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Fragility of leisure ties between ethnicminority and majority youth – anempirical case from FinlandAntti Kivijärviaa Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland,Joensuu, FinlandPublished online: 24 Sep 2013.
To cite this article: Antti Kivijärvi , Leisure Studies (2013): Fragility of leisure ties between ethnicminority and majority youth – an empirical case from Finland, Leisure Studies
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2013.841745
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Fragility of leisure ties between ethnic minority and majorityyouth – an empirical case from Finland
Antti Kivijärvi*
Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
(Received 28 November 2012; final version received 18 August 2013)
This paper explores social integration of ethnic minority youth in the context ofmicro-level leisure interaction in Finland. The aim of the study is to disentanglethe types of ties that are formed between ethnic minority and majority youth.Moreover, the article will examine how these ties build bridges across groupboundaries in the form of providing new leisure resources for ethnic minorityyouth. The qualitative data of the study consists of multi-sited ethnographyconducted in the context of youth work and distinct interview data of ethnicminority youth (n = 38). Strong interethnic ties in the form of close friendshipsare rare in the data. Instead, many weak ties in the form of distant acquaintancesare maintained. However, because of manifold micro-level elements, these weakties are often too fragile to function as bridges accumulating the leisure resourcesof ethnic minority youth. Strong interethnic ties seem to have more bridgingqualities. Thus, the conceptual distinction of weak/bridging and strong/bondingties originally formulated in the framework of the labour market may not beapplicable in the fields of youth leisure.
Keywords: ethnicity; youth; leisure; bridging; interethnic ties
This paper presents a case from a lesser known ‘new’ migration contexts byexploring social integration of ethnic minority youth1 in Finland. During the lasttwo decades, Finland has changed from an emigration to an immigration country,and the proportion of foreign born people is steadily growing, being approximately5% at present. Some of the biggest national groups are Russians, Estonians,Somalians and Afghans. The first two groups include ‘returnees’ (people withFinnish heritage), spouses and workers while the latter two contain mostly refugeesand asylum seekers due to severe conflicts in their countries of origin. Foreign bornpeople and their descendants in Finland are on average younger than the wholepopulation (Statistics Finland, 2011). Thus, the younger generation, in particular,faces multi-ethnic peer networks in schools and leisure surroundings. In spite of theincreasing multi-ethnicity, there are few ready-made ethnicity-based communitiesand interethnic interaction is only taking its shape.
This paper explores ties crossing ethnic and cultural demarcations in the contextof youth leisure. The first aim is to disentangle the types of ties that are formedbetween ethnic minority and majority youth. Secondly, the article will examine howthese ties build bridges across group boundaries in the form of providing new leisure
*Email: [email protected]
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
Leisure Studies, 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2013.841745
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resources for ethnic minority youth – enhancing their ability to reach newrecreational settings. The qualitative data of the study consist of ethnographyconducted in the context of youth work. Furthermore, distinct interview data ofethnic minority youth (n = 38) will be utilised.
Social integration in the form of interethnic ties has been explored particularly inquantitative methods (e.g. van der Laan Bouma-Doff, 2007; Vervoort, 2012).According to this research, interethnic ties do not easily overcome structuralconstraints such as residential segregation, socio-economic cleavages and deficien-cies in language skills (e.g. Martinovic, Tubereng, & Maas, 2009; Schlueter, 2012).Qualitative studies have revealed more mundane circumstances preventing the accu-mulation of interethnic ties such as a lack of intergroup trust, racist group relationsand cultural codes of keeping distance (Blockland, 2008; Haynes & Hernandez,2008; Lopez & Stack, 2001). This article scrutinises the existence of the latter typesof micro-level mechanisms.
Research on interethnic ties of youth constitutes the empirical foundation of thispaper. Studies executed in school contexts indicate that young people tend to formties – particularly close ones – within their own ethnic group (e.g. Kao & Joyner,2004). Particularly, the ties between ethnic majorities and minorities are fragile (e.g.Mouw & Entwisle, 2006; in Finland see Souto, 2011). The same types of boundariesseem to remain in out-of-school settings as well (e.g. Reynolds, 2007; in Finlandsee Kivijärvi & Harinen, 2009). On other hand, a great deal of qualitative researchevidence reveals that ethnic minority youth possess manifold links to majority youthduring leisure (e.g. Back, 1996; Hewitt, 1986; Wulff, 1995).
Studies on youth leisure and sports reveal that participation in organisedfree-time activities is not an unequivocal solution to the problem of social integra-tion of ethnic minority youth (Walseth, 2006). Because of the similarities of interest,lack of rigid structures and voluntary participation, one could expect more inter-group cohesion during leisure than in school settings (cf. Stack & Iwasaki, 2009,p. 255). However, the bulk of the research evidence indicates that leisure activitiesdo not necessarily help ethnic minority youth in creating enduring ties with majorityrepresentatives. Interethnic ties tend to be confined to particular leisure settings andactivities (e.g. Elling, De Knop, & Knoppers, 2001; Spaaij, 2012; Walseth, 2008).Consequently, it will be scrutinised whether the observed interethnic ties function asbridges that extend to other leisure surroundings and networks as well.
