Transnational and National Belongings: Multiple Identities of Intermarried Finns and Americans in Finland and the U.S., 1950s-Present

During the 20th century, both Europe and the U.S. implemented immigration legislation that restricted labor migration while providing for family unification. Simultaneously, there was a dramatic rise in the number of international marriages, accompanied by ever-increasing numbers of people moving and an accelerating speed of transatlantic communication. While family ties provide the main means of entry into many countries, we know very little about international marriages or the families they form. Furthermore, well-educated persons are now a very significant component of international migrants. Yet we know almost nothing about elite migrants and their migration decisions. The research has suffered from ‘methodological individualism’: “The international migrant remains the single person, usually assumed to be a male, disembodied and disembedded from contexts such as familial or household relationships or the wider society in which he lives” (Eleanor Kofman, 2000: 53). 

Using marriages between Finns and Americans in Finland and the U.S. as a case study, my paper explores marriage and family life among intermarried, white, professional migrants. It examines the interplay of integration and transnationalism, underlining the insufficiency of ‘methodological individualism’ when studying the lives of skilled migrants. The study argues that a migrant’s simultaneous engagement in their country of origin and in the country in which they currently live highlights the weakness of treating integration and transnationalism as if they were dichotomous categories. The study also shows how a migrant’s life may involve not only multiple migrations in different roles and for different reasons but also multiple, simultaneous identifications in transnational and national spaces. Furthermore, the privileged status of Finns in the U.S. and Americans in Finland enhances their possibilities to express both national and transnational belonging. The study demonstrates that there are periods during a migrant’s ‘transnational life-cycle’ when they seem more transnational and others when they seem more incorporated.