This is a CTP of initiative: Living Labs - Laurea (Finland)
This CTP (CTP3) is part of the last phase of the 'Sharing and Caring project' that was developed under the umbrella of the Laurea Living Lab. It focuses on the Espoon Keskus neighbourhood in Espoo, Finland. It elaborates on the efforts of the living lab researchers to engage immigrants living in this neighbourhood in the project. Like with the ‘other’ residents (see CTP 1), this was challenging and it put pressure on the project and rose questions about the methodology used for community participation.
The Sharing and caring project is funded by the Finnish Ministry of Environment and has three major focus points. Firstly, it aims at promoting interest in the re-development of the neighbourhood under its residents. The second goal consists of getting residents to collaborate together with other actors (educational facilities, entrepreneurs and governmental institutes), and construct a networking model for regional development. Thirdly and lastly, the Sharing and Caring project aims to develop efficient means for stakeholder cooperation. The three focus points together form the main objective of establishing a local model for urban development which empowers residents to participate in city planning.
This particular CTP took place in the ending phase of the Sharing and Caring project. In the period from January until May 2015, during the last year if the 2,5 year project that ran from the middle of 2013 until the end of 2015, all actors would come together in community workshops to share ideas and knowledge. By doing so, the actors (including the residents) would steer the process of the urban development in a user-centred direction. Since the neighbourhood has a large immigrant population, this project targeted to include residents that could represent the various immigrant groups. The CTP 1 discussed the difficulty that the Laurea Living Lab was facing in attracting residents to participate in the workshops and interviews. As a consequence, the Living Lab researchers were afraid about the projects’ outcomes, particularly with respect to the degree of representation. Just like the greater residential population, the immigrant group was reluctant to participate in the Sharing and Caring project. But unlike the other residents, they had very particular (cultural) reasons for this. That is why it worthwhile to understand and elaborate upon the fact that the immigrant population was not willing to collaborate with the Laurea Living Lab researchers as a separate CTP. In short, this CTP concerns the difficulty of convincing immigrant residents to participate in the project. As with the non-immigrant residents, this absence of resident input put a strain on the representation of a key actors in the Sharing and Caring project.
The Laurea Living Lab network calls itself an 'innovation ecosystem', working together with various actors or 'social partners' like mentioned under 'Contents'. These actors share a common interest in developing service innovation and smart solutions in certain domains of life. The 'Sharing and Caring project' is a project under the umbrella of the Laurea Living Lab.
The project focused on redeveloping the Espoon Keskus neighbourhood that is considered an area that has some socio-economic problems. In an article written by Soile Juujärvi and Virpi Lundthe neighbourhood is described as follows; “The area is characterized by different historical layers in terms of construction and waves of migration, mainly refugees, from the 1970’s onwards. Cultural diversity in daily life is reflected in a high proportion of immigrants and more than 70 spoken languages. In the light of social and economic indicators, the area represents the least advantaged district in the City of Espoo. Due to social housing, problems of poor people and immigrants are interwoven. The area is also underrepresented in the city council and other democratic bodies due to low turnouts in local elections. Within the prosperous city, the area has been exceptional over decades resulting in its stigmatization (Juujärvi & Lund, 2015, p.2).”
The engagement of a variety of actors was an important element of the Sharing and Caring project. The idea behind this was that each actor (residents, governmental organizations and entrepreneurs) could bring along his or her own set of skills and knowledge and hence contribute to the project. The goals of the Sharing and Caring project were mostly developed around gaining the interest and participation of residents. This implies that the residents were important participants to include in the co-production process. Additionally the researchers in the Laurea Living Lab would interview the residents, and the interviews would serve as an input for the Living Lab research. Residents were also the ones most affected by the urban development of the Espoon Keskus residential area, so they had an important stake in this project. The project neighbourhood houses a significant number of immigrants, as a consequence the immigrant population was a specifically identified target group. As became apparent from the description of the Espoon Keskus area, 70 spoken languages are present in this particular part of Espoo. The inhabitants are of very diverse origin and with mixed socio-economic status. As the interviewee explained: “The immigrants in our project come from: Iraq, Syria, Kosovo, Morocco and Somalia. The Somalians dominate. In the area there lives a rather big group of Russians and Estonians, but they did not attend to our project, since they are at work, and they consider things are OK with them. The immigrant wave started in 1991 and is still continuing (..). Some of them are already the second generation immigrants. The most spoken language is Arabic, or related. But all the conversation are always held in Finnish because immigrants do not speak English, and they are practising Finnish. They feel comfortable to learn more Finnish though. The second generation immigrants have education, but the older ones do not. Immigrants are anxiously looking for a job, but usually they are rejected.”
The CTP was able to form because of the high dependency of the Laurea Living Lab and the Sharing and Caring project on resident collaboration. Since the project was already running for 2 years, a lot of work was already put in the Sharing and Caring project. Thus, the Living Lab and the Sharing and Caring project found themselves in a situation where obtaining these residents was especially important as otherwise the previous work would be in vain.