The above literature focuses on highly multi-ethnic and urban milieus of‘western’ world. Interethnic leisure ties of youth have not received academicattention in loosely populated Finland, even though young people have long beenconsidered as ‘principal recipients of time released from work’ (Roberts, 1983,p. 3). According to recent studies in Finland, time spent in leisure settings and thesignificance of recreation and peer networks are greater to young people than toother age cohorts (Myllyniemi, 2009, p. 87; Pääkkönen, 2006, p. 46). Therefore,studying the integration of ethnic minority youth in the context of leisure is highlyimportant.
Strong and weak interethnic ties
In this paper, interethnic ties refer to affiliations between ethnic majority andminority youth. The assumption inherent in this notion is that connections of ethnicminority youth with majority youth enhance their social integration in general and
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leisure participation in particular. Thus, interethnic ties profit ethnic minority youthin the form of increased likelihood of cultural accommodation and peer support,new information and access to various fields of the host society.
The notion of interethnic ties is parallel to the individualistic conception of socialcapital (cf. Lin, 2001; Raffo & Reeves, 2000). Interethnic ties are examined ‘as asource of benefits through extrafamilial networks’ (Portes, 1998, p. 9). Thus, theaim is to study the resources embedded in leisure networks of ethnic minority youth(Lin, 2001, p. 43). The assumption is that the more extensive and heterogeneous thenetworks are, the more they provide accesses to various resources.
Based on the renowned article by Granovetter (1973), interethnic ties are dividedinto strong and weak ones. Strong ties are defined as tight bonds between closefriends which provide emotional support, shared norms, altruism and reciprocity.Strong ties often mean social closure – interaction in fixed groups. Thus, strong tieswould not provide access to new resources and information. Weak ties, on the otherhand, are more remote connections and memberships in loose networks. Weak tiesare often determined by instrumentality, thin trust and a greater risk of norm viola-tion (e.g. Burt, 2005; Onyx & Bullen, 2000). Weak ties are supposed to function asbridges between different people and their networks, thus providing access to newresources and information.
The analytical division of strong and weak ties leads to a conclusion that weakties mean bridging ties while strong ties imply bonding ties. Weak ties are thus seenas particularly important in increasing the social integration of ethnic minorityyouth. Weak ties would mean ‘getting ahead’ instead of just ‘getting by’ (Blockland& Noordhoff, 2008; Briggs, 1998). From this perspective, strong/bonding ties donot provide leverage and new resources but emotional and instant support, helpingindividuals only to ‘get by’ among a spatially confined and bounded peer group.
The dualistic approach to weak and strong ties – initially oriented to studyingformal relationships in the labour market – has been criticised in more informalempirical settings. Researchers have claimed that weak and strong ties are not neces-sarily synonymous with bridging and bonding (e.g. Leonard & Onyx, 2003). It hasbeen noted that in everyday lives particularly marginalised people tend to look forsupport from family members and close friends instead of more distant and imper-sonal networks (e.g. Holland, 2007). Moreover, a lack of formal or professionalroles may lead to withdrawals from interaction with emotionally distant acquain-tances (Leonard & Onyx, 2003). Finally, suspicions towards out-groups, ethnic andsocial hierarchies, cultural differentiations and an interest in maintaining one’s pridein everyday encounters have been identified as factors hampering interethnic weakties in informal settings (Blockland & Noordhoff, 2008; Spaaij, 2012; Walseth,2008).
The conceptual aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on bridging qualityof interethnic ties (both strong and weak) in the contexts of youth leisure. Thenotion of bridging refers to the capacity of interethnic ties in accumulating theleisure resources of ethnic minority youth. Bridging interethnic ties would enable‘getting ahead’ in the fields of leisure – to gain access in new recreational spacesand networks. It has been claimed that particularly immigrant youth need affiliateswith whom to enter new leisure settings or who encourage experimenting differentleisure pursuits. Having affiliates who provide information and overall comprehen-sion about available leisure options in Finland is important (Harinen, Honkasalo,Ronkainen, & Suurpää, 2012).
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Ethnographic glimpses and interviews in the context of youth work
The data of the study consist of multi-sited ethnography and interviews of ethnicminority youth. The ethnography (participant observations and interviews) wasconducted in the context of youth work in eight localities from 2008 to 2010. Theconcrete sites were six municipal youth clubs, a targeted multi-ethnic group organ-ised by municipal youth services and a NGO-based youth theatre group. All of thesesites were multi-ethnic in a sense that they included majority representatives andyouth with backgrounds in different parts of Africa, Asia or Europe. Most ethnicminority youth were refugees or asylum seekers with relatively short residentialhistories in Finland. Since teenagers are the main target group of municipal youthwork, most youth were 13–17. The ethnographic data include 35 days during whichfield notes have been composed. Moreover, five interviews of young people havebeen conducted in four of these sites. These interviews include four group inter-views and an individual one. Altogether, 13 young people were interviewed.2 Thesemi-structured interviews concentrated on peer affiliations and lasted from 40 minto one and a half hours. In addition, ethnographic data contain documents, leafletsand numerous informal conversations.
