Fennia - International Journal of Geography https://fennia.journal.fi/ <p align="left">Fennia is a non-profit peer-review journal published by the Geographical Society of Finland since 1889. It is an international scientific publication dedicated to all fields of geography with attentiveness to northern dimensions. In 2010, Fennia became an open access electronic journal with two yearly issues. It is devoted to a fast publication process, including the open access publication of forthcoming papers before inclusion in an issue. The journal has no submission or article processing charges, and authors retain all rights to their work throughout the publication process and after publication. We appreciate that authors clearly bring up that the text has been originally published in Fennia. We also offer the opportunity to publish short, popularized texts based on research articles through the <a href="https://www.versuslehti.fi/english/">Versus</a> platform that aims to make research more visible, dialogical and effective in societies.</p> <p align="left">Fennia publishes papers of high scholarly merit in three categories: Research Papers, Reviews and Essays, and Reflections. Research Papers are original full-length articles that make a significant contribution to geographic and related research. Reviews and Essays introduce empirical, theoretical or methodological insights from ongoing research, including literature reviews and lectures. Reflections section includes commentaries, debates, discussion pieces, interventions and other argumentative short texts related to contemporary issues. With these three publication formats, Fennia seeks to take forward geographical research and discussion in a critical and responsible spirit. In addition to individual contributions, the journal welcomes proposals for special issues and sections.</p> <p align="left">The fully open access Fennia publications are under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY 4.0</a>). The journal is member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (<a href="http://publicationethics.org/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COPE</a>) and follows the peer review standards set by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (<a href="http://www.tsv.fi/en/services/label-for-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TSV</a><a href="http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&amp;Word=fennia" target="_self">)</a>. It is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (<a href="https://doaj.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DOAJ</a>) and the Thomson Reuters Emerging Sources Citation Index (<a href="http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&amp;Word=fennia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ESCI</a>), and is part of the <a href="http://freejournals.org/">Free Journal Network</a>. The main language of the journal is English.</p> en-US <p>Authors who publish with Fennia agree to the following terms:</p> <ol type="a"> <li>Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Creative Commons Attribution License</a> that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0). </li> <li>Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a doctoral dissertation or book compilation), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.</li> <li>Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See <a href="http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html" target="_new">The Effect of Open Access</a>).</li> </ol> editor.fennia@geography.fi (Kirsi Pauliina Kallio) managing.fennia@geography.fi (Maija Halonen) Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:24:20 +0300 OJS 3.2.1.4 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 Racialized immigrants becoming part of the city: connecting migration, space and race – commentary to van Liempt https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129437 <p>Building on Ilse van Liempt’s (2023) lecture, this commentary addresses the connection and shift between forced displacement and local emplacement by addressing what becoming part of the city means for racialized immigrants. By bringing forward the notion of racialization I hope to contribute to a growing body of literature discussing how malleable and productive the concept of race – albeit erased and relegated to the past – keeps on shaping conversations about and across Europe. Connecting migration, space and race offers a particularly rich context in which to have this discussion because, as all three elements are mutually constructive, addressing them together exposes some of the complexities and nuances of the experience of becoming part of the city for racialized immigrants.</p> <p>Addressing this topic calls into question my own experience as an immigrant which, as a French white woman living in Finland and working at the University, is shaped by many privileges. It is therefore important to highlight the position of power from which I talk, in part because of the extent to which whiteness permeates much of our conceptual and methodological work as researchers. However, committed we, as individuals, might be to anti-racism, it is important to recognize that we are working within the structures of academia and as such are working within a (discursive) space that has historically been organized through whiteness. Exposing the racial structures at play in Academia is a small but critical step to contest it and work towards change within the academy as well as society.