The co-production with immigrants did not work out very well. Despite that the relationships between immigrants themselves and also between immigrants and native Finnish residents seems to be generally good as the interviewee explains: “To be honest, I do not know too much about it, but I know that the Muslims are keeping in touch with each other, no matter where they come from e.g. Somalian and Kosovans and Albanians seem to have the same interests with religious holidays etc. The native Finnish and the immigrants seem to get along well. Native Finnish are worried about the immigrants’ situation and like to support them.” But for the Contrary to the non-immigrant residents, there were a number of cultural related issues that caused the immigrants to refrain from participating in the project as is explained in the section contestation.
The overview of the related events has overlap with the related events identified in CTP 1 However, the focus on including immigrants also resulted in specific efforts such as approaching voluntary organizations.
Initial project planning. The starting point of the Sharing and Caring Networks project was the decision of the Espoo city council to re-develop the Espoon Keskus area which was taken in 2010 and which led to the establishment of the Sharing and Caring Networks project and the creation of its’ goals. The related events that led up to the forming of this CTP mainly consist of the initial project planning back at the start of the project in 2013. When developing the Sharing and Caring Networks project, it was found important to involve the residents of the Espoon Keskus area, as it was their neighborhood that was being re-developed.
Naturally, as Espoon Keskus had a large immigrant population, the immigrants would become part of the workshops. As explained in 'co-production', the earlier event of project design in the summer of 2013 (September 2013, at the start of the project) created a large degree of dependency, as the participation of residents was on a voluntary basis.
Two years into the project, at the start of the ending phase in 2015, (before the workshops and interviews could commence) voluntary organizations were approached to establish contact with immigrants. The voluntary organizations were resident organizations with close contacts to residents. They comprised of both immigrants and native Finnish residents, but they were not particularly focused on immigrants, they also had no immigrants in important positions such as the chairman. By making use of the voluntary organisation the Laurea Living Lab did not only depend on their own capacity to engage with residents, but also on those mentioned organizations to establish successful contacts with immigrants. Because the Laurea living lab had access to these resident organizations (and their close contacts within the area), they might have had the expectation that getting (immigrant) residents to come to the workshops would be easy. Additionally it was very important for the project to get them on board. All together this created an environment with high stakes and expectations for the Laurea Living Lab and the Sharing and Caring project. And this has most likely triggered the formation of this CTP.
Even via local organizations that were considered to be trusted by residents (including the immigrant residents) it was very difficult to establish contacts with the immigrant population and even if contacts were established, it remained hard to get people engaged. This created a critical moment. The fact that the project failed engaging immigrant implied that it could not rely on community inputs and feedback that were truly representative for the entire population of Espoon Keskus.
Despite the challenges, the Laurea Living Lab researchers also gained some valuable insights on how to establish relations with immigrants and how to deal with their different cultural needs when participating in a project such as Sharing and Caring (see lessons).
The contestation in this CTP can be understood by looking at the issues that challenged the collaboration of the immigrant residents with the actors in the living lab in the Espoon Keskus area. There are several cultural reasons that can explain why immigrants were very hesitant to participate in the Sharing and Caring project. To start with, there was a lack of trust. Most immigrants were not familiar with participating in projects such as Sharing and Caring. The Laurea Living Lab researcher explains; 'With immigrants, the need for trust was more important compared to other residents.' The interviewee elaborates, that a key person would be invaluable in order to establish this 'trusted' contact with immigrants. 'We learned that we should search for a kind of key person within this immigrant group, a person with a certain status or significance to them. This person could be a priest or imam, or politicians, as they [the immigrant groups] also had representatives in public politics.'
Trying to establish contact with the immigrant women however, proved to be an even bigger challenge; 'We couldn't find straight lines to them [immigrant women]. Maybe the younger ones, but the older ones...no, they stayed at home mostly.' Of the immigrants that did participate, the men were sent to the workshops as they were seen as the 'head' of the family. The interviewee explained that many immigrants have large families and this played a role in the immigrants' hesitation to participate; 'Women are at home, which is quite understandable, because they have a lot of children. During the workshops, we also provided childcare so that the women could come. But, they did not show up. Maybe it is just not the culture.' The interviewee had the impression that offered childcare is not trusted or it simply not a motivator for women from immigrant groups to participate in the project as she addressed: 'These immigrant women are so connected to their children, they would not go to a place where the children could not come along.' A second hurdle for many of the immigrant women seemed to be about the cultural embedded relation between women and men. A large share of the women would not feel comfortable coming to the workshops and interviews if there were males, either researcher or other (non-) immigrant males.
Lastly, the interviewee mentions that there was a language barrier for immigrant residents to overcome. It is thought that immigrant residents were also too shy to come because of their limited knowledge of the Finnish language.
