Becoming a citizen—becoming information-literate? Immigrants’ experiences of information literacy learning situations in Finland
Working life is an important area of societal participation and active citizenship. Building possibilities for immigrants to participate in their new home society by being employed is one of the main aims of immigration support work. To achieve this goal, immigrant employees need to be able to mediate relevant information about the employment system and how it functions to their clients. They, in turn, need to become orientated in the new information environment, which brings together aspects of adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) and making use of the potential they offer to the building of social networks in a new culture.
This chapter discusses the role of information literacy in the integration process of immigrants. It draws from the findings of an ongoing study of how immigrants seek and share information about jobs and working life in Finland. The focus is on Kurdish and Russian women who have settled in Finland over five years and who have received, or are receiving, vocational or academic education. Some of these immigrant women are also refugees and asylum seekers. In the study, ‘immigrant’ refers to every person who has moved to Finland in the preceding ten years, regardless of their reason for coming. The aim of the study is to find out what kind of information immigrant women need in order to participate in working life in Finland and how and where they find such information.
In this chapter, I explore immigrants’ experiences of information literacy training with different actors: language teachers in occupational courses; counsellors in employment offices; and teachers in computer courses. By focusing on three cases based on three individual interviews, the immigrants’ experiences of learning information seeking in different situations are described. The crucial role of social networks, which include immigration and employment officials, language course teachers and social workers, among others, in helping immigrants to understand the new information environment will be considered. Additionally, the problems of the digital divide and information poverty will be discussed from the perspective of social networks and the communicative approach to information literacy.
The communicative approach to information literacy was launched by Louise Limberg and Olof Sundin (2006) who challenged the views of information seeking and information literacy as individual and generalizable processes that are unaffected by their context. In this approach, information literacy is seen to be based on the communication between individuals and is, therefore, social by nature. People’s information practices take place within a community existing in a certain time and place, thus giving them a unique context. The values and norms of the community, including its codes of communication, are mediated in social networks and play a crucial role in information mediation and learning new skills. Taking into consideration cultural issues, this approach gives a fruitful starting point for the present study of the information literacy experiences of immigrants.
The research question explored in this chapter is: What is the relationship between immigrants’ experience of integration and information literacy? The chapter begins with a short introduction to Finnish immigrant policy and to the practices of immigrant integration. It is followed by an overview of research into the information behaviour of immigrants and the question of the digital divide. After discussing the study’s methodology, the process of integration is linked to the issues of information literacy by analyzing the episodes of information literacy instruction. Quotes taken from the interviews are used to illuminate how information literacy themes and questions are present in the lives of the interviewees.
Background
Immigration in Finland
Immigration in Finland differs in many ways from immigration in other Western European countries. For example, the number of immigrants is the smallest in Europe. Today, Finnish immigration policy is designed to follow the directives of European Union (Joronen 2007). The growth in immigration has been enormous during the last two decades; between 1990 and 2006 immigration increased fourfold. However, in spite of growing numbers of immigrants, the labour force has not increased in Finland (Forsander 2001, 2007).
By the end of 2008, the population of Finland was 5,300,484, of which 132,708 were foreign citizens, forming 0.25% of the total population. The four major groups of immigrants in the end of 2007 were: Russian (0.049%); Estonian (0.037%); Swedish (0.015%); and Somalian (0.009%) (Joronen 2007). Most foreign citizens live in the biggest cities in Finland (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Turku and Tampere) and almost half of them in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Tilastokeskus 2009).
In Finland, the concept of integration of immigrants has been discussed since the early 1990s. The Integration Act (493/1999) aims at enabling immigrants to live and participate in Finnish society as other citizens do. Learning Finnish or Swedish, which are the main national languages, is one of the essential prerequisites for integration. One of the objectives is to facilitate immigrants’ access to work and to ensure that Finnish society can benefit from their competence and education. At the same time, immigrants receive support for the preservation of their native language and culture. The Integration Act emphasizes immigrants’ responsibility to participate actively in the integration process and provides the authorities with tools for support (Maahanmuuttolaki 301/2004).
At the administrative level, guidelines and recommendations for integration are provided by the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Education, which also coordinates integration activities. Although the concept of information literacy is seldom mentioned in the strategies, it is implicitly regarded as one of the goals of integration. Today, every immigrant in Finland who has been granted permanent residency has a right to participate in a three-year integration program. These programs are provided on the municipal level and vary in their content. The programs include individual plans for language and professional education as well as for seeking and securing employment.
Despite the recommendations of the Finnish government, local integration strategies vary remarkably. The biggest cities supply a wide range of immigration services, including language and computer courses, whereas small towns and rural areas often lack both the financial resources and political will to arrange them. In the most poorly resourced municipalities, there is a chronic lack of funding for services in general.
Library services for immigrants are concentrated in the metropolitan areas and are coordinated by the Municipal Library of Helsinki. Some libraries in the biggest cities (for example, in Helsinki, Tampere and Turku) provide free computer and information-seeking courses for immigrants.
Earlier research on immigrants’ information practices
Information practices are understood as socioculturally constituted and relatively established ways to seek, use and share information in specific contexts, such as the performance of work tasks and the pursuit of leisure. Information seeking is a constituent of information practice and refers to the ways in which people identify, select and access information sources and channels of various kinds (Savolainen 2008).
To date, the ways in which immigrants orientate themselves in the Finnish information environment have remained unexplored. There are also gaps in our knowledge of the role of immigrants’ social networks in orientation to the new information environment. Research on immigrants has mainly been conducted within the fields of sociology, social work and social psychology (Martikainen & Tiilikainen 2007). These studies have concentrated on accommodation and integration issues of immigrants in their new environment.
