Studying Finnish Feels Bad Sometimes: A Conversation About Affects of Migrant Language Learning in Finland

Julkaistu 26.11.2025 | Kirjoittaneet: Dash Che ja niko wearden

Dash: All right, so niko, tell me about yourself and also why are you interested in this topic?

niko: Yeah, let's go. Okay. So well, I happen to be a migrant, and I live in Finland. I work in the field of performance and culture. I've been here mostly as an international student, and I want to stay here. I'm British. I lived in Finland before Brexit also and then I was away for many years, and I've come back, so I have this slightly weird and unique experience of knowing what it's like to live in Finland as a person with an EU passport, and also somebody without an EU passport. Now I live in Finland on a residence permit. I've been thinking a lot about how that's affected my migrant experience here and how it feels to study Finnish, which is our topic.

I've been studying Finnish all of the time that I've lived in Finland, but with varying degrees of intensity. I think it's felt good and bad at different times and recently it's been feeling worse. I think it feels bad because of the rise of the far right in Finland and this right-wing government and fascist immigration policies and being in classrooms with people who are also suffering because of all of that. I also think that we need to talk about it feeling bad in order to make it feel better. I think we should also talk about the realities that studying Finnish is often kind of necessary because migrants need employment, citizenship, and so on. In the majority of fields in this country it is very difficult to get a job without knowing Finnish, and it’s a requirement that we pass the YKI test – a language proficiency exam – if we want to get citizenship. Now Finland is also talking about introducing language requirements for permanent residence permits too. Sometimes these don’t motivate you to study. I've also been thinking about ways to hold the truth that these intense practical needs are there and that learning often feels ambivalent, but maybe it can also be joyful. What are those ways?

Yeah, that's a little bit about my relationship to this topic and me. Do you want to share something?

Dash: My name is Dash. I'm also a performance artist. We actually studied in the same program. That's where we met, when you came before Brexit, with your EU passport! Yes, for me, it was constant. I mean, I have never had an EU passport. I'm a migrant from Russia who lived in the United States for quite a long time. So, I do have the privilege of an American passport, which allowed me to come to Europe in the first place without a visa, but then to stay in Europe, I needed to get a visa; a student one, and now I have a work one. I've been studying Finnish on and off, dropping it because it felt impossibly overwhelming with being a migrant in Finland, having to have jobs and pay university tuition as a non-EU student. Also, once I dropped studying Finnish for a few years when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. I was in classes with many Russian speaking students then while having no idea what their political views were. That made me very unsafe as the person who has a clear anti-Russian government and anti-war position. At that time everything felt very raw and emotional. And then I came back to Finnish. I've been again somewhat intensively learning it for a year. I got to level B1. I haven't passed the Yki test, which I would like to pass, to apply for Finnish citizenship. It's very precarious to have a work visa that has an expiration date as well as requires specific income and such. And now there is a new racist law that practically bans the immigrants from applying for Finnish welfare, which makes my living here even more precarious. I get discouraged often. I get really upset by the language study materials that are provided, by the kind of tone that we are being taught with - quite patronising and conventional tone. Really outdated and narrow way of representing Finland and immigrants living here.

niko: Yeah, that resonates. And of course, our experiences are also different, but it is so important to hear say this out loud.

You've also been making performances about this topic. For me watching those and also watching them with other migrant language learners who are my friends has really revealed how much affect there is amongst adult Finnish language learners around this conversation.

On this course at the University of the Arts called Learn Finnish through Arts, I've been facilitating workshops for migrant language learners where we have been making kind of access riders for Finnish studies. An access rider is a document that usually looks like a list of needs. It is often used by disabled people in workplace or study environments. It might say things like, ‘I need materials provided in large font text’, for example. In the workshops we have been thinking about our needs around learning Finnish. It's so much to do with affect and how it feels bodily to be in the classroom. Since this can be so much produced by socio-political conditions, writing needs down as concrete demands isn’t easy. Then I thought that because it's also an arts course the riders could have a creative format; people could also write needs down like, ‘I need Finnish citizenship’. Of course that's not something that a language teacher can provide, but in some ways, it is something that these language teachers are supporting their students with. What if teachers would really be considering the affect of that? Some do, I've definitely had that experience. But I've also had this experience of feeling that the teacher is going to teach the class regardless of who's in the room. Even if there would be nobody in the room, they would still be just powering through; individual experiences and affects are completely irrelevant to them. That's at least one kind of Finnish teaching style I have experienced a lot.

