad living: the amount of money that is used for alcohol and tobacco and the detrimental industries that dominate Europe, and sees the tropics as the answer for the future of Europeans (Uuskallio 1927: 83–84).

  5. 5.

    After the 1930s Brazil disentangled the connection between immigration and branquamiento, ended the subsidies for European immigration, and started to move towards the ideas of racial democracy proponed by the social scientist Gilberto Freyre (Andrews 1996, 487, FitzGerald and Cook-Martín 2014). “Freyre’s writings thus became the basis of a new, semi-official ideology propagated in public proclamations, schools and universities, and the national media” (Andrews 1996, 488). In the 1960s and 1970s there were military governments in Brazil, which saw racial democracy as “‘acts of subversion' carried out by leftist” (ibid: 491).

  6. 6.

    Until 1808, what now is “Finland”, was the eastern part of Sweden. Finland was autonomous grand duchy of Russia 1808–1917 after which Finland formed an independent state.

  7. 7.

    According to Saffioti (1978), by that time, the upper classes had diverged somewhat from this order, and for working class it had never applied.

References

  • Ahlbeck-Rehn, Jutta (2006) Diagnosticering och disciplinering. Medicinsk diskurs och kvinnligt vansinne på Själö hospital 1889–1944. Åbo Akademi University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Warwick, Ricardo Roque and Ricardo Ventura Santos (2019) Lusotropicalism and its Discontents. The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism. Berghahn books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andrews, George Reid (1996) Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900-90: An American Counterpoint. Journal of Contemporary History, 31(3), 483‒507.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arvin, Maile, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill (2013) Decolonizing feminism: Challenging connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. Feminist Formations, 25(1): 8–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barker, Adam J (2012) Locating Settler Colonialism. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13(3), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/491173.

  • Costa, Emilia Viotti da (2000) The Brazilian Empire. Myths & Histories. Revised Edition. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daily, Lisa (2019) “We bleed for female empowerment”: mediated ethics, commodity feminism, and the contradictions of feminist politics. Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, 16(2), 140‒158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Lynne, Jeff Denis & Raven Sinclair (2017) Pathways of settler decolonization, Settler Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies, edited by Caroline Elkins, and Susan Pedersen, Routledge, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • De los Reyes, Paulina, Irene Molina and Diana Mulinari (2003) (eds) Maktens (o)lika förklädnader. Kön, klass och etnicitet i det postkoloniala Sverige. Stockholm: Atlas.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elkins, Caroline & Susan Pedersen (2005) Introduction. Settler Colonialism: A Concept and its Uses. In Elkins & Pedersen (eds.) Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • FitzGerald, David S. & Cook-Martín, David A. (2014) Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policies in the Americas, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gastro Gomez, Santiago & Ramón Grosfoguel (eds.) (2007) El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores; Universidad Central, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos y Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Instituto Pensar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grossi, Miriam Pillar (2004) A revista feminismos faz 20 anos. Uma breve historia do feminismo no Brasil. Estudos Feministas, 12 (N.E.), 264, 211–221. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-026X2004000300023.

  • Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Encarnación (2018) The Coloniality of Migration and the “Refugee Crisis”: On the Asylum-Migration Nexus, the Transatlantic White European Settler Colonialism-Migration and Racial Capitalism. Refuge 34(1), 16‒28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Encarnación, Manuela Boatcă, Sérgio Costa (2010) Decolonizing European Sociology. Transdisciplinary Approaches. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handlin, Oscar (1951) The uprooted: the epic story of the great migrations that made the American people. Boston: Little, Brown.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harjula, Minna (2007) Terveyden jäljillä: suomalainen terveyspolitiikka 1900-luvulla. Tampere University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hietala, Marjatta (1996) From Race Hygiene to Sterilization: e Eugenics Movement in Finland. In Broberg, Gunnar and Nils Roll-Hansen (eds) Eugenics and the Welfare State. Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 195–258.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hollsten, Laura & Salla Tuori (2020) Avoin ja vapaa kaikille, varsinkin eurooppalaisille—suomalaissiirtolaisten utooppinen yhteisö Dominikaanisessa tasavallassa 1929-1944, Historiallinen aikakauskirja 4/2020.

    Google Scholar 

  • Honkanen, Katriina (1997) Tasa-arvoideologia suomalaisessa naishistoriassa. Naistutkimus/Kvinnoforskning 3(1997): 2–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huhta, Aleksi (2017) Toward a Red Melting Pot: The Racial Thinking of Finnish-American Radicals, 1900–1938. Turun yliopisto.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jungar, Katarina (2011) Long Live! South African HIV-activism, Knowledge and Power. Sociological Discussions. Åbo Akademi University. http://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/87685

  • Keskinen, Suvi (2018) The ‘crisis’ of white hegemony, neonationalist femininities and antiracist feminism. Women's Studies International Forum, 68,157–163.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keskinen, Suvi (2019) Intra-Nordic Differences. Colonial/Racial Histories, and National Narratives: Rewriting Finnish History. Scandinavian Studies, 91, 163–181.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keskinen, Suvi, Salla Tuori, Sari Irni & Diana Mulinari (2009) Complying with Colonialism. Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region. Farnham: Ashgate 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koivukangas, Olavi (1998) Kaukomaiden kaipuu: suomalaiset Afrikassa, Australiassa, Uudessa-Seelannissa ja Latinalaisessa Amerikassa. Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koivunen, Anu (2003) Performative Histories, Foundational Fictions. Gender and Sexuality in Niskavuori Films. Helsinki: SKS.

