Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Finland's Demographics

Gates of Vienna has a post entitled The New Multicultural Finland. It was written by a new correspondent of GOV who is from Finland, and discusses changes in Finland's demographics, relating those changes to changes in crime.

Intrigued, I did a little sniffing around.

What I was looking for was information on immigration to Finland from areas that are mentioned in posts on my blog. Here's what I found so far:

The population of Finland in 2006, the last year for which statistics seem to be available, shows the following:

On 31 December 2006 the total population of Finland was 5,276,955 of which 2,583,742 are men and 2,693,213 women. In the course of 2006, Finland's population grew by 21,375 persons. The increase in population was the largest since 1993. The number of men grew by 11,392 and that of women by 9,983.

[snip]

At the end of 2006 Finland was the country of permanent residence of 5,155,216 Finnish citizens, i.e. 97.7 per cent of the population, and 121,739 foreign citizens, i.e. 2.3 per cent of the population. During 2006 the number of foreign citizens grew by 7,887 persons. The largest groups of foreign citizens were from Russia (25,326 persons), Estonia (17,599 persons), Sweden (8,265 persons) and Somalia (4,623 persons). The number of persons who were born abroad but live in Finland was 187,910.

Of the population of Finland 4,828,747 persons (91.5 per cent) had Finnish as native language, 289,609 persons (5.5 per cent) Swedish and 1,772 persons (0.03 per cent) Sami.

Persons with a native language other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami numbered 156,827, or 3.0 per cent. The largest foreign-language groups spoke Russian (42,182 persons), Estonian (17,489 persons), English (9,659 persons), Somali (8,990 persons) and Arabic (7,564 persons).

Population by country of birth, citizenship and native language, 31 December 2006




I was surprised how large the Somali- and Arabic-speaking minorities are.

Number of recipients of Finnish citizenship fell in 2006

According to Statistics Finland, in 2006 Finnish citizenship was granted to 4,450 foreign citizens permanently resident in Finland. The number was 1,250 lower than in 2005. Of the recipients of Finnish citizenship, 2,550 were women and 1,900 men. Of the recipients of Finnish citizenship, 1,300 were younger than 15 years of age and 150 were older than 65.

Last year 2,550 citizens of European countries were granted Finnish citizenship, which is 1,140 fewer than in 2005. Of the recipients of Finnish citizenship, 500 were citizens of European Union countries. Finnish citizenship was granted to 1,000 citizens of Asian countries in 2006. Their number fell by 50.

Finnish citizenship was most often granted to citizens of Russia (1,400) and Somalia (450). The third largest group of recipients of Finnish citizenship was made up of citizens of Iraq (400).


That is information about those who have received Finnish citizenship. So, a natural question arises about the breakdown of those who haven't.

Finnish Immigration Service General statistics show that from 2005 to 2006 the numbers of foreign citizens living in Finland changed as follows for people from select countries:

Afghanistan: 1831 up to 2008

Albania: 90 up to 104

Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1579 up to 1601

Iran: 2553 up to 2599

Iraq: 3265 down to 3038

Macedonia: 162 at the end of both years

Pakistan: 470 up to 538

Serbia and Montenegro: 3319 up to 3352

Somalia: 4694 down to 4621

Turkey: 2613 up to 2881

(Did I get my ups and downs right?)

It is unclear what caused some numbers to go down; presumably, people did not return to Iraq and Somalia, so it must mean that more people from those two countries received Finnish citizenship than arrived new to the immigrant community in 2006.

Miscellaneous background: Finland's Prosperity Brings New Migrants.

What I enjoyed about this is that it opened up the cans of worms that I am looking at from a whole new direction, and the glimpse so far is intriguing. More on that -- maybe. :)

I now have a new label: Demographics

Meanwhile, take a look around Gates of Vienna: it's a pretty decent blog.

2 comments:

MathewK said...

"It says that there’s a huge crime wave in the city of Turku (the second largest city in Finland) caused by immigrants. The 6% immigrant minority commits 13% of all crimes. But that’s not the worst: they commit 34% of sexual crimes, 21% of assaults, and 37% of robberies and blackmail."

It amazes me that Europeans cannot learn from their neighbors mistakes. Today i was listening to talkback radio and one of the topics was skinny dipping, long story short, an aussie lady called in saying she went over to Finland a while back and went skinny dipping, something she would consider back in 'Conservative' Australia, because the folks here wouldn't approve.

Well that's real swell and all that but i was thinking what life is like now in Liberal Finland. Based on the above, i think i'll stick with 'conservative' Australia and just deal with wearing clothes.

pela68 said...

Ahh- Finland. The land of (some) of my ancestors. The land of real sausages (Lenkki Makkara-
mmmmh!) The land of Koskenkorva Vodka served luke warm from a bottle at the restroom on a wedding.

Love it!

Finland has also only got a fragment of the immigrants- especially muslim ones- that Sweden does.

And their food are yummy (as long as you don't go to a restaurant that is. I'm not sure why but restaurant food in Finland sucks!)...