International research into immigrants’ information seeking has mainly been conducted in the United States. Many studies have focused on the ways in which immigrants use public library services (Fisher, Durrance & Hinton 2004). Studies paying more attention to different information environments, as well as to the information needs and information seeking of immigrants in the context of everyday life, were not conducted until the early 1990s. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the role of the social networks of immigrants in sharing information. For example, Metoyer-Duran (1991) explored the roles and types of ethnolinguistic information gatekeepers in Native American, Asian and Latino populations in California. Chu (1999) investigated the role of immigrant child mediators and Sligo and Jameson (2000) focused on Pacific immigrants in New Zealand.
Fisher and her associates (2004) explored information practices of farm workers of who had moved from Mexico to the United States with their families. They found that personal networks were used more often than any other type of information source, because they were considered to be more reliable. Credibility and use of various sources were related to the personal status of the information provider, as well as to his or her interest in information. The primary sources of information were existing family and Hispanic friends living in the United States.
A year later, Courtright (2005) published her study of health information seeking among Latino newcomers. In line with earlier research, Courtright stated that the personal network played a crucial role in immigrants’ information seeking, with family members and Latino friends being the main source of information. Caidi and Allard (2005) focused on barriers in information seeking met by newcomers and reported that the main barriers for the immigrant in acquiring information were institutional, social, environmental and cognitive in nature. Their study was the first to articulate the idea that information provision is a key component of social inclusion and that immigrants not only need access to meaningful and relevant information but also need information literacy to use it.
The information needs of North Americans immigrating to Israel were studied by Shoham and Strauss (2007). The information needs that their informants experience were divided into two categories—general (housing, banking, health, schooling, etc.) and those related to immigration (visas, permissions to stay and to work, application for citizenship). During the integration process, word of mouth and personal contacts were the main source of information; formal sources were used only after the immigrants had been in Israel for some time (Shoham & Strauss 2007). Srinivasan and Pyati (2007) explored diasporic information environments, criticizing the lack of context of globalization and diaspora in studies of the information seeking of immigrants. They were among the first to connect information seeking and information literacy with issues of transnationalism. Ethnic groups that are widely dispersed (for example, Jews or Kurds) benefit from new media in building their ‘home country’ on the web. Because of the way they allow for information sharing, these online communities help to maintain an ethnic identity that surpasses the limits of traditional nation states.
A common problem in immigrants’ information seeking is their low awareness of their information needs. They lack a ‘cognitive map’ (Shoham & Strauss 2007, p. 189) of how things are done in the culture of their new homeland. The structures and functioning of the new society are unfamiliar and, consequently, it is difficult to ask relevant questions. Immigrants possess different characteristics with regard to ethnicity, culture, income, type of job, and perhaps even education and legal status, that set them apart from more established local populations. Thus, their information practices will not be similar to those of native-born residents who have been raised in an information environment based on a mainstream configuration of public libraries, schools, service providers, government offices and mass media. Instead, the situation of immigrants is often comparable to the information practices of vulnerable populations that are outside the mainstream (Chatman 1991, 1996, 1999).
Information literacy, the digital divide and information poverty
There are varying definitions of the concept of information literacy in the research literature (for example, Bawden 2001; Lloyd 2009). The present study is based on the communication approach to information literacy as defined by Limberg and Sundin (2006).
Limberg and Sundin (2006) studied web-based tutorials and classroom teaching of secondary school students. They found that the tools for the mediation of information literacy are not simply neutral instruments but contingent, reflecting different and occasionally conflicting worldviews. They identified four main approaches to information literacy education and thus to information literacy: the source approach focusing on information sources and bibliographical tools; the behavioural approach focusing on ways of using sources and tools; the process approach underlining the users’ experiences of information seeking and ways of creating meaning; and the communication approach emphasizing the social and communicative aspects of information-seeking practices.
The communication approach challenges the view of information seeking and information literacy as individual and generalizable processes that are unaffected by their context. It reflects an increasing awareness of the sociocultural aspects of information seeking—a perspective that has gradually become more pervasive in library and information science literature (Limberg & Sundin 2006). Information literacy is considered to be social by nature as it is based on communication among individuals. As noted above, people’s information practices take place within a community existing in a certain time and place, thus giving them a unique context. The values and norms of that community, including its codes of communication, play a crucial role in information mediation and learning new skills.
In this approach, the information-seeking expertise of information literacy trainers includes an understanding of the sociocultural conditions for the production, mediation and use of information. Social origins and contingencies of information sources affect the ways in which they mediate values and perspectives. The challenge for information literacy trainers is to convey to the people they train this understanding of how information and information seeking acquire meaning (Sundin 2008, p. 10). Paying attention to cultural issues, the communicative approach to information literacy is fruitful in studying the information literacy experiences of immigrants in the context of integration. The understanding of the social nature of information helps to see its role in the integration process. Information and information-seeking practices are seen to shape communities of users and to maintain them by communication and interaction. Thus, entering a new community and participating in its activities requires not only mastering the appropriate information-seeking tools used within it, but also a deeper understanding of the cultural values and codes of communication within that community.
There are also sociocultural aspects of information literacy associated with the use of new media. The significant role played by digital media in communication in today’s society has lately created public interest in the concept of the digital divide. The digital divide has traditionally been conceptualized as the division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of new media (DiMaggio et al. 2001). However, the traditional notion of the digital divide may be misleading, because it suggests a one-dimensional divide. A central focus of recent research on the digital divide has been, therefore, the question of ‘digital literacy’, which relates to ‘quality of use’ (Loader & Keeble 2004, p. 63), rather than the question of access to information
Often, there is an underlying assumption that there exists a ‘right’ kind of information that can be shared and owned as an alienable good (Haider 2006). Consequently, the lack of it leads individuals, groups of people, and even whole nations, to information poverty. It implies that wealthy people in the Western world are also ‘rich’ in knowledge, as they possess the ‘right’ information, whereas the rest of humanity suffers from information poverty. Confusing the media with the message, this approach fails to see that ICTs do not automatically increase information provision. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that ICTs cannot be transferred from one culture to another without considering the different context of information seeking.