Dash: I'm really sad I missed your workshops. A while ago I participated in the group for queer Finnish learners that you, niko, started. It was great and I would love for that to come back. I know it's, of course, the resources question, how to keep something going. But it's been supportive just to be in a group of queer people, to know that that is available. To just share basic ground that doesn't need to be explained, and there would be no assumptions. I have had Finnish classes when we were speaking about our families, and I mentioned that my partner is Finnish. Then someone in the class was like ‘oh, so you found a Finnish man’. Why is there an assumption that I would have a Finnish man? Why would someone need to assume those things about me?

I think that if different identities and subjectivities were normalized in the class it would create a base for many more students to feel comfortable. Unfortunately, that's been a rare experience. It is often a teacher who upholds the space for assumptions. Or doesn't remove the assumptions, doesn't want to dismantle them. And then they just stay in the air. There are so many assumptions in our study materials. They suggest such normative scenarios that it's so easy to feel like a freak. Like, ‘wow, like a lot of those things do not represent my life as a queer freelance artist immigrant in Finland at all’. But whose life do they represent?

niko: Yeah, I mean, totally. I’d like to be asked ‘what is your life like?’, ‘what are your needs and desires?’, and like, ‘what would you like to talk about in Finnish?’ Like, this question of desire, it just feels so missing.

And in those textbooks, it’s absurd and kind of outrageous; the model immigrant discourse, normative genders, nuclear families etc. And when that goes unchallenged, also by the teacher, then it just feels like your, your whole being is erased. You feel so isolated and alone.

What I realized from watching your performance is that, of course, I'm probably not the only queer or trans person in the room. I'm probably not the only person feeling these things. And people also feel this way because of other aspects of their identity that are not represented. Maybe even most of the people in the room are feeling those things, but you still feel isolated because you don't feel like you have space to talk about it. You feel like you should be this kind of model migrant that the book presents.

And yeah, having this like queer language circle has been important because it tries to address this. We need to be able to use this language to talk about our lives and things that are relevant to our lives. And the group also supported language learning because all migrants have a practical reason to learn Finnish. And it's especially intense if it's connected to being able to stay here legally.

At Uniarts I've been lucky that the language teacher there is enthusiastic about teaching Finnish in relation to the arts – teaching vocabulary that's relevant to our lives. For example, we have had studio visits with students from Kuvataideakatemia. We looked at what they were doing and talked about their artwork and asked questions in Finnish. It was nice. After I completed all the Uniarts courses I needed to take courses elsewhere and that has been such a different experience. I felt good in the Uniarts courses but going elsewhere I also realised that I do need to be around people who are not just other international art students. That's a very specific demographic and it's actually meaningful to be in a classroom with very different kinds of people. But if our differences are not held, it can very fast become very unsafe.

Dash: True, yeah.

And maybe speaking a bit about my performance, since you mentioned it. I made a performance called Kaikki Suomen Mestarit, out of frustration being a queer trans student studying with those Finnish books that have zero queer representation. And of course, there are other problems in those study materials, like there is no conversation on disability and books have racist assumptions. But I chose queerness as the focus. Actually, I felt erased in those classes. Like I was back in the closet such as in my birth country where being queer is a crime. I make performances about issues that bother me, political and social issues. And this performance was based around the book. It held a kind of fantastic sci-fi idea of a queer agent who entered the book in order to convert Pedro and Hanna, the main characters of the book, into queerness. So the performance started in a very absurd and comical way and then developed into more serious and poetic where I ponder what does this erasure of queerness do in terms of studying the language?

niko: I was gonna ask, because you said that your Finnish teacher came to watch the performance, and you've also been performing this for Finnish high school students. I'm interested, what is that like? I think it's so important that Finnish people understand what migrants need to go through. I'm interested in what the reaction has been like from Finnish people and also about your motivation to put this work in front of Finnish speaking, native Finnish audiences.

Dash: Yeah, exactly as you say. I think it's very important to uncover this very hidden thing – the struggle that we, the immigrants in Finland, have to go through. When I came to Finland to study at Uniarts in 2019 there was barely any conversation that non-EU students have to pay fees. Maybe someone knew about it. But whenever I would tell a Finnish student they would be surprised and say, ‘oh, this is unfair’, or ‘this is strange’. So it felt like there was no transparency of how differently lives were arranged, even amongst people who spend so much time next to each other. I think it goes similarly with learning the language as a migrant, having these intensive classes, studying with these outdated language books, maybe having gender dysphoria while being in those classes – no one is aware. For instance, people say, ‘oh, you have such great Finnish’ but they have no idea what you have been going through in order to have even that level of Finnish and what more you have to go through.

So for me, it was exactly about introducing people, especially Finnish ones, to another perspective. To share – in a funny, creative and playful way – the reality of how we, migrants, are taught the language and that this teaching is not neutral – it often has unexamined nationalist, normative agendas.

So for me, it was important as a starter of the conversation. What kind of stories are used to learn the language? Whose stories are told and whose are erased? When I showed Kaikki Suomen Mestarit to high school students at a festival in Muhos, a town near Oulu, there was a discussion after. Teenagers and the school headmaster both shared that seeing something like this, that pointed to different ways of being, was important to them. My desire for the future is to bring this performance into more classrooms. I also would love to show it to teachers and study materials makers, because I think representation, making materials more up to date, and taking a more intersectional feminist approach is very important. This should be part of the conversation when making a teaching methodology.

niko: Yeah absolutely, it's so important that you're doing this work.

Maybe I’ve been focusing more on having this conversation directly with migrants and thinking about what we need. But then also in the workshops at Uniarts we did make a kind of collective access rider which we gave to the Uniarts Finnish teachers. I was hoping to start a conversation about language pedagogy from the point of view of the student. And I think that that's really the key. We need to get teachers to start listening to their students and think, ‘what do the students want and need?’.

Dash: Can you speak a bit more about the rider? What was in there? So curious.

niko: Yeah. People had very different responses. One thing that came up was just practically the cost of the books. Oftentimes you are expected to buy Suomen Mestari or Oma Suomi or whatever it is, and it's compulsory for the course and sometimes the book actually costs more than the course. So, students wished for basic transparency about that. Also, transparency about the language learning style and things like that. But then we also talked quite a lot about the sociopolitical conditions as we've been talking now. Asking, what if there was more space for talking about and naming the difficult or even painful aspects of studying?

I remember in the queer language circle, when we were there together, we talked quite a bit about the Migri. To have those conversations in Finnish, to get activated, to get angry in Finnish – I’d just never talked about that stuff in Finnish before, yet it's so connected to learning Finnish. So that was something that we put in the rider – more space for emotions and affects, including negative ones.

Dash: I love that. Yeah, this is really great. To be angry in Finnish, yes. I think sometimes that the migrant is not allowed to be angry in the native language of the country they move to, they are just supposed to be grateful.

niko: Yep. Exactly, exactly.

And then also stuff like trans inclusive and queer inclusive language. I remember one time I was in a Finnish course with a teacher I really liked at Aalto Open University. I told her that I was nervous about family words. It was a beginner course. And she said, ‘I'll make sure I include the gender-neutral words’. And then she actually taught me this English neologism ‘nibbling’, it's like a gender-neutral word for niece or nephew. So, I actually learned a new queer English word from her. And then she translated it like ‘sisaruksen lapsi’, or like ‘sibling’s child’. That little gesture, it made so much space for me to feel like I could talk about my life. And after that course I went to the next course at Aalto Open University and I just dived headfirst back in the closet because the teacher of that course didn't make this tiny bit of space for queer identities. And when the textbook is how we've described, it's such a big gesture actually. It tells students with different identities that they're welcome in the room.

So in terms of the rider, it included this more abstract stuff to do with holding affect and feeling, but then it also included these really simple and concrete things like; ‘please teach us gender neutral words’.

Dash: Yeah, I agree. We just went over family words in my current Finnish course. Very detailed ones: ‘son in law, mother-in-law’. And again, I felt confused because they're so gender specific. And the teacher did not think of introducing some alternatives. They did not know. You know, if it's not in your reality, how would you even imagine thinking about it?

niko: Yeah. And I think that the teachers could also learn some new Finnish words as well because all languages, including Finnish, are always evolving. The Finnish teacher at Uniarts was interested to hear about our queer language circle and then she asked me if I know the Finnish word for non-binary? Sometimes we might know culturally specific Finnish words that our teachers don’t because we learn them from our Finnish speaking friends who share our identities. Like the term access rider. It’s a very specific term that usually relates to disability cultures. I've been asking disabled Finnish friends how to translate it. They had some conflicting suggestions, but the consensus seemed to be that ‘saavutettavuusraideri’ is perhaps the best. Finnish teachers may well not know Finnish language terms that do not relate to their reality; if they're not queer, they're not disabled, or they don't inhabit specific identities. We might know terms that they don’t. I wonder what it would be like if teachers would also be open to learning some Finnish from their students as well.

Dash: Yeah, and I think another thing that would be so helpful is to bring politics in too. Of course, I understand why the teachers try to stay away from politics, but I wish they didn't. I wish teachers could speak about genocide. I wish teachers could use the word feminism, etc. I wish teachers would speak about colonialism and use that word, so we get this language. In the Suomen Mestari 4 study book we are learning about Finnish male architects. Why do I need to learn that but why can't I learn about colonialism and repression of Sámi people or about Sámi culture?

niko: Yeah, absolutely. And also, we are sometimes encouraged to read these like selkouutiset YLE articles and stuff. And they are also often about things that are happening, like world events e.g. war or natural disasters or political repression. Things that are maybe directly happening in the home countries of some students in the classroom. But we're just asked to read and kind of understand what the Finnish words in the article mean on this really superficial level and not critically or personally engage with the context of the text. And how is that really supporting my everyday use of the language? I would never read a news article in English and start a conversation with someone about understanding the very superficial level of semantics. I would always talk about emotion and opinion and affect. So, let's do that in Finnish too, you know.

Dash: And I wonder if it reflects Finnish culture. And of course, in some way this is a stereotype. But in general, Finland has a conflict avoidant culture, and it starts in the language-learning class. So you're being indoctrinated, not just with a propaganda of normativity, but also with how one needs to be presenting emotionally; always composed, always a bit reserved, not showing anger, avoiding conflict. Once you graduate from these classes, you know, you learn how to behave. For example, you're not going to be an angry killjoy immigrant who has an opinion, who has feelings, and who can disagree and call someone out.

niko: yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really interesting to think about what this language could become if we were really encouraged to be ourselves whilst using it.

I've also been thinking so much about the dramaturgy program at the school that we both attended, The Theatre Academy, the Finnish playwriting and dramaturgy program. What if they would admit somebody who had learned Finnish as an adult? I think about creative writing programs in the UK and they're full of people whose mother tongue is not English. And they write in English in a very specific way because of that. The language is theirs in such a different way to somebody who, like me, is a native speaker and grew up in an English-speaking environment. Their way of using English is different and creative and full of potential. I'm waiting for the day that that programme admits somebody who has learned Finnish as an adult. I'll be motivated to learn Finnish so that I can watch their plays, because I just feel like there is so much potential for migrants to be creative with the Finnish language.

I'm a grammar nerd. I'm super excited by Finnish grammar and its potentialities and what it does. I think that is the way I've managed to learn as much Finnish as I have; by being excited about the grammar. I would be interested in what adult Finnish learners can do with the grammar that they can only do because they've learned Finnish very differently from people who learned it as children.

Dash: I also think about how to learn Finnish besides taking classes. I've been watching and listening to YLE Areena, a Finnish public TV and radio station, and reading texts in so-called selkosuomi – easy Finnish. But we're in a library right now, and there is a shelf with selkosuomi books. I've read at least half of them by now. I'm quite critical of many, and some of them I couldn't read at all because of their politics. Some were quite sexist or written in a language that felt like the immigrants are not seen as intelligent or creative people.

niko: Yeah, I recognise this too.

Okay, so maybe not to wrap this conversation up with too, like, toxic positivity or something, but I'm just wondering about the moments when – when does learning or speaking or like being in Finnish, when does it not feel so terrible? If it does at all.

I think for me, I have noticed a big thing is speaking Finnish with children who don't know English, people's grandmas and granddads and grandparents who don't know English, that that can be good. But I think actually the biggest thing is to speak Finnish with other migrants, where we don't have English as a mutual language, and then we have to use Finnish, and we can both be very bad at Finnish, but it's our only mutual language, so we have to use it. And for me, there's some real joy that happens in knowing that I can connect with somebody through the language. And that is really where I feel the best about speaking and learning Finnish. So yeah, I'm wondering for you. For example, was it fun to make Kaikki Suomen Mestarit?

Dash: Yeah, absolutely. It was fun to channel my frustration into performance making.

But yeah, random encounters in Finnish bring me joy. Like the other day, I was at the bus stop and some Finnish grandma approached me and asked if my backpack was nice. And I was like, ‘it's a bit, erm, worn out. I've had it for the last 10 years’. But she's like, ‘but is it nice?’. I’m like ‘yeah, it used to be nice’. And she was like, ‘where did you buy it?’. I said ‘I bought it in the United States’. And she was, ‘oh, I need a nice backpack, because I'm finally going to Stockholm’. That was so great. And then we continued having this small talk until the bus arrived.

And another time, which was fun, was when our teacher, upon my request, introduced a five-minute exercise with a video, I think it was called Jumppakissa. So we did exercises whilst we were learning words that were about the body and movement. And everyone loved it, all the adults in the class were like, yes, we want to do it again. I just remember people were happy to get up and do little hip rolls and twists, because it was something unusual, not sitting for 3 hours 15 minutes on your butt doing grammar.

niko: Yeah, definitely also movement in classrooms. Whenever there's just even a tiny moment for being able to move your body, it helps so much because when studying in a classroom it's so easy to lose your body.

Yeah, but yeah, maybe we wrap up there. We had so much. Thank you so much.

Dash: Thank you also.

***

Note from the authors: In this next we touched on a wide range of topics in relation to our experiences of learning Finnish whilst being trans migrants with different backgrounds and contexts. niko spoke about making access riders for Finnish Studies in a course at University of the Arts, as well as hosting a queer Finnish language circle. Dash shared about the educational performance work they made out of frustration with commonly used gender normative Finnish language textbooks. Writing this text felt urgent for us especially in the current sociopolitical environment in Finland which includes increasing xenophobia and harshening immigration policies, particularly impacting migrants from outside the European Union. We hope that this text will spark a wider discussion about the impact and experience of Finnish language education for migrants at this time. We believe that this is important for both those who work within the field of language pedagogy as well as the wider Finnish society.

***

Here you can read more about “Kaikki Suomen Mestarit” performance and watch the video documentation https://dashche.com/kaikki-suomen-mestarit

Dash Che (they/he) is a trans masculine post-Soviet immigrant performance artist and a performance educator based in Helsinki. They practice as a solo artist as well as in a performance duet called Mean Time Between Failures. In their performance they explore personal histories, contradicting aesthetics, political topics, and conflicting concepts through materiality of the body, objects and humor. Dash studied Live Art and Performance Studies at Theater Academy in Helsinki and completed a 6-month dance intensive at Outokumpu dance school.

niko wearden (he/they) is a British performance artist who lives in Helsinki now. niko tends to their body in water, lying on the floor, ecological grief and waiting with his kin. He doesn’t want to wait alone anymore. niko recently completed his master’s in Live Art and Performance Studies (LAPS) at the Theatre Academy, Helsinki. He also holds a BA in Fine Art: Time Based Media (PTBM) from Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London. His work has been shown internationally including at the Polish Sculpture Centre, Museum of Impossible Forms, Helsinki, the Royal Academy, London, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Vantaa Arts Museum Artsi. They recently published their first work of art criticism for NO NIIN magazine.