School counsellor Abdulkadir Isak
Parents may be immigrants, but their children are now Finnish. It is traumatic for children if they follow in the footsteps of immigrants, only use the services designed for immigrants and only train for occupations suited to immigrants.
School counsellor Abdulkadir Isak, 39, works in the lower grade at Helsinki’s Kontula and Keinutie schools. He deals with learning and other problems and works both with Finnish children and the children of immigrants.
“The problems immigrant children have are not really very different from those of Finnish children. If a family is having a hard time of it, so is the child. Immigrants should not be shut off from the rest of society. Most have come to Finland to stay.”
Abdulkadir thinks a child may react strongly if, say, their parents do not have permanent residency in Finland. Their worry and stress might show up in a child’s restless behaviour. Cooperation between the home and the school is made difficult if the parents do not know the language well.
“Immigrants do get support of course, and if necessary, rehabilitation assistance, but the Finnish system is in many ways confusing.
“Who actually are the immigrants? Not my two sons, at least.”
Abdulkadir Isak is an immigrant himself. He came to Finland from Mogadishu, in Somalia, having gained a master’s degree in education in Russia, then the Soviet Union. Abdulkadir took a course for immigrants, became a school attendance assistant and also worked at a day-care centre. Having obtained Finnish citizenship, Abdulkadir continued with his studies in Russia.
“I would have started studying earlier, but I had to fight to obtain citizenship. It took five years for the Immigration Service to deal with my case, although I had had a job in Finland the whole time.”
Abdulkadir now works in a permanent post. He lives in Helsinki with his Russian-born wife and their two children. In a multicultural family such as theirs, at home they speak Somali, Russian, and, obviously, Finnish.
Abdulkadir is preparing a doctoral thesis on the subject of young immigrants adapting to Finnish secondary schools (at the lower level). He wants to research into ways to support the school attendance and study of children and young people. He is taking time off to write his thesis, though he will continue his work as school counsellor.
“A school counsellor creates a sense of security in school life. As society becomes more complex, there are more and more problems for children and young people. School counselling services should have more resources, but most of all children and young people need the time of an adult they can trust.”
All too often immigrants have to try and prove that they have come to Finland to stay and that they can work. It is Abdulkadir’s view, however, that negative feedback should not be taken too personally. Immigrants need to learn to face up to problems.
Text and photograph: Anu Likonen, Jukka Vuolle and Nanni Akkola
The Ministry of Employment and the Economy