On the other hand, people are in unequal positions when it comes to the use of new media because of the prevailing systemic and social structures. Gender, age, class, race, sexuality and spirituality are fundamental components that often affect daily activities and experiences, including information practices. For many immigrants, access to digital media is limited because of problems associated with lack of language (especially English-language) and technical skills, ignorance of existing services and inability to afford the needed technology and network connections (Ono & Zavondy 2007).
Methods
An ethnographic approach framed this research, which included two techniques for collecting the empirical data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Kurdish and Russian women aged between 28 and 50 years who had been living in Finland for over five years. Participants’ information practices were also observed in everyday-life situations. The interviews took place in March–May 2008 in three cities of Finland. In the recruitment of the first informants, I used my contacts with people working in the immigration field. After that, the snowball method was employed in order to recruit additional informants.
The interviews were conducted in different places according to the wishes of the informants—libraries, meeting places of ethnic associations, cafeterias, at my workplace or theirs, at my home or theirs. Usually, there were one or two meetings before the recorded interview. In the beginning, a few informants were somewhat suspicious because their life history sometimes contained very painful experiences (for example, in refugee camps), but after getting an idea of the focus and the purpose of the study, all informants had a very positive attitude towards participating in it. Still, many of them preferred to take a little time to get to know me before entering into the interview. The interviews lasted between one and two hours and were conducted in Finnish.
I used the episodic interview method which combines the traditional theme interview with elements of the narrative interview. This method allows the division of the phenomenon under study into different themes. A narrative part of question is linked to the themes, which makes it possible to get information about everyday life episodes connected to these themes (for example, seeking information about vacant jobs at the employment office) (Flick 2006, pp. 181-6). The specified questions give more general information which, in turn, helps to get an idea of the general attitudes of the culture that the interviewee presents (Bates 2004, pp. 18-9). In addition to the interviewees’ ‘reports’ on the different situations of their information seeking, I got information about their attitudes towards information, knowledge and work, especially in the context of the mastery of life.
The main themes of the interviews were: 1) job vacancies and applying for them; 2) planning for career, education and work practice; 3) training for information-seeking; and 4) dissemination of tacit knowledge related to the practices of workplaces and working life in general.
The ethnographic data of the study is based on the diaries that document the meetings with the informants during the field-work period. Diary-keeping and the analysis of the diaries is a method used widely in ethnographic studies to collect and arrange data based on the researcher’s observations (Flick 2006, pp. 287-8). In addition to the interview sessions, we met in various kinds of everyday life situations (for example, going to the employment office and the Social Insurance Institution and participating in the meetings and activities of ethnic associations). The main points from conversations with the informants were written down, together with my perceptions and thoughts on the information-seeking and information-sharing aspects of these situations.
Three interviews from the larger study were selected to be analyzed for this chapter in order to illustrate the kinds of information literacy situations and questions immigrants meet in the context of integration. The main criteria for selection were their rich content of issues relating to information literacy and their relevance to the research question stated earlier in this chapter. Limiting the number of cases allowed for their in-depth analysis.
In the analysis of the cases presented here, an inductive content analysis has been used. This method allows for the building of general categories from the data by studying the texts in detail (Krippendorff 2004; Weber 1985). After the preliminary reading of the transcriptions, open coding was employed in order to identify common issues. Based on these main points from the interviews, categories of phenomena described in the texts were created. These subcategories were studied more closely in order to find relationships between them and then combined into general categories. The goal of multi-level coding is to find central topics mentioned by the interviewee to produce a description of each case, or a theme based on them (Flick 2006, pp. 312-7). The quotes were selected to present the central topics of each case. After studying their content in detail, they were read again in the light of the whole interview in order to find support for the interpretations and conclusions. The findings were considered in the light of current relevant research literature.
Three stories of immigrants’ lives
The informants spontaneously elicited descriptions related to information literacy learning situations and a lot of attention was paid to them in the interviews. In the following, the cases are discussed in more detail.
Case 1 Anna changing occupation
Anna (name changed) is a 44-year old Russian economist. She moved to Finland six years ago with two children from her previous marriage and was granted Finnish citizenship as the spouse of a Finn. After living in Finland for two years, she got a letter from the employment office welcoming her to a meeting with the work counselor, at which
…we trained to look for vacant jobs on the Internet with her [the work counsellor]. She spoke fast and I didn’t manage to catch it all… I didn’t succeed in finding the information we were looking for. Then she said to me: ‘Next time you gonna do it by yourself.
Informant: [laughing] I didn’t remember how it works.
Researcher: Did you ask somebody to help you, that work counsellor, for example?
Informant: [shaking head] No, I don’t want to make a fool of myself.
The need for educators to observe learners in learning situations has often been mentioned in information literacy research (Abbey 2005; Bielaczyc & Collins 1999; Correia 2002; Limberg & Sundin 2006). It is highly recommended to make sure that the student understands the points of the lesson and feels free to ask questions if something remains obscure. This short episode reveals how sensitive a situation an adult information literacy lesson is. Anna’s feelings of shame at having forgotten what she had been taught prevented her from future information seeking.
Some months later, Anna attended a computing course organized by the local open college.
It was a bit frustrating, too crowded… and too basic. The teacher had made a plan for the course that he gave us in the first meeting… It included everything, even principles of designing a home page… but he had to give up with that as people didn’t follow. During the first two meetings we just trained to start and switch off the computer [laughing]. But [the teacher] was a clever man and gave me extra exercises.
