Raseborg refugee families choose Finnish as state promotes Swedish

Families arriving in Raseborg have chosen Finnish for their children’s schooling, even as the Finnish government steers quota refugees mainly towards Swedish-speaking and bilingual municipalities, Yle reports.

The policy, announced by the government last autumn, aims for 5 to 10 per cent of immigrants to integrate in Swedish. In Uusimaa, there are limited places for quota refugees because the region has relatively few bilingual municipalities. The regional vitality centre is seeking additional placements from municipalities in the region and elsewhere in Finland.

Raseborg has doubled the number of quota refugees it will receive this year, to 48, at the vitality centre’s request. Thirty-one arrived in mid-September, with the rest expected during the winter.

The city’s economic development director, Anna Mäkelä, said Raseborg was seeking population growth. The city has seen a slight net gain from migration, but its age structure means births are not enough to ensure growth. She said the city also wanted to offer refugees the choice of integrating in Finnish or Swedish and to support the position of Swedish in Finland.

The group that arrived this autumn includes 19 children, all of whom will attend school in Finnish. Their parents are expected to choose their own integration language soon, which is likely to be the same as their children’s.

By the end of May 2026, Swedish was recorded as the integration language for about 1.5 per cent of jobseekers whose language choice was available in the customer information system. Not all municipalities have begun using the system, and recording the choice will become a legal requirement only at the start of next year.

Raseborg has a tradition of receiving quota refugees dating back to the 1990s. The city usually takes in about 25 every three years. New arrivals receive support including local host families, donated furniture, kitchen items and bicycles, as well as help with their first shopping trips.

Laura Malin, Raseborg’s integration adviser, said the newcomers’ feelings varied. They were happy to have reached safety and begin a new life, but also felt sadness about loved ones and the lives they had left behind. Malin said she hoped local residents would introduce refugees to their hobbies, particularly because the group includes many children.

The city said the refugees received so far this year are Arabic-speaking. Anneka Pitkänen, who teaches Finnish to refugees and immigrants at the Agora organisation’s Finnish-language club in Karjaa, said Finnish offered wider employment opportunities than Swedish. She added that some of the newly arrived refugees could already form full sentences in Finnish, possibly after studying online.

Finland’s quota for refugees is 500.