</p> Melodine Sommier Copyright (c) 2023 Melodine Sommier http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129437 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Emplacement in hostile spaces: hopeless notes – commentary to van Liempt https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129570 <p style="font-weight: 400;">In her keynote lecture from the Finnish Geography Days in 2022 Ilse van Liempt offers a hopeful and useful approach to understanding refugees’ processes of belonging and home-making. She focuses on arrival infrastructures, which encompass both the formal and the informal processes and structures that greet migrants as they arrive. Important part of these is emplacement, where the focus can turn into how migrants themselves become part of creating arrival infrastructures and making home in new environments, including the public spaces they inhabit. My commentary draws from my experiences of the United Kingdom (UK) hostile bordering practices, and I am reminded that hostility, policing migration and migrants and bordering practices are not only present, but often framing both the formal and informal infrastructures. Secondly, I reflect on the meaning of home here: the patriarchal and heteronormative home can follow a migrant on their route, as well as become part of the bordering practice for new arrivals. Hence for some, home itself becomes a prison, a site of violence or a place of non-belonging. Finally, the emergence of the techno-borderscape (Godin &amp; Doná 2020) has moved large parts of arrival infrastructures, both the bordering and the support that these represent, and possibilities of home-making online, with many migrants simultaneously having reduced access to the digital spaces.</p> Aura Lounasmaa Copyright (c) 2023 Aura Lounasmaa http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129570 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Migrant agency and embodiment in space – commentary to van Liempt https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129714 <p style="font-weight: 400;">In this reflection, I use van Liempt's analysis of emplacement as a helpful instigation to challenge and nuance three current theoretical debates in migration studies and geography. Focusing on the spaces of embodied migrant agency I counter the legacy of static concepts such as ‘immigrant integration’, refine ideas about the city and public space, and explore the contemporary politics of refusal. In each of these conversations, bringing in ideas of the spatial agency of migrants helps us to contest received ideas and categories and open up new ways of thinking about scale, society, public space, and refusal.</p> Katharyne Mitchell Copyright (c) 2023 Katharyne Mitchell http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129714 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Towards more locally aware resource governance? – commentary to Albrecht and colleagues https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/130300 <p>This text grew out as a commentary on the article “Hydropowering sustainability transformation: policy frames on river use and restoration in Finland” (Albrecht <em>et al</em>. 2023) during the manuscript review process. While the article itself is a timely contribution to expanding our understanding on how rivers are framed and related to in a national context where the history of coercive ‘modernization’ meets an urgent demand to decarbonize, the authors’ observations also invite discussion beyond the explicit scope of water governance. Considering the range of extractive and renewable resource projects that are expected to unfold across the country in response to the demands of the ‘green transition’, I make use of this text as an opportunity to discuss Albrecht and colleagues’ (2023, 58) conclusion that “more emphasis should be placed on […] governance that recognises the local dynamics and interactions within the social-ecological systems”. I take a focus on the inseparably political, affective and situated nature of all resource-related developments and debates, which all pose their unique challenges for translating the idea(l)s of locally aware environmental and resource governance frameworks into practice.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p> Hanna Lempinen Copyright (c) 2023 Hanna Lempinen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/130300 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Project management and research governance – towards a critical agenda beyond neoliberalization? – commentary to Refstie https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/126176 <p>In this contribution to the debate that followed the publication of Hilde Refstie’s timely and cogent <em>Reconfiguring research relevance</em>, I propose to take a closer look at the funding structures that bind academia and other institutional and private sector actors into networks of collaboration and research co-production often experienced as dysfunctional. In particular, I focus on competitive funding bids that distribute financial and labour resources by awarding short-term ‘projects’, with particular reference to European Union (EU) projects. Drawing on my current research work on the ‘project economy’, co-led with Nadine Hassouneh and funded by the KONE Foundation at Tampere University, I make two initial suggestions that expand on some of the points raised so far in the discussion hosted by <em>Fennia</em>. First, project-based research funding is a more politicized and coercive tool than we tend to think. Second, project management and project-based work, and the associated patterns of (gendered and racialized) precarization and even abuse, have a longer and more ingrained history than what we commonly identify as the ‘neoliberalization’ of academia. By way of conclusion, I highlight how scrutinizing the funding architectures that enable and constrain our work help us to explore the relation between research and policy, beyond the limits of critical categories such as ‘neoliberalism’.