The heterogeneous groups of students on courses (language, vocational, computing) is repeatedly mentioned in the interviews as an inconvenience and an obstacle for efficient learning. The feelings of frustration experienced by the advanced students decrease their motivation to attend education sessions in the future. In designing courses for immigrants, it is worth of paying attention to the homogeneity of the group in terms of existing skills of the participants.
After the course, Anna began to seek for jobs by herself.
First I tried to find out how 1 could have a job of my own education… I asked my [ethnic] friends… They told me that studying wouldn’t help. They said they [the employers] don’t hire you if you have a foreign surname… 1 didn’t believe them so 1 asked the work counsellor. She said that if I wanted to work as an engineer, I should have a Finnish diploma or complete my qualifications in a Finnish university. ‘How could I apply for such an education?’, I asked. She looked at me and said that in her opinion, I’d better look for other jobs. There are so many unemployed engineers in Finland, anyway…First I was angry with her response, but then I realized that it was true. I am going to be old. People in the work ads published in the newspapers are all under 35 and good-looking…No, I didn’t try to find out how I could complete my studies. I looked around me and realized that I couldn’t get a job in my own field. I went back to the employment office to apply for a course to be a hairdresser.
This episode of the interview reveals that Anna’s friends and husband have had an influence of her information behaviour. Positive attitudes and affective support provided by significant others may encourage an individual to seek information. On the other hand, the lack of the encouragement or negative attitudes towards information acquisition expressed in one’s social environment may even prevent his or her information seeking (Julien 1999).
In the case described above, the lack of emotional encouragement built a barrier to Anna’s aim of finding a certain kind of job. Her friends refer to the xenophopic attitudes of employers saying they would not hire a foreigner. The work counsellor suspects Anna’s qualifications and her chances in the competition for the posts in her own field of work. Anna’s own observations about the pictures in newspapers are worth noting. After realizing the tendency of today’s Finnish employers to favour younger candidates, Anna re-evaluates her chances of obtaining employment that corresponds to her academic education. Placing herself in the group of older and not-so-wanted candidates, she decides to seek other areas where the job opportunities are better.
Some months later, Anna applied for and got into a ten-month vocational course in order to become a hairdresser.
In the beginning, it was a bit difficult. The teachers spoke fast and I didn’t always understand everything. Luckily, I met Laura [a Finnish woman]…she helped me a lot.
The course was good, but we didn’t get a lot of information about working life. …nor did I ask. Maybe I thought it would have been impolite to interrupt the classes.
My interviewees often said that educators and counsellors tend to overestimate their client’s ability to understand spoken Finnish. The speed of native Finns’ speech is often regarded as an obstacle for understanding. Here, Anna’s courtesy and shyness also prevented her from asking for the information she needed. Her image of a teacher ‘who knows better’ refers to the Russian tradition of hierarchy and authoritarian teaching (Alapuro & Lonkila 2000). After getting a diploma in hairdressing, Anna
…considered establishing an own firm…1 went back to the employment office and asked for advice. The lady was very friendly, but maybe she didn’t understand me very well… She gave me a list of enterprise courses. The longest one lasted six months! I said that 1 don’t want to go for another course but start a business of my own…Then she told me to go to my bank and ask for a loan.
Anna interprets the behaviour of the work counsellor as an inability to understand her aspirations. Even though she had no clear idea of her exact information need and, therefore, of the type of information relevant to it, she felt disappointed. She did not expect to receive suggestions for more courses, but wanted more concrete advice. The lack of further dialogue is striking. Noting Anna’s reluctance to attend another course, the work counsellor advises her to ask for a loan. Instead of asking questions, she tries to guess what her client wants. On the other hand, Anna seems to let her prejudices against courses organized by the employment office affect her decisions and ends up leaving her problem unsolved.
Researcher: What did you do next to find that information?
Informant: I tried to find something on the net…l put the words ‘start a firm’ in Google and got tens of pages full of conversation on blogs [laughing, shaking head]. No, I didn’t look at the employment office’s site…I don’t know, maybe I thought that there are only ads of those courses.
The tendency of previous experiences to orientate future information seeking is shown in research (Savolainen 2007). Anna’s reactions in this situation are in line with these findings. On one hand, the failure to get the desired information encourages Anna’s self-motivated information seeking. On the other hand, the disappointment of not getting desired information from the employment office affects her choice of resources.
So 1 asked my hairdresser…a very nice Finnish woman. She gave me the phone number of somebody… in an association that helps people to start their own business. The man [of that association] was enthusiastic to tell me about everything, he gave me a pile of booklets to take with. At home, 1 asked my husband for help as 1 didn’t understand everything in them. He was laughing and said that they included information about pensions of a farmer!
Anna turns to the help of her hairdresser, an expert in questions of establishing a hair salon. Unfortunately, the firm counsellor is not able to interview his client correctly to get an idea of her needs and, consequently, fails to provide her with the desired information. After the confusing experience, Anna turns again to her friends, this time to her husband. Finally, she was hired by her hairdresser for a year.
To summarize, the above case exemplifies well the fact that those disappointed with ‘officials’ or persons assisting with formal information seeking tend to prefer informal sources such as friends, relatives or acquaintances. Feelings of disappointment are often linked to misunderstandings and inconvenience experienced in information literacy training situations.
Case 2 Svetlana learning not to ask the Finns
Svetlana (name changed), 47, moved to Finland with her family eight years ago from Russia where she had worked as an elementary school English teacher. She lives with her Russian husband in a small village close to a town. They thought that moving to a rural area could facilitate integration into Finnish society and would allow them to make Finnish friends more easily. However, this did not happen as planned. Svetlana failed to make acquaintances or to learn Finnish and, therefore, she is lonely. They have two children who have dual citizenship. Svetlana and her husband applied for Finnish citizenship three times but have failed the language lest.