A distinct interview data consist of individual and semi-structured interviews ofethnic minority youth (n = 38).3 Conducted in 2005, the interviews include themesof leisure participation and desires, friendships and racism. The interviews wereconducted in 18 different localities, covering most regions in Finland. Interview dataincluded 22 girls and 16 boys. The oldest interviewee was 25 and the youngest13 years. In comparison with the ethnographic data, the backgrounds of the intervie-wees varied more: there were youth born in Finland while others had migrated therefewer than three years earlier. Some had entered Finland as refugees while some hadmoved to the country because of the highly paid job of one of their parents.Moreover, the national backgrounds of the youth were manifold, including youthfrom different parts of Africa, Asia, Middle East, Europe and America. Interviewslasted from 45 min to approximately two hours.
The data have three distinct features which probably have an affect on theresults of the study. The ethnography is conducted in adult organised settings ofyouth work. In Finland, the main instrument of municipal youth work is youthclubs which provide unstructured but adult controlled leisure for all young people.One of the main aims of youth clubs is to offer a safe place for young people increating and maintaining peer networks. Youth clubs are built around masculineactivities: pool and tennis tables and game consoles could be found from everyyouth house under scrutiny. In addition to ‘open for all’ youth clubs, municipalyouth services orchestrate many types of targeted work for definite groups.Furthermore, and in spite of the term, youth NGOs in Finland are often fundedand supervised by public authorities. They are responsible for providing differentinterest (e.g. human rights and animal protection) and pursuit (e.g. sports and arts)groups for young people.4
Above types of adult organised leisure settings are often labelled as ‘thirdspaces’ of young people. They are separated from homes (first), schools (second)and other public or commercial settings (fourth). Homes probably enclose emotion-ally close friendships while hang-around spaces such as malls and parks mightcontain a variety of more ‘light’ affiliations in rapidly changing crowds. In theleisure spaces under scrutiny, more or less the same groups of youth spend their
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time. Youth club activities attract mostly boys. Thus, the number of (ethnicminority) girls is scant in the ethnographic data.
Secondly, since Finland is a loosely populated country, the bulk of theethnographic data is conducted in either rural or small town surroundings. Only twoof the sites reside in distinctively urban multi-ethnic areas. Due to national immi-grant policies and mobility of migrant populations,5 ethnic minorities in small townsand rural localities in Finland are scant in number and often quite recently arrivedrefugees and asylum seekers while more prosperous and settled immigrants areheavily concentrated in few of the largest cities. This ‘bias’ of the ethnographic datamight mean that the results of the study seem sombre from the perspective of ethnicminority youth.
A third distinct feature of the data is its ‘cross-sectional’ nature. The presence ofthe researcher in the sites has been very short term, lasting from only one to tendays. As for the interview data, no follow-up interviews have been made. Therefore,in some cases, when analysing continuities in interethnic ties and leisure resourcesacquired through them, I have resorted in retrospective accounts of local youthworkers and youth themselves. The lack of ‘longitudinal’ data might hamper thereliability of interpretations considering the evolvement of interethnic ties. However,brief observation periods and singular interviews enabled to conduct a ‘broad’ data,covering various leisure settings and districts.
Because of the broadness of the data and its concentration on particular spaces,the main aim of the paper is neither to make systematic comparisons between sitesnor to investigate distinct features of local communities but to analyse the quality ofinterethnic ties in a more generalising manner. The focus of the analysis is onoverall patterns of micro-level interethnic interaction while many abnormalities and,for instance, manifold social, cultural, economical and historical stratifications areprobably omitted.
Consequently, in multi-sited research tradition, the common aim is to examine thecirculation of culturally and socially mediated interactional patterns in diffusetime-space (Marcus, 1995, p. 96). The researcher is constantly on the move whilesearching for relevant data and informants. Thus, the sites of the study are primarilysocial spaces (networks of young people), not corporeal places (leisure facilities)(cf. Hastrup & Olwig, 1997, p. 8). Ethnographic sites and interviews are not treatedin isolation with each other, or with respect to majority–minority interaction patterns.
Passing visits to ethnographic sites and brief encounters with interviewees do notenable the formation of trusting relationships with youth or even familiarising withall of them. In many youth club surroundings, there is a constant stream of youngpeople entering and exiting the place. It was thus impossible to discuss with everyyoung people about my research interests. Some of them probably did not evenrealise that they were under observation. Therefore, particular cautiousness isrequired when anonymising informants and their residential areas. Participation inthe interviews has been voluntary and if interviewees were under 15, permissionfrom their guardians was asked. Moreover, the approval of the youth workers andtheir supervisors has been requested before entering the sites.