</p> Elisa Pascucci Copyright (c) 2022 Elisa Pascucci http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/126176 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Lectio praecursoria: Recognizing the plurality of knowledge, values, and experiences interwoven in Mexican community forestry https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129243 <p style="font-weight: 400;">During my doctoral defense at the University of Eastern Finland on January 27<sup>th</sup>, 2023, I introduced my doctoral research with the present lectio praecursoria. This lectio delves into the plurality of experiences, values and knowledge interwoven in the development of community forestry in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, Mexico. In the last 40 years, Mexico has promoted community forestry as an alternative to forest management directed by the central government or private companies. As an alternative, community forestry is based on social justice and environmental sustainability principles, aiming for communities to use forests for social and economic development while conserving them. The research examines how forest communities have created their paths to achieve these objectives, like creating community forestry companies for wood and non-wood forest products. Based on ethnographic methods and documental analysis in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca state, the research investigated the challenges, paradoxes and changes forest dwellers face when managing and working in their community forestry companies while conserving their forests. Furthermore, this study contributes to understanding how different environmental governing rationalities intersect when 1) socio-territorial conflicts arise, 2) women's access to productive labor is encouraged, and 3) the plural values of the forest are adapted. The lecture addresses one of the critical inquiries of this research: how various environmental<strong> </strong>governing rationalities intertwine in community forestry to shape and regulate people's behavior and interactions with forests.</p> Violeta Gutiérrez-Zamora Copyright (c) 2022 Violeta Gutiérrez-Zamora http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/129243 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Becoming part of the city: local emplacement after forced displacement https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/127425 <p style="font-weight: 400;">For refugees, arriving in a new place is inherently emotional – fraught with experiences of disorientation and fear of the unknown – but it can also be liberating and result in new connections. This article explores a series of questions around how forced displacement is experienced and turned into local emplacement. It is argued that it is important to recognize that global migration is grounded through attention to the ways in which such processes are locally lived and produced. I acknowledge that, on arrival, forced migrants become entangled in an infrastructure – laid out for them as a special category of migrants – that is directing them towards certain institutions and places; however, at the same time, I argue that this is not the only infrastructure which they use and explore. Starting from the issue of how refugees <em>themselves</em> try to build connections and find their way in a new city enables the exploration of potential overlaps, gaps and tensions between the official response to arrival and the everyday lived experiences of refugees. The city as a whole is explicitly taken as the unit of analysis in this article, without limitations to specific places dedicated to refugees or specific neighbourhoods where it is known that refugees arrive and/or are housed. It is argued that a focus on public and semi-public spaces is important as it allows an exploration of spaces that are meaningful to refugees and might result in new insights on connections or disconnections with already existing infrastructures. This approach offers more room for the unexpected – but also the mundane and the everyday – which all play an important part in the production of a counter-narrative against the formal and institutionalized way of framing the arrival of refugees in which refugees’ own experiences are the more central focus.