Borders, Borderscapes, and Border-Crossing Romances in Contemporary Migrant Writing in Finland by TaoLin and Arvi Perttu

This essay examines the crossing of national and cultural borders in contemporary fictional narratives by first-generation immigrants in Finland. While immigrant writing has a long-standing status in countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany, the situation is different in Finland where mass immigration is historically more recent. Yet recent years have seen the publication of several novels, autobiographies, and anthologies by migrants with focus on border crossings and adaptation to a new life. This essay examines two recent novels written in Finnish by immigrants to Finland. Through an analysis of TaoLin’s Suomen taivaan alla [Under the Finnish Sky] (2008. Turku: Enostone), the first novel by its Chinese author, and Skumbria by the established migrant novelist Arvi Perttu (2011. Helsinki: Like) with roots in Russian Karelia, I will discuss the role that borders and borderscapes play in these two novels telling of cross-border romances between Finns and non-Finnish migrants. By paying particular attention to their use of the interethnic romance plot as a narrative convention characteristic of immigrant fiction, and its role in constructing and negotiating new Finnish identities, the essay will address the border crossings of the texts and place them in the context of nation and the conventional privileging of Finnishness. I will suggest that the two texts provide markedly different perspectives on the issue, TaoLin’s novel as a pedagogical and Perttu’s a performative narrative of nation. The paper shows how cultural encounters lead to the formation of new borderscapes as signs of emergent migrant identities that reflect on Finnishness and its transformation.