Distant acquaintances instead of close friends
A: I’ve had Finnish friends but when you have problems no one wants to help you.
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[…]
Q: So you don’t have Finnish friends anymore?
A: They are people you just say hello.
Q: Acquaintances?
A: Yeah, acquaintances, no friends. [i6: male, 24 years, born in Kenya]
In spite of many research results in Finland reporting explicit exclusions in thecontext of the everyday lives of ethnic minority youth (e.g. Rastas, 2005;Souto, 2011), the data of this study depict a more comforting picture: all of the leisurespaces under scrutiny allow interethnic ties to exist.6 In a wide variety of leisurespaces, young people have a possibility to make interethnic contacts because of theshared physical space.
However, as the interview quotation above aptly denotes, the bulk of the tiesbetween ethnic minority and majority youth remains on the shallow level. Strongties in the form of closeness, trust and intimacy seem to be uncommon (cf. Kao &Joyner, 2004). For instance, while studying teenage girls in South London, Wulff(1995, p. 69) noticed that the girls tended to share the same ethnic background withtheir best friends in spite of having multi-ethnic peer circles. In my ethnographicdata, the absence of close friendships is also evident. The passage below is from ayouth club in a small town in Eastern Finland.
It’s seven o’clock, and the setting seems familiar: the regular Finnish crew lies on thecouches and plays videogames. Some of them are playing billiards. A couple of Afghanboys are playing table tennis in the gym. While I’m watching the game, two majorityboys enter the room and ask the Afghan boys, ‘Can we play?’ Neither of the majorityboys wants to challenge the winner of the previous game (as is usually the habit). Theywould obviously like to play together. A while ago, on the other hand, one of themajority boys, Teemu, played a game against one of the Afghan boys. As they played,Teemu’s friend Katja (a majority girl) watched the game while standing next to thetable – her body turned towards Teemu and away from Afghan boys. After the game,Katja and Teemu left the gym without further delay. (Field notes, autumn 2008)
The lack of close interethnic friendships was verified when interviewing majorityyouth during the fieldwork. In spite of the enduring contacts with the same minorityyouth, none of the majority interviewees (n = 7) claimed to have them as closefriends. Instead, all of them agreed that they have ethnic minority members as moredistant acquaintances. In some ethnic minority youths’ interview accounts, ‘Finnishyouth’ were depicted as aloof, sometimes prejudiced and already having a completefriendship circle. Thus, getting to know other ethnic minority youth (regardless oftheir national or linguistic background) was easier; shared experiences as outsidersin Finnish society and mutual understanding seemed to generate solidarity among‘foreigners’7 (cf. Vestel, 2004).
According to the ethnographic data, even relatively long-lasting leisureinteraction does not guarantee close friendships. There are some examples of ethnicminority and majority youth spending their free time even for years in the sameleisure space (and/or school) and still having relatively little contact. In oneethnographic site – a rural area in Eastern Finland – most of the interethnic ties
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remained rather distant even though ethnic minority and majority youth werespending three or more evenings each week at the same youth club. Young peoplein the club evidently knew each other by looks, usually greeted each other and hadsporadic interethnic conversations. However, more profound interaction did not takeplace. Moreover, only one interviewee of the five in the same locality claimed tohave close friends across ethnic boundaries.
Obviously, there were some closer interethnic friendships in the data as well. Ona general level, stronger ties occurred in the few urban and highly multi-ethnic dis-tricts in the data. In the districts where the proportion of ethnic minority populationis relatively high, interethnic interaction is often based on the more equal ground ofcommon interests.
More and more boys are coming to the youth club. After six o’clock, there are 15 ofthem. The bunch is pretty multiethnic: majority, African and Russian backgrounds. Itseems as if the ethnic minority youth present are either born in Finland or have livedhere for a long time: their language skills are fluent, and they are on top of street talkand youth cultural styles. […] Altogether, local youth seem to tolerate ethnicdifferences pretty well. It is hard to notice any group-based conflicts or even divisions.It appears as if the boys present share the same youth cultural (hip hop) and alsosocio-economical position. Most of them are probably coming from working classbackgrounds. The conversations are about street life, the local district, intoxicants andcertain sports. (Field notes, autumn 2010)
Like the above field note quotation from a ‘boys evening’ at a youth club in thecapital area illustrates, interethnic ties in urban multi-ethnic districts tended to becloser due to equality of interactional patterns, commitments to the local district(and youth club), a deprived position in the socio-economic hierarchy and commonyouth cultural styles. Hip hop as a current ‘black’ street culture seemed to unite par-ticularly boys irrespective of ethnic boundaries (cf. Back, 1996; Hewitt, 1986).Moreover, some authors have claimed that above kind of sociability is free from the‘middle class’ codes where the rules of making contact are elaborate and the risk ofmaking awkward mistakes high (Fangen, 2010; Goffman, 1967). During the eveninginteraction patterns were rather straightforward: with youth cultural resources andpersonal courage, local peer community seemed to be quite attainable.