A month after arriving in Finland, Svetlana and her husband applied for a language course. After one year, they were finally given the opportunity to take the course.
There were three teachers…They told us a lot of things. They also taught us to write e-mails and to seek jobs on the net.
Researcher: Would you tell me more about it? How was it?
Informant: Well… They took us to different places…like to Kela [Finnish Social Insurance Institution] and library…There the officials told us everything, how it works…We got library cards…No, I haven’t used my card. I can’t use it, because I have forgotten what she [librarian] said about it …We also went to the theatre to see a Finnish play. It was fun, even if I didn’t understand all they were saying ….
Taking immigrant students out for ‘informational sightseeing’ is a common practice used by Finnish course providers. The groups are shown different kinds of institutions useful for learning to take care of everyday affairs (for example, libraries, banks, post offices and healthcare centres), as well as cultural heritage institutions (museums, art exhibitions and galleries) and workplaces. The idea is to introduce the students to Finnish society and culture. The majority of the interviewees reported that they had participated in these kinds of activities. They considered it as an interesting way to learn about their new home country but regretted not being able to internalize all the information they were provided with on these tours. Limiting the number of places to visit and focusing on the most essential information would help immigrants avoid the unpleasant experience of cognitive overload and psychological fatigue during these informational trips.
Then they divided us into two groups and took us to the computer classes. I was not so lucky, because I had to sit with a lady …who wanted do everything by herself. She used the computer all the time.
Researcher: Did you say to her something about it?
Informant : No … It would have been impolite to do so.
Once again, the need for information literacy educators to observe what’s going on during the classes becomes obvious. Svetlana felt unable to interfere in her colleague’s behaviour which finally slowed down her learning.
I went back to the employment office and asked how I could enter a school to work as an assistant teacher with immigrant children. She [the work counsellor] told me to go back to a language course, it was two months.
Researcher. Did she answer to your question about applying for a job as an assistant teacher?
Informant’. No. She just told me to go to the course … I thought my Finnish is so bad that I have to. So I went there, and after that I went back to the employment office. And they gave me more language courses.
Researcher. How were these courses?
Informant: They were OK …In the first course we didn’t have books at all. The teacher just wanted us to talk …about everything, cooking and seasons …The teacher told us about Finnish holidays like juhannus [midsummer fest] and what Finns do then. She explained us the Finnish culture …She said you’re not supposed to talk with Finns about these things: religion, politics and money. For example, you’re not supposed to ask if somebody believes in God or how much money she or he earns …Yes, I try to avoid these [issues when talking to Finns],
This episode of Svetlana’s story contains many interesting points. The hierarchy between the work counsellor and her client is evident. Giving a recommendation to apply for a language course instead of answering her client’s question, the work counsellor seems to control the meeting in the employment office. This is not an exceptional case. A wide range of research on power and status relations in the workplace has been conducted, for example, in the fields of medicine and social work. (For a literature review, see Wallis 2008 and Fook 2002.) The studies show that the experts tend to maintain their higher status in the situational hierarchy in many different ways. These include, for example, the use of professional jargon instead of an everyday vocabulary, distancing manners and body language as well as passing or ignoring clients’ needs by taking decisions without paying attention to their viewpoints. In the case described above, Svetlana interprets the work counsellor’s behaviour to be a statement about her client’s poor language skills. Relying on the employee’s ‘expertise’, she doesn’t seem to be worried about leaving her question unanswered. In the later meetings, she still follows the given instructions without asking for details about seeking a school assistant’s job.
The teacher of the language course Svetlana describes seems to be very eager to increase the students’ knowledge of Finnish culture. In her well-meaning effort to introduce Finnish customs and social norms she implicitly acts in a way that may have a negative effect on her students’ information seeking in the future.
Researcher. After all, did you still try to find out how you could get a job as an assistant teacher?
Informant: I didn’t ask in the employment office … One of my [ethnic] friends told me to call directly to a school …Yes, I did so. But [the principal] said that I don’t have theb–what is it …yes, the Finnish qualifications of a teacher because I haven’t studied in Finland.
Researcher: What happened then?
Researcher: Did the principal tell you how you could get the required qualifications?
Informant: No …No, 1 didn’t try to find out that by myself. I thought that he didn’t want me to come to work in his school anyway. Researcher. Why did you think so?
Informant: I don’t know …He just sounded so hostile to my ears.
Svetlana gives up any hope of getting an answer to her question in the employment office and decides to make a personal contact with the school principal, following her friend’s advice. In the interviews, turning to one’s social network after a failure to get the desired information from formal channels seems to be a common way of dealing with the problem at hand.
She [the counsellor] said that I should go to a vocational course so that I could work as a cook or a waitress … And she gave me booklets about different courses. 1 said: ‘But I don’t want to work in a restaurant’. You see, I am a teacher. I am used to working at school with children. She said that my Finnish is not [good] enough for that … ‘Did you like your practice [in a restaurant]?’, she asked. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘Well, then …You will easily find work if you have the qualifications of a cook.’
Researcher. What did you think about it?
Informant: I don’t know …I thought that she surely knows better …that it is better to work in a restaurant.
Here, the work counsellor directly expresses her estimation of Svetlana’s Finnish language skills indicating they are insufficient for the desired job. In her effort to help Svetlana by advising her to seek her way to other fields of work, she implicitly gives her an impression of the Finnish hierarchy of occupations. According to Svetlana’s interpretation, she recommends that she look for a ‘better’ job than a school assistant’s job. The themes of social and financial appreciation of different jobs remain undiscussed.
Finally, Svetlana participated in the recommended ten-month vocational course.
We were three foreigners there … They [the teachers] just taught us how to cook and serve and that’s it …I talked about this with them [other immigrants] …tried to find out about salaries and so on …but they didn’t know. A few times, I tried to ask Finnish students about these [working life related issues]. But they didn’t want to tell. Or maybe they didn’t know, either ….They aren’t very talkative, anyway.
The wish to get more information relating to working life on the vocational courses is repeated in the interviews. Despite the recommendations for teachers to discuss the practices of Finnish working life (labour contracts, trade unions, laws of working time and vacation arrangements, taxation, etc.) during the lessons, the immigrant students were often obliged to seek help elsewhere. The immigrants’ lack of awareness of the relevant questions they should ask is a common problem mentioned by the interviewees.
After consulting her ethnic mates, Svetlana turns to Finnish students whose behaviour confuses her. She doesn’t know whether their silence should be interpreted as hostility towards foreigners, ignorance, or a feature of their character. Indeed, many informants have same kinds of experience of ‘quiet Finns’. The Finnish way of communication seems quite bare to foreigners (Carbaugh, Berry & Nurmikari-Berry 2006).
It can be that I don’t really know how to seek vacant jobs on the net, that I don’t know all the addresses. Where are all those announcements? There are so few of them on the employment office’s site. Elsewhere I don’t find anything. Researcher: Where do you think you could get an idea of how to find more good web resources?
Informant: [laughing] Nowhere …In the employment office, they just show their own web pages …
Researcher: Have you ever asked librarians?
Informant: Librarians? No! [laughing] How could they help? I go to library so seldom. If I need something to read, I borrow books from the Russian Club’s bookshelf.
In other interviews, too, the informants recognized their need to enhance their information literacy skills. When asked how this could happen, they usually expressed their unawareness of opportunities to seek for assistance. Librarians were never mentioned as potential information literacy teachers or libraries as a place for developing one’s information literacy.
Later, Svetlana found a part-time job in a lunch restaurant. She is going to continue her studies to become a teacher in vocational cooking courses for immigrants. Svetlana’s case shows that information literacy learning situations are not free from the issues of hierarchy and power. The different status of the trainer and the client manifests in the communication between them, both verbally and nonverbally. In meetings with their clients, trainers also unconsciously mediate values and norms of their own culture. The good advice they give can be misunderstood, if the client is not able to interpret them in the context of the culture. Good advice could, therefore, even prevent information seeking.
Case 3 Farida determined to succeed
Farida (name changed) is a 34-year-old Kurdish journalist, who came to Finland as the wife of an asylum seeker from Iran eleven years ago. After divorcing her husband, she continued living in Finland with her small son. She got Finnish citizenship two weeks before the interview. Two years after her arrival in Finland and after taking three language courses, she attended a computing course for immigrants.
In Iran, we didn’t have a computer. During the time of the dictator, it was strictly forbidden to have one. Nor did we have mobile phones or fax machines. Even copy machines were forbidden. It was only in Finland I learnt how to use a computer, on a three-week course to immigrants.
Researcher: Would you tell me more about that course?
Informant: Well …That didn’t help a lot. The teacher spoke so fast that I had difficulties to follow. And then there were something else …Never mind. I’d rather not to say it to you.
Researcher. Are you sure? It might be important.
Informant: [reflecting] OK …He [the teacher] used put his hand on my hand to move that—what is it called, mouse? And stayed very close to me …It was disgusting. I couldn’t even listen to him, so terrified I was.
In paying attention to cultural differences of their students, teachers of immigrants would avoid a lot of tension. In addition to designing lessons in correspondence with the participants’ language and other skills, course leaders working with immigrants also need to consider their classes as situations of the meeting of cultures. The research literature of cross-cultural communication in the context of teaching and learning has shown, for example, the culture-dependence of the rules of physical contact and personal spatial territory as well as the norms concerning communication between sexes (Grove 1993).
Farida continues by telling her experiences of another integration course for immigrants:
The teachers were very nice, but the speed of the course was too fast. There was so much they wanted us to know. Look, I have a whole folder full of material from that course …[shows a folder containing booklets published governmental offices, maps, brochures of bank and post services, bus time tables etc.] At the time, I was very worried about my relatives in Iran …During the classes, I just kept thinking about them and how they are doing …and did not quite follow the teaching. Well …they told us about the services on the net …about how to pay bills online …I was totally lost with that all. [shakes her head] Look, at the time I didn’t even have a bank account! [laughs] But it was there I learned to watch news on the net and that was good.
The striking point in this episode is Farida’s experience of information overload during the course. She understands the teachers’ willingness to help, but because time was limited and because of her life situation she wasn’t able to handle all the information provided and felt exhausted. She also refers to the imbalance in some parts of the information literacy education (such as, teaching a person without a bank account to use online banking services).
It was only in my current job I learned to use the Internet and write e- mails …My boss taught me. One evening, she sat down together with me and showed how to do it. We spent hours like that, without hurrying …It was so good, far better than on the employment office’s courses.
This informal information literacy lesson has remained in Farida’s mind as a pleasant experience. The calm atmosphere of the situation and her boss paying her unlimited attention was in sharp contrast to the hectic course for immigrants. The importance of affective support in information literacy learning becomes clear.
A practice of 7 months was included in that course … I said to her [Finnish language teacher] that I would rather go to work in a newspaper. She said: ‘No. they won’t take you’. ‘Why’, I asked. ‘Because you can’t speak Finnish well enough yet. You’d better to go to a kindergarten to increase your language skills’. 1 was angry with her, because she didn’t want to help me …and, in addition, I’m not so interested in children …So I asked my Finnish friend how could I apply for a job in media, and sent applications to local newspapers …No, I didn’t get a place there and went to the kindergarten. But at least, I got to know the addresses of the newspapers’ editors! [laughing].