</p> Ilse van Liempt Copyright (c) 2023 Ilse van Liempt http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/127425 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Travelling abroad and geopolitical preferences – case of Kharkiv, Dnipro and Mariupol, Ukraine https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/117041 <p style="font-weight: 400;">The paper investigates the relationship between travel abroad experience and individual geopolitical preferences in three geopolitical fault-line cities in the eastern part of Ukraine. Employing binary logistic regression as a principal research method, we show that travel experience to European countries positively correlates with pro-European attitudes and corresponds to weaker pro-Soviet sentiments. On the contrary, travel experience to Russia is associated with somewhat weaker support for European geopolitical and cultural integration but stronger pro-Soviet sentiments. Travel experience to Russia is less important predictor of geopolitical preferences than visiting European countries. Pro-European attitudes, compared with pro-Soviet sentiments, are much more interlinked with international travel experience. The data on bilateral travellers evidences that possible effect of visiting European countries basically neutralises the effect of visiting Russia in terms of impact on geopolitical preferences. Although the relationship between travel abroad experience and geopolitical preferences is similar in all three cities under investigation, certain variations between them may be explained by different economic, socio-cultural and institutional background. The revealed correlations seem to cover both direct causal effect of travel abroad on geopolitical preferences and a reverse causality, namely self-selection of destination country according to personal pre-existing geopolitical views. The importance of discovered relationships for the integration of Ukrainian society into European civilization project is apparent not only considering visa-free regime between Ukraine and the European Union (EU), but also in view of the Russian military invasion in 2022 as a cause of flows of refugees from Ukraine to Europe.</p> Oleksiy Gnatiuk, Kostyantyn Mezentsev, Grygorii Pidgrushnyi Copyright (c) 2022 Oleksiy Gnatiuk, Kostyantyn Mezentsev, Grygorii Pidgrushnyi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/117041 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Hydropowering sustainability transformation: policy frames on river use and restoration in Finland https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/120946 <p style="font-weight: 400;">Hydropower, as a flexible energy source, has sparked renewed interest in the ongoing decarbonisation of the society. Simultaneously, a wider transformation of the socio-ecological system towards more sustainable practices of energy production is required. Our paper draws from the sustainable transformation theory and the concepts of transformability, hydro-social cycle, and aquatic regime to study a system of water governance and regulation in Finland. Our case study data consists of 16 semi-structured interviews and 207 news articles from Yle national broadcast company. We studied the policy frames to reveal how the water governance actors understand, view and make sense of future river use and restoration, and how they utilise the frames for strategic purposes. Results demonstrate that the future river use and restoration were framed by four modes of thinking: 1) hydropower as a ‘cultural trauma’, 2) restoring rivers and dam removal after hydropower construction and operation to improve ecological flows in rivers, 3) improving the social acceptance of hydropower and dam removal, and 4) improving the efficiency of the hydropower regime as a flexible source of power. Our paper shows that to enable pathways for socio-ecological-technical transformations of aquatic ecosystems further scientific scrutiny should be focused on reconciliation of the interest of river restoration, recreational uses of aquatic environments and the flexible energy function of hydropower in energy transition. Removal of migration barriers and small-scale hydropower plants and building fishways and bypasses are part of this transformation. Furthermore, the river regulation needed to give impoundment facilities the flexibility, causes changes in water levels which may be a potential source of conflict between riparian residents and hydropower operators. Therefore, more emphasis should be placed on water governance that recognises the local dynamics and interactions within the social-ecological systems.</p> Eerika Albrecht, Jani Lukkarinen, Miikka Hakkarainen, Niko Soininen Copyright (c) 2023 Eerika Albrecht, Jani Lukkarinen, Miikka Hakkarainen, Niko Soininen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/120946 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 South Asian students’ migration to, within and from Finland and Sweden: connecting the dots to arrivals and departures https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/119776 <p style="font-weight: 400;">Much of the current research on international student migration is focused on home-to-host and stay-or-leave migration behaviours. However, there is a possibility that international students might migrate within the host country before making their final stay-or-leave migration decisions. This paper adapts stepwise migration theory as an analytical tool with which to investigate the migration behaviour of Indian and Pakistani students. Based on 57 interviews and extensive participant observation, it analyses the factors that prompt South Asian student migration to, within and, subsequently for some, from Finland and Sweden. The findings support the argument that international student migration is multistage. Initial origin-to-destination migration is often insufficient to meet the high-set ambitions of talented young migrants. Disappointment with perceived missing opportunities in the university city or town lays the basis for subsequent intercity and stay-or-leave migration stages. Subsequent migration within the destination country impacts on the students’ stay-or-leave aspirations, while the origin-country situation influences return-or-onward migration decisions.