Even though stronger interethnic ties were more frequent in urban multi-ethnicenvironments, they also existed in less populated and ethnically more homogenousareas. In the light of the data, ethnic minority youth both willing and able (due tolength of residence, fluent language skills and suitable outfits) to assimilate into localyouth cultural milieu very likely possess close majority friends. Moreover, and irre-spective of place, descendants of Finnish and other nationality relationships werecapable of bonding with either majority or minority youth – and possibly functionas links between ethnic niches (Harinen et al., 2012).
Overall, weak ties between ethnic majority and minority youth were far morecommon than strong ones. Furthermore, and in congruence with some of the quanti-tative studies, the extensiveness and intensity of interethnic ties seem not to showany significant changes over time. It has been indicated that interethnic contactsremain on a stable level after an increase during the first post-migration years(Martinovic, Tubergen, & Maas, 2011, p. 483). It is thus important to analysewhether the abundant number of weak ties helps ethnic minority youth ‘in gettingahead’, giving access to new leisure settings.
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The fragility of weak ties
In the following, the quality of interethnic weak ties will be analysed. It will beclaimed that weak ties are literally weak by deciphering the most commonmicro-level elements contributing to the deterioration of these ties. These elementsare racialising narratives, conflicts aggravating intergroup juxtapositions and‘considerate aloofness’.
Ethnic minority youth are surrounded by narratives in which the national andracial ordering of the world is constantly reproduced (e.g. Phoenix, 2005). In thedata, these narratives were occasionally so self-evident that they were harnessedunwittingly. At other moments, available narratives were harnessed moreconsciously when interethnic conflicts occurred. Either way, racialising narrativesefficiently dissolved incipient interethnic ties by distancing ethnic minority andmajority groups and resetting the ethnically determined positions of youth. Thebelow example is from a youth club in Northern Finland. During the evening, amulti-ethnic group of youth were watching a DVD on the Hungarian food culture.
On the screen, we can see many traditional Hungarian delicacies. Suddenly there is aslip of the tongue by one of the youth workers when she notes that one of the delica-cies reminded her of ‘negro’s kisses’ (a Finnish chocolate sweet later renamed as‘kisses’). All the youth are concentrating on the DVD, so they are not sure what theyouth worker said. Later, the ethnic minority youth gather together, constantly specu-lating about the previous words: ‘What did she say?’ they whisper to each other. Fromtheir facial expressions, the situation begins to be awkward even to majority youth onthe other side of the room. Everybody seems to be aware of the bearing of the n-word.After pretending that she did not hear any of the speculations of ethnic minority youth,the youth worker confesses, ‘Okay, I admit it. I said it, but that was what we used tocall them’. This does not help to solve this ‘silent’ conflict which has segregated thetwo groups at least for the time being. (Field notes, spring 2010)
During the fieldwork, harnessing these types of racialising narratives at leasttemporarily reinforced demarcations between ethnic minority and majority youthand probably undermined some of the already made interethnic ties. The exploita-tion of these narratives caused conflicts that compressed ethnic minority youthtogether – against majority representatives. As a result, even young people, whowere usually able to avoid falling into the categories of ‘foreigner’ or ‘Finnish’ (e.g.descendants of interethnic relationships), were put on one of these sides. Apparentexternal features forced these ‘in-between’ youths to the side of ethnic minoritiesirrespective of their own will. For instance, even though a brown-skinned girl ofFinnish and other nationality parents in the youth theatre group tried to claim that‘I’m not actually black’ when racial stereotypes were provoked (‘dangerousness’ ofblack people was critically discussed), she eventually allied with other ethnic minor-ity youth (all boys) in the group. During the rest of the session, previously obscurephysical (distance) and emotional (little interaction) boundaries were established.Racialising narratives seemed to invoke a fixed category of Finnishness whichexcluded any ethnic diversity. At the same time, majority youth were denied accessto minority groups as well. The above circumstances created closed spheres whereinthe experience of otherness became a unifying factor (cf. Back, 1996, pp. 133–134).
Racialising narratives caused interethnic conflicts in which there is scarcelyroom for ambivalence between binary positions (see Simmel, 1955, p. 92). In somecases, interethnic conflicts were manifested in the discursive construction of an
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‘international match’. In such a match, there is no room for impartiality. This typeof discursive reservoir was harnessed particularly in conflict situations where youthleisure space was shared by two distinctive and nationally separable groups. Forexample, during fieldwork in one youth club, there was a dispute between a majorityboy and a boy born in Russia. The disagreement was solved in an ‘internationalbilliards match’ which, at the moment at least, made the distinction between‘Finnish’ and ‘Russian’ youth visible and solidified the nationalistic demarcation.
The ever-present threat of racialising narratives and interethnic conflicts, togetherwith an unawareness of local interactional codes, may cause particularly immigrantyouth to exhibit suspicious attitudes towards majority people. In the data, this meantthat even a minor friction can turn into a ties-breaking conflict due to misinterpreta-tions. For example, the shyness and quietness of majority youth may be interpretedas ignorance (cf. Fangen, 2010, p. 149) or misunderstandings as racism. The lattertype of wariness became apparent when a boy born in Somalia threatened to quitthe youth theatre group and refused to answer his phone when youth workers triedto reach him. The boy accused the youth workers (and other youth) of racismbecause they could not offer him a ride home the week before. As a result, he didnot participate in practises for approximately two weeks which made the preparationof the plays more difficult. This in turn irritated some of the majority youth whocould not understand the behaviour of the boy.
In addition to somewhat explicit conflicts, more implicit mechanisms alsoseemed to make interethnic weak ties brittle. In the data, ‘considerate aloofness’ is away to keep distance in interethnic relationships without apparent exclusions orconflicts. Small verbal or bodily actions (or non-actions) function as hints of engage-ment or disengagement. Considerate aloofness tends to preserve the vacillatingboundaries between ethnic minority and majority youth. The decisive collapse offamiliar boundaries would expose young people to unpredictable and ambivalentcircumstances (cf. Goffman, 1959). Thus, excessive ‘disturbance’ of the youngpeople representing different ethnic category was considerately avoided in the data.In some settings, as in the youth club below, it seemed as if there were an implicit‘set of rules’ (Barth, 1996, p. 301) preserving ethnic boundaries.
For the time being, the lounge is (regular crew has not arrived yet) in possession of theAfghan boys. Tariq sits on the couch and begins to play a videogame which he has notdone in previous evenings. He obviously enjoys playing the game. At some point twoFinnish boys come in and start to watch Tariq’s game from a distance. They stand fewminutes next to the sofa. At the end of Tariq’s first game they ask him: ‘can we play?’There is no verbal answer. Instead, Tariq stands up and tags along with the otherAfghan boys in the other side of the room. There is nothing dramatic in the scene – nomocking, smirks or other gestures. Activities continue like they have been since I camehere: Afghan and Finnish boys spend time in their own groups. (Field notes, autumn2008)
In the data, considerate aloofness seems to be connected to avoidance of interac-tional failures and ‘codes of honour’ (Simmel, 1955, p. 163). Majority youth inparticular were not willing to expose themselves to the risk of embarrassmentin front of minority youth. This is illustrated through the words of a boy born inAngola who was interviewed during fieldwork: ‘There are some Finnish and someforeigners who are willing to get to know each other but many of them do not wantto show it’. It has been asserted that maintaining one’s independence and pride
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hampers the consolidation of weak ties because ‘costs of failed transactions in such(weak) ties is much higher’ (Blockland & Noordhoff, 2008, p. 119). In the data, thismeant that young people commonly searched for close friends when in need ofsupport or just company.
From the perspective of considerate aloofness, a crucial factor in the data is thepresence of assumed cultural differences between ethnic categories. At some points,constructed cultural differences created almost insurmountable barriers in interethnicgroup relations. For majority youth, approaching ethnic minorities may occasionallyseem too complicated in an atmosphere which highlights fixed cultural orders andexotic customs of ‘others’. Fangen (2010, p. 149) notes, ‘In order not to do anythingwrong, he chooses not to recognise the other at all, which in effect might be morehurtful for the other than if he had chosen the wrong greeting ritual’. In the inter-view with two girls born in Afghanistan, assumed cultural differences hinderedinterethnic interactions in the following way:
Q: Do you think that this shyness (of majority youth) is typical?
A: Yes. When I was at elementary school all schoolmates, particularly boys were like… Because I was foreigner and also a Muslim … They had no guts to come and talkto me because I was wearing scarf. They were thinking that I am not allowed to talk toboys.
Q: So you think that they were somehow reserved?
A: Yes. And some were so shy that they didn’t talk at all.
Assumed cultural differences may occasionally turn into strict categorisations whichreinforce ethnic boundaries and make interethnic interaction appear awkward. In theethnographic data, fixed views over ethnic minorities were sometimes turned intobad reputations and rumours which effortlessly tore down embryonic interethnic ties.The following passage quotes an interview with three majority girls.
With those (migrant) boys you are a bit distant because […] you hear all kinds of stuffabout them. So it kind of affects our relationship. […] It is about asking girls’ phonenumbers at bus stop and these kinds of things. So this makes the gap between uswider, if you can say so.
What is common for all the above described elements hampering interethnic weakties is that they are rarely discussed within multi-ethnic groups. Racist discourses,past conflicts and cultural differences are either not addressed at all or are discussedwith emotionally intimate and reciprocal groups, which are often ethnically deter-mined. Therefore, the elements of ethnic demarcations are not easily unwound.
Crumbling bridges
Many interethnic weak ties seem to be too fragile to function as bridges accumulat-ing the leisure resources of ethnic minority youth. The constant disintegration ofinterethnic ties might partly explain why young people in the data resort to closefriends when looking for advise, support or just company – and these friends tend toshare the same position in ethnic categorisations.
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In the following, three ethnographic examples are briefly presented to illustratethe crumbling quality of interethnic bridges. As stated in the first interview quotationof the paper, many of the interethnic weak ties in the data are between people who‘just say hello’. During these types of ephemeral transactions no information orsupport are transmitted; ‘no one wants to help you’, as the interviewee dismallypoints out.
The first example is a youth club in which, according to a local youth worker,the same ethnic majority youth and minority boys had visited for several years. Inspite of the shared leisure surroundings, little interaction took place and little infor-mation was transmitted. Strikingly, a boy born in Afghanistan (a regular visitor ofthe club) did not know the names of the regular ethnic majority visitors and claimednot to have made any new friends in the youth club premises. In a less drastic sense,according to my observations, all of the interethnic communication that took placeconcerned activities in the club (e.g. taking turns in different games), not leisure (orother issues) outside the house. Moreover, Afghan boys entered and left the clubeither alone or as a group and stated in the interview that sociability with ethnicmajority youth outside youth club premises is scant.
The second example is the youth theatre group. In spite of the common goals(preparing plays) and most of the times good spirits, ethnic boundaries were main-tained through conflicts and mutual suspicions. Moreover, since most of the ethnicminority youth in the group were boys and many of the majority youth were girls,inter-gender conflicts intertwined with interethnic ones. The girls accused the boysof not taking the practise sessions and actual shows seriously enough. Conflicts anddiffering stances evidently had repercussions when considering interethnic bridging:emotional and trusting ties were not formed. As in the youth club above, most ofthe interethnic interaction focused on the issues and activities at hand. According tomy observations and four participants of the group interviewed (three majority girlsand one minority boy), no more than random encounters took place outside thecommon pursuit.
The final example is the targeted multi-ethnic group of seven young peoplewhose task was to plan a live music event for local youth. The group included twogirls born in Afghanistan and five majority young people (four boys and one girl).During the planning process, which consisted of six meetings, youth started toformulate at least brittle interethnic ties. These ties grew stronger towards the end ofthe process, and the initial aloofness was partly abandoned: activities often resultedin common laughter and friendly picking. Moreover, and as an exception to previouscases, the migrant girls stated that due to the project they became more aware of thetown’s overall leisure options. However, approximately three months after the event,when the girls were interviewed, they denied having maintained any relations withthe majority youth in the group. As in the case of the youth club, the girls haddifficulties in remembering the names of the majority youth. One of the girls statedthat she had seen the majority girl from the group by accident in the street but theyjust greeted each other.
In all of the above presented cases, interethnic ties were confined to one specificgroup and included little exchange of information considering other recreationaloptions. None of these cases provided ethnic minority youth majority friends withwhom to enter new leisure settings (cf. Spaaij, 2012, p. 1529; Walseth, 2008). Manyof the interethnic weak ties thus tended to fade off simultaneously with ceasedmulti-ethnic group activities. From a more longitudinal and structural perspective,
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Hewitt (1986) noted that multi-ethnic peer groups of youth tended to disband duringtransitions towards adulthood. Hewitt explained this divergence (of blacks andwhites) by scant number of interethnic marriages, distinct leisure tastes and differinglabour market positions. In addition to rather limited interethnic sociability, theethnic minority youth in the above cases had initially entered the leisure settingsbecause of the information shared by local youth workers or other officials, not withthe help of interethnic peer ties. In the latter case, the project evidently increased theleisure resources of the two girls but this was more due to the knowledge providedby the project itself and youth workers who administered it.
Above examples do not entitle one to say that interethnic weak ties do notfunction as leisure bridges in any circumstances or that interethnic acquaintancesconfined in one setting could not eventually develop into all-encompassing friend-ships. However, strong interethnic ties in the form of intimate relationships seemedto be more important channel in accruing new leisure contacts. In both ethnographicand interview data, interethnic love affairs opened up new networks through thepartners’ affiliates. According to Martinovic et al. (2009, p. 315), ‘having a nativepartner gives immigrants access to the social network of their partner, which consistsmainly of native friends and family. These, as third parties, encourage the immi-grant’s further interaction with natives’. The maintenance of these types of networksmay nonetheless be dependent on the duration of the initial bond: ‘… earlier when Ihad a Finnish boyfriend I had also more Finnish pals’ [i26: female, 24 years, bornin Russia].