Here, the teacher’s refusal to give the requested information in fact spurred Farida’s information-seeking and information literacy learning. Although the result was not that she was hoping for, she was finally satisfied with having learnt to apply for jobs in the field of media. The teacher ignored her wish to practise in a newspaper by suggesting another field of work that she found uninteresting.
[At the end of the course], the teacher asked us what we would like to do after the course has finished. I said that I would like to study at the university. And you know what he answered? That it is almost impossible, that my diploma won’t do and that I would be obliged to go back to senior high school that is, in his opinion, really difficult [for a foreigner] … I was desperate and believed him, so 1 signed up for an evening school …
1 noticed very soon that 1 could quite easily follow the lessons and that I already knew almost everything they taught us, sciences and languages, only the Finnish history was unfamiliar to me …
Unaware of the entrance requirements of Finnish universities and the contents of education in the lower-grade schooling, Farida followed the suggestion to take evening courses in the senior high school. The language course teacher’s estimation of his student’s abilities and Farida’s education obtained in Iran turned out to be too pessimistic; Farida was eventually frustrated with the classes as they were too easy for her.
I quit. 1 didn’t listen to anybody. I went to the university, even if 1 didn’t speak Finnish well at that time. I discussed with a secretary from the university …a nice lady …who really listened to me. 1 filled those forms: I applied for Department of Journalism and Communication. And do you believe that 1 got in at once! …I was so determined to succeed [in the entrance examination] …During that time, I talked a lot with [Finnish] people, watched [Finnish programmes on] TV and read Finnish books …I guess that helped a lot.
The way in which Farida describes her meeting with the secretary at the university is worth noting. The ‘nice lady’ seemed to be helpful and gave an impression of taking her client seriously. The positive experience led to a self-motivated and goal-orientated Finnish learning that brought success in the entrance examination of the university. Unlike the course teacher, this person encouraged Farida to seek university entrance and to trust in her abilities. In this way, Farida was ready to meet the challenges and combat the possible obstacles on her way to university.
It seems evident that the affective support stimulates one’s information seeking. The common understanding about the meaningfulness of a goal and positive attitudes towards it expressed within the social environment tend to activate information behaviour. The studies of Chatman (1991, 1996, 1999) cast light on the restrictive effect of norms and expectations on one’s information seeking in the ‘small world’, whereas Julien (1999) emphasizes the central role of the affective support provided by family members while choosing one’s career. Savolainen (2007) devotes attention to the meaning of habits in the use of orienting information.
Farida commented further on the experiences of immigrants in Finland:
All immigrants are not aware of vacant jobs in their field or don’t know that they could study more at the university, for example. They are not told to do so. When a foreigner comes to Finland, (s)he knows nothing. (S)he just relies on what (s)he’s told, what the officials say. (S)he believes them when they tell that a foreigner should apply for lower level jobs, that he cannot study in the university or to be an architect …This is politics … that all immigrants should be trained to become nurses or shop assistants etc. Finland doesn’t want foreigners with higher education to stay here.
Farida’s criticism of Finnish immigration policy and practices derives from her own experience. She interprets the behaviour of people working in immigration services in a quite negative way, drawing conclusions from their motivations. In her eyes, the officials act in ways that reveal their indifferent attitudes towards their clients. The disappointment she experienced in her contact with formal and informal information literacy educators has made her question their willingness to help immigrants find relevant information. This prevents her from taking into account the fact that the majority of the vacant jobs of today’s Finnish labour market are in the service industries and that unemployment of native Finnish with academic diplomas is a reality.
Today, Farida is working as a freelance editor and has her own Kurdish program in the local radio. Her case, as described above, underlines two things. First, affective support from the social environment seems to play a crucial role in information literacy learning. Encouraging feedback from nearby people helps individuals create a positive attitude towards learning and, therefore, stimulates their information practices. Second, consensus among people about the meaningfulness of goals motivates self-oriented information seeking.
Discussion
There is a lack of research into the information seeking of immigrants in the context of working life. This chapter has examined immigrants’ experiences of information literacy in the context of integration. Drawing on a qualitative study, information-related issues in contexts in which immigrants sought information about working life were described. Working life is an area of societal participation and active citizenship. Active citizenship and integration in society are the main goals in immigration work. When teaching information literacy to immigrants, native Finnish workers cannot help but mediate their own opinions and values. These can, in turn, be received by foreigners through a different frame of interpretation.
The main findings of the study are:
1. Immigrants have a positive attitude to developing their information literacy skills but are often unaware of the opportunities to do so.
2. Cultural misunderstandings and confusion are commonly experienced in immigrants’ dealings with Finnish immigration workers in information literacy related situations.
3. Inner motivation, concrete goals and affective support activate information seeking and the learning of new information literacy skills.
The study suggests that the concept of information literacy is strongly dependent on the context and connected to cultural factors. People coming from other cultures have information literacies that cannot be transferred to another cultural environment. The problems they meet in information seeking are usually a consequence of differences between these two information environments and do not reflect shortcomings in their personal abilities. Information literacy is both a practice and an outcome of social inclusion. As Olof Sundin (2008, p. 10) points out, information and information-seeking practices both shape and maintain different communities of users. Thus, entering these communities and participating in their activities require knowledge of the shared meanings of information literacy, not just the ability to use information-seeking tools. An understanding of the cultural values and norms of the new environment is reached through interaction and communication that is by nature information-based. It helps individuals to seek and use information that, in turn, has a positive effect during the integration process.
Information literacy and illiteracy should not be viewed as opposites. Rather, they are positions in a continuum that is temporally and spatially sensitive. One’s place in this continuum is not stable but varies according to the situational and cultural frameworks and from one information environment to another. The communicative approach to information (Limberg & Sundin 2006) stresses the sociocultural aspects of information literacy by taking into account the contexts in which information practices are carried out. The main argument of this approach, that information seeking is not a generalizable process but is sensitive to cultural issues and contexts, is supported by the findings of this study. All informants were literate, but their deficient Finnish language skills put them to a certain extent in the position of illiterate people. Without an awareness of existing information resources and the ways of utilizing them, the problems they faced in interpreting the information environment are similar to those of someone who lacks the capability to interpret and produce a written text. There is personal variation in the correlation between language skills and information literacy; those who speak Finnish fluently do not necessarily have more information literacy skills than others. A crucial factor in the development of information literacy skills seems to be a positive attitude towards learning. Inner motivation is linked to a goal that is considered achievable and based on a belief that developing information literacy is useful. According to the communicative approach to information literacy, the goals of information practices are a result of shared understanding of cultural meanings of information and its value within a community (Limberg & Sundin 2006). The divide between people in a community in their abilities to seek, share and use information is closely linked to problems of the community conveying shared meanings. Therefore, both the digital divide and information poverty (Chatman 1991, 1996, 1999) can be seen primarily as a collective problem and not just as reflecting an individual’s lack of skills.
The concept of information poverty is widely used in library and information science literature. It has been understood as a general theory about people living in the margins (Hersberger 2005). However, the present study suggests that Chatman’s model is not universal or applicable in all situations. The findings of the present study show that working life information can be mediated in various ways which are equally valuable. The medium is not essential, nor is the form of the provided information. The crucial point is whether the information turns out to be useful or not. There is no ‘correct’ use oflCTs and there are no inherently ‘high quality’ information resources.
The interviewees exhibited a lot of imagination in seeking information within a new environment, and they used a wide variety of resources and channels. They contacted associations for immigrants to find employment projects, used their children as interpreters when dealing with officials, and asked their children for help in web-based information seeking, They called the local phone company to get addresses of employers, made drawings to explain their needs to their workmates, turned to everyday acquaintances (for example, hairdresser or shop workers) for advice. This kind of creative information behaviour is far from being ‘poor’. On the contrary, it can be seen as being richer than using one ‘right’ method, such as seeking information on official web sites. The fact that immigrant informants preferred informal resources and social networks in information seeking does not distinguish them from any other group.
The interviews revealed the need to enhance the level of information literacy education. Lately, there has been a public discussion in the Finnish media about the varying quality of courses for immigrants. There is no legislation to define, for example, the qualifications of language teachers. The training of information literacy educators varies and they often lack adequate skills. The need to increase teachers’ knowledge of immigration-related issues is raised in public discussion. Not only would ‘traditional’ information literacy educators (for example, librarians and teachers) benefit from a more organized education, but other people working in the field of immigration (for example, employment office counsellors and integration trainers) would also benefit. In the light of the present study, they have a crucial role as gatekeepers to information in the social networks of immigrants. Mediating information literacy to newcomers in a community also requires an understanding of how information and information seeking create meaning (Sundin 2008, p. 10). This includes an awareness of the social and culture-dependent nature of these meanings. Thus, the education of information literacy coaches of all kinds might include knowledge of different cultures and developing skills in multicultural communication, as well as the role of an information literacy teacher in the integration process. In addition, closer cooperation between these actors and division of tasks would produce more synergy that would, in turn, decrease overlaps in their work.
In Finnish information literacy instruction, the medium often dominates the content. The use of computers becomes a goal in itself, while other, more crucial, aspects of information literacy are paid less attention. Educational organizations support students through predefined contents and strategies, as do national information society strategies. For many organizations, the provision of information literacy education and the promotion of active citizenship seem to be difficult tasks that would require a detailed evaluation of teaching practices. Applying the ideas of the communication approach in multicultural information literacy learning situations could help educators see their students as creative subjects and not just consumers of technology.
The informants wished to have a personal information literacy trainer with a cultural background similar to their own. In the future, Finnish society will need not only information-literate immigrants but immigrants with abilities to teach information literacy skills to the members of their own ethnic groups. There are already peer-group integration coaches working with new settlers, but the cooperation between them and native Finnish information literacy teachers could be extended. The education of the peer coach should include lessons in teaching and information seeking
In general, definitions and standards for information literacy usually ignore the cultural contexts of information literacy. This can be seen implicitly in the ways in which the role of ICTs has been discussed in relation to information literacy. Instead of considering the social reality in which ICTs are used, they are often seen as universal tools that can be employed in similar ways across diverse contexts.
However, the use of ICTs is strongly linked to the values and norms of society and its cultures. As the knowledge of these values and norms is essentially tacit, learning to take advantage of ICTs can he brought back into social networks and the communicative process of information literacy.
In multicultural studies, it is crucial to pay attention to the ways in which things are discussed, as the words used not only describe reality but also create it. In research texts, authors unconsciously produce or reproduce dichotomies (we/others). To avoid this, they should be aware of the sociohistorical contexts of their studies and reflect critically on their own thoughts and on the prevailing ‘truths’. The term ‘immigrant’ is politically correct if it is accepted and used by immigrants themselves; but can the term ‘information poor’ ever be politically correct?
The learning of information practices relevant for integration increases immigrants’ potential to participate in their new society and thus creates possibilities for equal and active citizenship. This can be encouraged by linking information literacy training to concrete goals and actions. In immigrants’ information literacy training, it would be useful to stress the long-term benefits brought by the application of the new skills learned, while avoiding unfounded optimism. Effective learning originates from good cooperation between teacher and student. Therefore, it is important to focus on the education of different kinds of information literacy trainers. With good skills in multicultural communication, information literacy trainers will make their valuable work even more useful for their immigrant clients.
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