TRAVELLING ACROSS ESTONIAN-FINNISH BORDERS AND ITS TRANSNATIONAL DIMENSIONS. An ethnographical perspective of Estonians living in Finland
KINGUMETS, JAANIKA (2008)
2008
Sosiologia/ISSS - Sociology/ISSS
Yhteiskuntatieteellinen tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2008-07-31
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-19349
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-19349
Tiivistelmä
This thesis is an ethnographic study of travelling across Estonian-Finnish borders, most widely positioned in the field of migration, mobility and border-crossing practises. The subjects of travelling are the Estonians who live permanently in Finland for the purpose of work, studies or other reasons and travel regularly to Estonia in order to facilitate lasting transnational connections. Thus, I treat travelling in this study as a necessity, which is a different approach compared to travel as leisure or self-exploration which are part of many other contemporary discourses on travel.
Recent critical literature talks against the mystified perception of travel, a product of colonialism, and argues that travel should instead be viewed through its practical manifestations in people’s daily lives. People’s daily practises again, including travelling and border-crossing are culturally, politically, ideologically and economically bounded. For grasping better the travel in a deeply contextualised way I have firstly drawn out geographical, cultural, linguistic, political and economic connections between Estonia and Finland in historical perspective. Subsequently, I concentrate on the period of the communist régime in Estonian history and discuss the practical issues related to travelling abroad in Soviet Estonia. The latter approach is especially useful in my attempt to demystify the travel and border-crossing behind the “Iron Curtain”.
The methodological approach to the study is the combination of ethnography and auto-ethnography. The ethnography is based on thematic interviews with travellers, experts on travelling, and observations in the travel settings.
Autoethnographic narrations are present, because I have been an active traveller in the Estonian-Finnish borderlands and my own experiences shape considerably the interpretations of the whole phenomenon as presented herein.
The Estonian-Finnish border-crossing practises are specifically defined, because the travelling takes place overseas, and usually the means of transportation used is a passenger ferry, which is a central element in the studied ethnographies. The special characteristics of the overseas connections lead the following in-depth argumentations about the meanings and practises of journey today and in the past focussing on the time-distance relations, space-place-nonplace connections, travel functionality, and handling transitions in transnational spaces.
Finally I show one possible way how to understand the individual’s agency in the everyday-life applications of a travel, which are overwhelmingly moulded by state policies and economic forces. I argue that if the world is organised in global projects then as a parallel there are existent the personal life projects that people try to realise in the best way within the given macro conditions. The manifestations of a travel thus are the negotiations between the global and personal projects.
Keywords: travelling, border-crossing, ferry-trip, ethnography, Estonians, Finland
Recent critical literature talks against the mystified perception of travel, a product of colonialism, and argues that travel should instead be viewed through its practical manifestations in people’s daily lives. People’s daily practises again, including travelling and border-crossing are culturally, politically, ideologically and economically bounded. For grasping better the travel in a deeply contextualised way I have firstly drawn out geographical, cultural, linguistic, political and economic connections between Estonia and Finland in historical perspective. Subsequently, I concentrate on the period of the communist régime in Estonian history and discuss the practical issues related to travelling abroad in Soviet Estonia. The latter approach is especially useful in my attempt to demystify the travel and border-crossing behind the “Iron Curtain”.
The methodological approach to the study is the combination of ethnography and auto-ethnography. The ethnography is based on thematic interviews with travellers, experts on travelling, and observations in the travel settings.
Autoethnographic narrations are present, because I have been an active traveller in the Estonian-Finnish borderlands and my own experiences shape considerably the interpretations of the whole phenomenon as presented herein.
The Estonian-Finnish border-crossing practises are specifically defined, because the travelling takes place overseas, and usually the means of transportation used is a passenger ferry, which is a central element in the studied ethnographies. The special characteristics of the overseas connections lead the following in-depth argumentations about the meanings and practises of journey today and in the past focussing on the time-distance relations, space-place-nonplace connections, travel functionality, and handling transitions in transnational spaces.
Finally I show one possible way how to understand the individual’s agency in the everyday-life applications of a travel, which are overwhelmingly moulded by state policies and economic forces. I argue that if the world is organised in global projects then as a parallel there are existent the personal life projects that people try to realise in the best way within the given macro conditions. The manifestations of a travel thus are the negotiations between the global and personal projects.
Keywords: travelling, border-crossing, ferry-trip, ethnography, Estonians, Finland