    Google Scholar 

  • Korhonen, Liisa-Maija (2020) “Tulinen Amerikan kiihko”—Tunteet ja koloniaalisuus Anna ja Edvard Skogmanin kirjeissä Argentiinasta 1906–1907. Historiallinen aikakauskirja, 4/2020.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuokkanen, Rauna (2003) “Survivance” in Sami and First Nations Boarding School Narratives: Reading Novels by Kerttu Vuolab and Shirley Sterling, American Indian Quarterly, 27 (3–4).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuortti, Joel, Mikko Lehtonen and Olli Löytty (eds) (2007) Kolonialismin jäljet. Keskustat, periferiat ja Suomi. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, Gail (2006) Imaginaries of Europe, Technologies of Gender, Economies of Power. European Journal of Women’s Studies 13 (2), 87–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loftsdóttir, Kristín & Lars Jensen (2012) (eds.) Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lugones, Maria (2007) Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22 (1), 186‒209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lugones, Maria (2008) Coloniality of Gender. Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise 2, 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lundström, Catrin (2010) Transnationell vithet. Svenska migrantkvinnor i USA och Singapore. Tidskrift för genusvetenskap, 1‒2, 24-45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lundström, Catrin (2019) White Women. White Nation. White Cosmopolitanism: Swedish Migration between the National and the Global, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 27 (2), 96–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lähteenmäki, Olavi (1989) Colonia Finlandesa: Uuden Suomen perustaminen Argentiinaan 1900-luvun alussa. Helsinki: Suomen historiallinen seura.

    Google Scholar 

  • Melkas, Eevaleena (1999) Kaikkoavat paratiisit. Suomalaisten siirtokuntien aatteellinen tausta ja perustamisvaiheet Brasiliassa ja Dominikaanisessa tasavallassa n. 1925–1932. Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, Walter (2007) De-linking. The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies 22 (2–3), 449–514.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mulinari, Diana, Sari Irni, Suvi Keskinen and Salla Tuori (2009) Introduction: Postcolonialism and the Nordic models of welfare and gender. In Keskinen, Tuori, Irni & Mulinari (eds.) Complying with Colonialism. Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region. Farnham: Ashgate, 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngai, Mae M. (2010) A Nation of Immigrants: The Cold War and Civil Rights Origins of Illegal Immigration. With an exchange between Eric S. Maskin and the Author, Paper nro 38 The Occasional Papers of the School of Social Science, https://www.sss.ias.edu/files/papers/paper38.pdf

  • Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́ (1997) The Invention of Women. Making an African sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quijano, Anibal (2000) Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America. Nepantla. Views from South 1.3 https://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf

  • Rastas, Anna (2012) Reading history through Finnish exceptionalism. In Loftsdóttir & Jensen (2012) (eds.) Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Santos Soares, Maria Andrea dos (2012) Look, blackness in Brazil!: Disrupting the grotesquerie of racial representation in Brazilian visual culture. Cultural Dynamics 24 (1), 75–101.https://doi.org/10.1177/0921374012452812

  • Saffioti, Heleieth (1978) Women in Class Society. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saramo, Samira (2018a) “I have such sad news”: Loss in Finnish North American Letters. The European Journal of Life Writing, VII, 53–71, https://doi.org/10.5463/ejlw.7.235

  • Saramo, Samira (2018b) Lakes, Rock, Forest: Placing Finnish Canadian History. Journal of Finnish Studies, 20 (2).

    Google Scholar 

  • Silva, Denise Ferreira da (2006) À brasileira: racialidade e a escrita de um desejo destrutivo. Estudos Feministas, 14 (1), 336, 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-026X2006000100005

  • Smith Andrea (2010) Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy. Global Dialogue, 12 (2).

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Andrea and Kēhaulani Kauanui (2008) Native Feminisms Engage American Studies. American Quarterly, 60 (2), 241‒249.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Lynn T. (1969) Studies of Colonization and Settlement. Latin American Research Review, 4 (1), 93‒123.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tate, Shirley (2010) Not All the Women Want to be White. Decolonizing Beauty Studies. In Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Boatcă & Costa (2010) Decolonizing European Sociology. Transdisciplinary Approaches. Farnham: Ashgate, 195‒210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, 1 (1).

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang (2013) R-words: Refusing Research. In Paris & Wing (eds.) Humanizing Research. Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry With Youth and Communities. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuori, Salla (2009) The Politics of Multicultural Encounter. Feminist Postcolonial Perspectives. Åbo Akademi University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uuskallio, Toivo (1927) Euroopan orpolasten pelastaminen. Terveys 6‒7, 81‒85.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vargas, Joao (2004) Hyperconsciousness of Race and Its Negation: The Dialectic of White Supremacy in Brazil. Identities, 11 (4), 443‒470.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valkonen, Sanna (2009) Poliittinen saamelaisuus. Tampere: Vastapaino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Veracini, Lorenzo (2010) Settler Colonialism. A Theoretical Overview. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weiss, Holger (2016) Slavhandel och slaveri under svensk flagg. Koloniala drömmar och verklighet i Afrika och Karibien 1770–1847. Helsingfors/Stockholm: Svenska Litteratur Sällskapet/ Atlantis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Patrick (2001) Land, Labour and Difference. Elementary Structures of Race. American Historical Review, June 1, 866–905.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Patrick (1999) Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, London: Cassell.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Migration Institute of Finland, Turku, Finland

    Salla Tuori

Authors
  1. Salla Tuori
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Salla Tuori .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Shirley Anne Tate

  2. Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Tuori, S. (2022). Settler Colonial Mentality in Narratives of Finnish Migrants in Brazil: Exploring Gender and Race Identifications. In: Tate, S.A., Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83947-5_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83947-5_24

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-83946-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-83947-5

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation