Migrant Stay-at-Home Mothers Learning to Eat and Live the Finnish Way

Abstract

Integration programmes can be seen as a space where migrants can acquire language skills and context-relevant skills and achieve an autonomous position in society. This article explores an integration and language course for stay-athome migrant mothers and their young children in the capital region of Finland. Ethnographic data were collected through participant observations, open-ended in-depth interviews and photographs. The results show how the participants are silenced when course instructors bring an ethnocentric perspective to their teaching. However, the results also show how the women, especially those with more education, negotiate and resist this approach, highlighting their own perspectives and pushing the instructors to take a learner position.

Keywords

• migrants
• stay-at-home mothers
• adult education
• critical intercultural education
• ethnocentrism