Professor Pirkko Pitkänen believes that the best way to prevent the social exclusion of immigrants is to get them into jobs and into everyday Finnish life.

Researcher profile:

The professor who exchanged ancient Greece
for diversity in Finland

Pirkko Pitkänen would like to set about improving the position of immigrants by investing in training for teachers and continuing education

Text: Riku Roslund
Photo: Jonne Renvall
Translation: Virginia Mattila

Pirkko Pitkänen's enthusiasm for the multicultural goes back some ten years to Joensuu, where skinheads did a lot of bad for immigrants.  In an instant Joensuu became a blot on the Finnish landscape when the black American basketball player on the local team Kataja was beaten up and had to return to his home country.

"You couldn't help by become interested.  I wanted to find out what was going on and be more connected to the present day," Professor Pitkänen explains.

Her master's thesis addressed the state philosophy of Hegel while later her doctoral dissertation was concerned with the current challenges of value education on the basis of Plato's conception of good life.

By and by Professor Pitkänen's philosophical works began to gather dust as she became involved in the founding of the Joensuu Centre on ethnic studies and worked at the University of Joensuu as a senior researcher with special responsibility for multicultural education.

Over and above her main work, Professor Pitkänen contributed to the newspapers Savon Sanomat and Pohjois-Karjala in the capacity of assistant.  She actually applied to become a culture editor on the publication Karjalainen but was deemed overqualified.

Eventually she was drawn into academia.  She was appointed professor of education at the University of Tampere in 2005.

"As a person I suppose I am really more theoretically than practically oriented.  Now I am doing my dream job.  This is the only professorial post in multicultural education in Finland."

On behalf of foreign labour

In 1970 there were only 10,000 foreigners living in Finland, but now there are over 100,000.  Even though the proportion of foreigners in the population continues to be among the lowest in Europe, the speed of change has been amazing.

"We have not succeeded in keeping pace with the development.  Our immigration policy includes some really nice notions, but in practice they aren't realised."

Professor Pitkänen believes that most resources should be invested in training for teachers, especially in-service training.

"It's just incredible that just when multicultural education ought to be increased it is being cut."

Moreover, not all teachers are keen on the idea.  Professor Pitkänen tells a story of a school where straws were drawn in the staffroom to resolve who got to cope with a Russian pupil.

She also believes that a firmer grip is required in employment policy.  It is not unheard of for an African Ph.D. moving to Finland to be found here sweeping floors, if even that.  Given the worrying development in our age structure, this is not a situation we can afford.

"We are sure to be needing foreign labour in the years to come."

Up with multi-disciplinarity

Professor Pitkänen's university education extends over several fields of science.  She started off with geography, graduated with a master's degree in history, did a licentiate in practical philosophy and a doctorate in education.

"I appreciate multi-disciplinarity.  Learning to engage in routine co-operation is challenging but rewarding.  Nowadays I should not feel happy collaborating with someone whose nose is buried in her own subject."

Professor Pitkänen's team is distinctly international.  She herself is currently engaged in researching people's relationships across national borders and the "mainstreaming" of worldwide interaction.  Some thirty researchers throughout the world are involved.

"I couldn't manage without e-mail."

It can be considered one of the professor's special skills that she has already obtained funding for three major international research projects.  Only some five percent of applications get through.

"I have also been complimented on my leadership skills.  Multi-disciplinary groups composed of researchers form different countries are not the easiest to manage."

She is not interested in travel in her free time.

"There's no way I would go abroad.  I am tired of travelling when all you see on a working trip is airports, hotels and meeting rooms.  In my time off I relax with my two dogs in my summer place at Koli."