Just like the other residents, the immigrant residents were needed in order to have a representative panel of immigrant stakeholders for the Sharing and Caring project. As for the individual research of the Laurea Living Lab, there was the fear that the low participation of immigrant residents would make for a study group that was too small to produce generalizable research outcomes.
In the ending phase of the project, residents (either non-immigrant or immigrant) needed to be found for the interviews that were being conducted by the Laurea Living Lab and for the workshops. This was part of the Sharing and Caring project. The search for the resident participants did not differentiate between the workshops and interviews however, so willing residents for the workshops could be invited to participate in an interview and vice versa. For the interviews, a snowball-sampling method was used. 'We used a form of snowball sampling where we would contact a key person first, and ask him or her for five new contacts. By starting with a central figure, we hoped to reach the social outer layers of the resident group.' The interviewee explains that this form of snowball-sampling worked fine for the interviews, so this strategy was continued when trying to get residents to participate in the workshops. This continuation of the strategy shows a certain anticipation that the snowball-sampling would work evenly well for the workshops. Because of the success of the snowball-sampling for the interviews, the Laurea Living Lab did not really anticipate on any problems with the workshops. The interviewee highlights that it was surprising to them that (immigrant) residents did not come to the workshops, as it was in their interest to come and exert their influence in the re-development of the neighbourhood.
When attracting (immigrant) residents to the workshops by snowball-sampling did not work, some measures were taken by the Laurea Living Lab. Immigrants were contacted via trusted organizations and workshop times were changed to conform the residents' agendas. For immigrants, extra measures were taken to make it easier for them to come, like child care and women-only sessions. Nevertheless, the success rate of the snowball-sampling for interviews was not met. The interviewee mentions that among the Living Lab researchers, there was a certain disbelief that the (immigrant) residents cared so little for the faith of their houses and neighbourhood. 'It is something we were all really surprised about, maybe the residents did not understand the time frame in which this re-development was going to happen. If the re-development were to happen in five years, this would feel like a really long time to them.' In short, the Living Lab was surprised by the low turn up for the workshops of the Sharing and Caring project, especially after initial success with snowball-sampling for the interviews. In terms of anticipation, the Laurea Living Lab did not anticipate on these low turn up rates, which led to this CTP. The extra measures that catered to the needs of the (immigrant) residents, were not successful to the surprise of the Living Lab. The events in which this CTP came to be, and the actors responsible were therefore unforeseen.
Looking back on the project and the issues with obtaining the collaboration of immigrant residents, the interviewee draws a number of lessons. The Laurea Living Lab researchers now realize that gaining the trust of immigrant residents takes some more effort than non-immigrant residents in a few ways. Firstly, a key contact with a certain significance ought to be found to be used as a mediator between the Living Lab and the immigrants. Secondly, when trying to contact immigrant women, their position within their own culture needs to be considered. Trusting woman-only environments need to be set up in which these women can also bring their children along. The interviewee also mentions that in the future, it would be more convenient for these women if the meetings were planned during the day-time. 'The women would not show up in the evening, and not without their children, also in many cultures, women would not come if there were males at all. This is for us very complicated to understand, but normal in these cultures.' It is hoped by the Laurea Living Lab researchers that an approach that is culturally tailored will make it easier to obtain immigrant participants for future projects. There was no feedback or discussion on these cultural hurdles towards the voluntary organizations.
To conclude this CTP we (the CTP researchers) also add a reflection based on the interview outcomes and the extremely informative and rich paper of paper Juujärvi & Lund (2015. In their paper Juujärvi & Lund (2015) address that power relations are different in the contemporary Finish context than they are in the context of Brazilian Paulo Freire describes in his book from 1970 ”The pedagogy of the oppressed”. As they conclude the following about empowerment in their paper: “Experiences of oppression were however attributed to structural factors, rather than to direct power relations between the oppressed and oppressors that were rarely named by participants. In welfare Nordic societies, oppression may take more subtle forms due to more nuanced social stratification than in traditional class societies, thus requiring sophisticated analytical methods (Juujärvi & Lund, 2015, p.11).” This is by indeed a valid point, but this CTP also hints that social patterns within this neighbourhood might not have followed simply this ‘standard’ Nordic Welfare logic. The society is layered. Some of the immigrants might have grown up in a context where the role of the oppressed and the oppressors is rather different than in Finland and this might have influenced their perception of the ‘formal actors’ involved in the living lab as well as the level of trust.
References
Laurea.fi (2016) accessed 05th of July 2016 https://www.laurea.fi/en/research-development-and-innovations/laurea-living-labs
Soile Juujärvi and Virpi Lund, Laurea University of Applied Sciences (2015) Participatory Action Research as a Practice of Empowerment in Deprived Communities; accessed 05th of July 2016, http://ame2015.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Soile_Juujarvi-Juujarvi_Lund-Participatory_Action_Research_as_a_practice_of_empowerment.pdf
Stay informed. Subscribe for project updates by e-mail.
