City Council approves new programme supporting Espoo’s goal of being the best integrator in Finland

The residents of Espoo speak over 150 languages as their native tongues. The share of foreign-language residents is set to increase to nearly a quarter of the population of Espoo during this council term. Recognising these facts, it is important for us that residents with different backgrounds are able to feel at home in the city and welcome to participate in building the future of Espoo.

The fact that services facilitating integration leave women in a weaker position compared to men due to focusing largely on participation in the labour market is a structural problem.

We want to raise the employment rate of immigrant women to the Nordic level. According to Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey, in 2021 the labour market participation, or activity rate, of working-age immigrant women was the lowest out of all the Nordic countries in Finland. In Finland, the activity rate of women born abroad was 65.4% in 2021. The country where the activity rate was highest, at 77.3%, was Norway. In Sweden and Denmark, the activity rate of working-age immigrant women was 71.1% and 68.5%, respectively.

The integration of many immigrant women is slowed down by family formation. Going forward, Espoo will aim to reach women comprehensively so that their integration can be supported in a persistent manner regardless of whether they are participating in the labour market or taking care of children at home.

The foreign language speaking residents of Espoo are younger than the rest: In autumn 2021, foreign language speakers accounted for 20% of the city’s residents, but 27.5% of pupils starting first grade.

During this council term, we want to improve the learning outcomes of children and young people with an immigrant background in Espoo and thus reduce the gap in learning outcomes compared to the native population by half. We want more and more immigrant children to participate in early childhood education and care. Staying at home is not conductive to the language learning or development of reading skills of children nearing pre-school age.

In the 2018 PISA survey, the reading performance of pupils with an immigrant background was found to be lagging behind that of pupils with a Finnish background by an amount corresponding to approximately two years of school studies.  What makes this result especially worrying is the fact that a third of pupils born in Finland who have an immigrant background have such a poor reading performance that it is likely to hinder their upper secondary studies. And this is despite them participating in the Finnish education system for their entire lives. Furthermore, especially young people who moved to Finland after 6th grade face challenges in regard to integration and absorbing learning content in a new school language. On the other hand, we also know that there are no major differences in the grades of new university students or Omnia’s drop-out rates between foreign and native language speakers.

Espoo aims to improve learning outcomes with an uninterrupted growth and learning path in which early childhood education and care, pre-primary education, primary and lower secondary education and upper secondary education all play their own important roles. The cooperation for supporting immigrant parents will start as early as possible, at the maternity and child health clinic. 

We will also be strengthening employees’ capacity to apply language and cultural awareness in their work. As of the start of 2022, there were four cultural instructors working in comprehensive education in Espoo who provide support to children and their parents. In addition to their efforts, raising the grades of pupils with an immigrant background will require closer and more systematic cooperation with immigrant communities and the organisations that represent them.

Immigration and the mobility of international talent play an increasingly important role in regard to Finland’s wellbeing and competitiveness. In recognition of this, the City Council has highlighted the principle of “Every Espoo resident has the right to feel at home in Espoo” in the Espoo Story, which is the City’s strategy.

The preparation of the integration programme is steered by the Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration.

The integration programme approved yesterday by the City Council of Espoo highlights key development trends related to integration and outlines how the Council’s integration policy will be put into practice.

Espoo’s integration programme 2022–2025 (in Finnish).(external link, opens in a new window)