</p> Zain Ul Abdin Copyright (c) 2023 Zain Ul Abdin http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/119776 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 “Freedom is a treasure that only those who lose it can know”: a spatiotemporal exploration of 22 Iraqi women’s interlegalities https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/120307 <p style="font-weight: 400;">In this article, we discuss the spatiotemporal interlegalities of 22 women living in Iraq, understood as an emerging legal landscape characterised by legal and normative entanglements rather than parallel systems of laws and morals. Iraqi women are situated at the intersections of the coexisting legal spaces and stratifications of various scales and multiple normative orders that have been deeply embedded in Iraqi religious and tribal traditions throughout time. It is at these intersections that experiences of non-freedom and struggles for freedom are intimately felt and possible contradictions among the multiple legal spaces and normative orders encountered. Herein, we assess women’s opportunities to negotiate the boundaries of their spaces, their abilities to govern those spaces, and the constraints they encounter on their routes to freedom. We used a map metaphor to elucidate the women’s processes for finding their way. Women’s freedom in the Iraqi context is complex, indicative of multi-layered processes of negotiation within the legally pluralistic landscape. The concept of interlegalities is a useful tool for conceptualising the multifaceted interconnections in the legal landscape of Iraqi women. The Middle East legal geography has not been widely examined, but the special characteristics of the Iraqi context regarding the interplay among legal spaces and normative orders are essential for contributing to legal geography discussions, as some theoretical premises are unsuitable for application to contexts with pluralist legal systems that lack democratic traditions.</p> Katri Gadd, Faleha Ubeis Copyright (c) 2023 Katri Gadd, Faleha Ubeis http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/120307 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Research collaboration outputs between the European Union and Africa: the case of co-authored scientific articles between Finland and Africa https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/115611 <p style="font-weight: 400;">I analyzed co-authored international peer-reviewed scientific articles that resulted from research collaborations between scholars in the European Union (EU) and African countries, with a particular focus on the case of Finland. Among the 28 EU member states, Finland ranked 13<sup>th</sup> in terms of the quantity of co-authored scientific articles produced through these collaborations. I found that from 2015 to 2021, scholars from universities, research institutes, and other organizations in African countries and Finland co-authored more than 4,700 international peer-reviewed articles. Despite the doubling of co-authored Finland–Africa peer-reviewed scientific articles in international journals annually during this period, these articles accounted for less than one percent of all international peer-reviewed scientific articles in Africa, and their proportional share decreased over time. The most common fields of collaboration were medical sciences and natural science. Of Finland–Africa articles, almost 1,500 focused on Africa. The University of Helsinki and South African universities were the most active collaborators. Given these findings, it is crucial to address the implementation of the European Commission’s strategy for partnerships with Africa and Finland’s collaboration strategies with Africa to encourage more inclusive research collaboration among scholars from Finland, Europe, and Africa.</p> Jussi Jauhiainen Copyright (c) 2023 Jussi Jauhiainen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/115611 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300 Where is climate asylum? https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/131020 <p>This editorial discusses an alarming issue in the time of climate change: climate mobilities and, particularly, forced climate migration and the need for climate refuge and climate asylum. The focus is on the European Union (EU) where migration and asylum policies are being currently developed under the 'New Pact', yet with little intention to relate with climate mobilities of any kind. Neither does the EU's environmental and climate policy Green Deal give much attention to human mobility. At the same time, the EU has commenced many briefings on the topic, which shows that the subject matter itself is well known. The editorial hence asks, where is climate asylum if not in the EU, and when, if not at this juncture of creating new asylum policies?</p> Kirsi Pauliina Kallio; James Riding Copyright (c) 2023 Kirsi Pauliina Kallio; James Riding http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/131020 Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0300