In addition to intimate relationships, interethnic bridging occurs also among‘in-between’ youth who are able to mingle in different peer circles regardless ofethnic boundaries. These youth include the descendants of majority–minorityrelationships, and some youth who either have a lengthy residential history or wereborn in Finland. Moreover, interethnic bridging is probably more common in urbanmulti-ethnic districts. However, in most of these cases, interethnic leisure bridgesare created and maintained through reciprocal trust and emotional closeness – thatis, through features of strong ties.
Conclusion: keeping distance
The data clearly show that strong interethnic ties are rare, while weaker ties moreabundant in number remain quite fragile. In congruence with research results in thefield of sports, the maintenance of interethnic weak ties is dependent on particulargroup activities (e.g. Spaaij, 2012, p. 1536). These types of ties tend to break-upafter the groups organised by youth work are terminated. Weak ties may thus remaintoo weak to create leisure resources – they are not parallel to bridging ties(Blockland & Noordhoff, 2008, p. 112).
The idea of bridging weak ties is probably more applicable in formal settingslike the labour market and institutionally or professionally mediated interactions(cf. Burt, 2005). It has been claimed that professional status generates trusteffortlessly in comparison with interactions without formal roles (Leonard &Onyx, 2003). In school contexts, it has been indicated that interethnic friendshipsare formed in classroom rather than during informal campus events (Gareis,1995). In this data, professional youth workers seem to be an important channelof leisure resources, particularly to immigrant youth (cf. Phillips, 2010). More-over, the few interethnic strong ties in the data seem to have bridging qualities in
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the form of opening up new networks and accesses to various leisure settings.The stronger the tie, the more bridges and leisure resources it seems to build(cf. Holland, Reynolds, & Weller, 2007). Therefore, instead of a mere critique ofthe idea of bridging weak ties, future research in leisure contexts needs to focuson conceptual elaboration.
Finally, popular speculations about the possibilities of leisure in enhancingintergroup cohesion and social capital of ethnic minority youth seem quite optimis-tic. Building on the existing literature on youth leisure, this paper indicates thatmulti-ethnic peer groups are not an automatic solution to the problem of social inte-gration of ethnic minority youth. There seems to be many social boundaries andhierarchies hampering the accumulation of ethnic minority youths’ recreationalresources and interethnic dialogue during leisure. It might even be that in compari-son with formally mediated spheres of transactions, leisure interaction is based moreon ethnic categorisations and boundary maintaining mechanisms. Minority statusesmight be ‘master categories’ during leisure encounters while in formal spherespeople are primarily students, clients and workers (among others). In the terms ofclassical sociology, it could be claimed that the interaction through formal roles isbased on organic solidarity while the lack of these roles leads to more mechanisticsolidarities.
Notes1. In this paper, the notion of ethnic minority refers to foreign born people and their descen-
dants. The boundaries between ethnic majority and minorities are more or less artificialand porous. These boundaries and their (re)formulations are the essential objects of thisstudy, not the minority and majority groups as such (Barth, 1996).
2. Interviewees were 13–19 years old and consisted of eight girls and five boys. Six of themhad migrated fairly recently (within 2–4 years) to Finland, and the rest were majorityyouth.
3. Interviews of ethnic minority youth were conducted as part of the project Multiculturalyoung people, leisure and civic participation (2004–2007) coordinated by Finnish YouthResearch Network.
4. Municipal youth work reaches approximately one quarter of the young population inFinland (Myllyniemi, 2008, p. 78) while the number of ethnic minority youth reachedseems to be significantly lower (see Harinen et al., 2012, p. 182). A wide variety ofNGOs (often sport clubs), for their part, have approximately 45% of youth as theirmembers (Myllyniemi, 2009, p. 35). Contrary to municipal youth work, some NGOsseem to reach ethnic minority youth little better (Harinen et al., 2012, p. 183). Becauseof the lack of nationally representative data in the case of ethnic minority youth andsome variance between questionnaires and age cohorts, these statistics are not directlycomparable.
5. Reception centres for asylum seekers are traditionally located in non-urban areas, andrural municipalities in particular have been encouraged (with economic incentives) toaccommodate refugees. After settling down, migrant people tend to move to the fewlarge cities in Southern and Western Finland.
6. This does not mean, however, that explicit racism has ceased to exist in Finland. It seemsquite obvious that voluntarily gathering multi-ethnic groups are not the most likelyspaces where severe racism can be observed.
7. ‘Foreigners’ is often a positive self-definition of immigrant youth. The term works as acounterforce against the rather assimilative and, at the same time, exclusive notion of‘Finnishness’. When using the word ‘foreigners’, youth refer to open-minded personsand display solidarity regardless of national and cultural boundaries.
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Notes on contributorAntti Kivijärvi is a PhD candidate in the University of Eastern Finland. His dissertationfocuses on interethnic peer affiliations of youth in Finland. He has been working as aresearcher in University of Joensuu, Finnish Youth Research Network and most recently, inUniversity of Eastern Finland. His research interests have included interethnic affiliations,youth studies, leisure, racism and youth work.
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