Discussion and conclusion
So far, SDT has been considered more applicable to children’s learning in school. We have chosen this theoretical approach here to look at the learning of immigrant women about their new future in the host country. SDT supports the sense of learning within a time frame through building a successive method of sharing experiences, creating autonomy, and developing a sense of willingness, which usually develop children’s learning opportunities as a whole. Here, we also believe that SDT could equally be applied in order to increase immigrant women’s capability during the integration process to make them aware of their integration.
A women-specific integration strategy can include activities that are related to their values and create a sense of willingness. Such activities that are enjoyable for immigrant women can create self-learning capacities and also improve their motivation owing to associations with positive learning outcomes. Immigrant women may need instruction with regard to self-management skills, which needs to include various training related to daily, social living in a new environment.
Usually, when immigrant women are invited to meet social worker for their regular follow up meeting, many women go with husband. In this case, husband talks on behalf of the wife with social worker. Such kind of provision should not be acceptable. It does not support women’s autonomy and not support indeed to be decisive.
(EO, 2018)
Many immigrant women are not given the opportunity to learn problemsolving skills and measuring skills on self-report assessment. Strategies inspired by the needs of women should allow them to live more independently. Family norms and customs and traditions that they practise at home are not autonomy-supportive, which creates obstacles to self-selected goals. A goal-attainment social policy that involves women in order to help them establish their own goals regarding their future competencies and relatedness can specify a range of outcomes in the host country.
[Mjany immigrant women chose their vocational educational place based on their family decision and in many families, women are not permitted to work in a working place where there are men as a worker - which hinder their scope of job opportunities.
(EO, 2018)
To some extent, immigrant women cannot actively participate in social activities, as it is the tradition in various families that the childcare is the responsibility of women alone. Many women even lack specific information that they could use in preparation of their well-being: for example, in Nordic countries such as Finland, men can also take paternity leave and fulfil childcare duties. Such information that can support women’s integration can be distributed among immigrants in specific ways so that they can easily access the information - for example, through regular information targeting immigrant women. Adjusting actions that can set the goal to meet the needs of immigrant women to construct their learning environment is significantly important and should be included in women-specific integration strategies.
Many women also lack gender-specific knowledge, which limits their ability to be the causal agent of their own lives. Taking care of their children usually
Migrant integration in Finland 87 excludes them from integration training after arriving in a host country (OECD, 2018). In many welfare countries, mothers receive child care benefits, which influences families when deciding on the allocation of household activities, often with a preference for women staying at home in traditional family configurations. Therefore, many immigrant women cannot complete their integration training, which includes learning many skills, such as local language skills, sociocultural knowledge, knowledge of fundamental national laws and practices, along with obligations and responsibilities.
“I did not even know earlier that men are also responsible for childcare. In our country, usually women take care of children at home and men do job. I don’t have any job experiences from my country of origin” (F, 35-55).
Hence, an integration strategy directed at women could provide immigrant women with new perspectives that can enable them to gain self-competence and can make them determined to be integrated into the host society. Social participation support can give them the feeling that they are related to a system and an integral part of the system relatedness.
Different policies that are aiming to enhance the sense of belongingness of the target group necessitate acquiring specific knowledge for both formal and informal service providers so that they can navigate women towards specific settlement services. It can be necessary to offer more learning opportunities to know about their neighbourhood and recreational facilities.
A lot of activities are offered to immigrant women that do not create interest among the target groups. Therefore, immigrant women’s involvement in such activities is often relatively low. The programmes and activities can be designed by immigrant women. This can create a platform for immigrant women to plan and design programmes that are suitable for them. At the same time, immigrant women need to be given a place where they can learn, for better acculturation. Not only participation in activities but also involvement in the planning of social activities can give immigrants a feeling of belonging to a group. They can learn more when they feel that they are not only the target group, but they are also useful for the target group. This also creates self-confidence and self-competencies and it could also be a cross-cultural learning platform with sharing individual experiences and involvement. If a society were to recruit immigrant women as volunteers or through job contacts in leading roles, it would be an example of autonomy-supportive measures that also facilitate increased autonomy development that allows them to maintain their own family relationships.
Though previous research has shown that the integration of migrants is a lifelong learning process (Guo, 2013), it can be mediated through social interaction and by sharing the context of the lived experiences. Each of these experiences within social networks and relationships provides a context of understanding learning. A multicultural and multidimensional network can provide immigrant women with learning opportunities. Institutional learning or integration training could be practical for immigrant women if it includes more learning methods that allow them to increase self-determination, as well as learning that takes place in the community’ (Alfred, 2013).
The 2018 OECD report also states that a lack of ability to communicate with school staff hinders immigrant women’s participation in their children’s educational experiences. Learning the local language is an important part of integration as it facilitates interactions with the host country’s society as a whole. Creating self-motivation by combining language learning with a proper (as seen from the host society’s perspective) understanding of better family life might ensure women’s successfill participation in the language learning process. A psychological gender-based empowerment tool for adaptation to and familiarization with the host society is a key aspect for many of the interviewees.
I used to go to day care Centre with my child and tried to observe how my child is learning language and taking part in group activities, which also helped me to learn language. However, teachers in the day care Centre didn’t like my such approach to be with child in the day care for long. However, I enjoyed that situation of learning.
(F, 30-50)
It follows that all kinds of learning methods that facilitate transformation of experiences (e.g. by feeling, watching) towards a new experience are argued to be a proper learning method by Kolb and Fry (1974). The main objective of social learning is to create an interest in learning among immigrant women. There are no logical approaches for social learning, which is an emotional influence, such as paying attention, observing situations, and learning through conditioning (Bandura, 1977). It is less relevant how a person is learning; rather, it is the determination to learn that plays an important role, because motivation and self-determination may be enough for reinforcement in learning where the target group is marginalized and at risk of various difficulties during the process of acculturation. Social learning theories sometimes suggest that role models can play a positive role and encourage learners’ behaviour and ease social changes (Cherry, 2019). This is applicable also to the social learning process of immigrant women.
As immigrant women usually create a safety network that is formed of people in their community who share similar cultural values, a role model from among their peers could demonstrate to other immigrant women a useful social learning path. An experienced mentor can demonstrate new, positive behaviour to encourage learning (EO, 2018-2019; Cherry, 2019)
Given the changing environment of migration, it can be concluded that immigrant women live under conditions of complexity and uncertainty. They need to build the capacity to learn about autonomy and relatedness. Social learning encompasses many factors that can help immigrant women learn about the competitive advantages of enhancing their own capacities in the host society.
Autonomy learning is a learning process that takes place on the level of the individual. Learning about the host country and its traditions can construct logic to accelerate autonomy learning among immigrant women. The development of immigrant women’s autonomy can lead to increased willingness to make decisions and to take independent actions regarding different solutions required for integration in the North. Comparative social analysis and more analysis of
Migrant integration in Finland 89 their learning capabilities in terms of better integration can continually expand women’s interest in accommodating different logic to learn about new values, norms, and customs of the host country. However, social relationships facilitate the gaining of information about the relevant gender approach of the host country, which in turn can support the empowerment of immigrant women. Capacity-building demands specific evidence on which actions are functioning and which are not, and with regard to what needs to change in the new environment. This realization marks an important phase in social learning. Relatedness to a new environment is not an individual learning process: peers, whether from a similar culture or from the host country, can facilitate and support transformation. Collective discussion and socially active participation help create trustworthy relationships. New knowledge and concrete good evidence can support and increase the understanding of immigrants about their new environment. Sometimes, the involvement of men in women’s social learning process is seen as effective, and this could support family members to understand women’s autonomy and understand contingencies of transformation or the reform of the family structure as a consequence of migration. In many immigrant families, having a job might not be an attractive option for immigrant women. Taking an initiative to teach them about the labour market, it is seen as necessary to justify accessing the labour market. Learning about the positives aspect of social participation could increase self-motivation for learning.
Immigrant women often face particular barriers that make it more difficult for them to integrate into a new society than it might be for males who are prioritized in the family background. These barriers are often dependent on the culture of the country of origin. Especially women from cultures in which wage earning by women is not seen as the norm might face obstacles when trying to integrate into Finnish society. Different programmes for healthy relationship development between men and women with immigrant backgrounds could be a potential part of the social learning of immigrants. In addition to learning the language, understanding different societal attitudes and expectations concerning the role and rights of women in Finnish society can go a long way towards contributing to a successful integration into the country’s society. The highly egalitarian nature of Finnish society might well provide a significant challenge for many immigrants; it does, however, provide for numerous learning possibilities, in particular for immigrant women from very different cultural backgrounds. It is this learning that allows immigrant women to take an active role in their process of integrating into Finnish society.
