City of Vaasa, Immigration and some Electric Sheep.

Today I hopped on a train heading north. In my work at the Kalevi Sorsa -foundation I am coordinating a research project on immigration and the work market. A few weeks ago I was asked to share some of my initial results from a series of workshops I hosted last fall and winter. Not only was I asked to do that, they asked me to host the entire ETNO seminar. The “Q-seminar method” I piloted with the process is focused on the question how immigrant NGO’s could start producing services to the open market.

And, since I am a true believer in open data and open knowledge, I’ll “release” the entire Q-seminar process “handbook” as a Creative Commons research method when I get the thing tweaked.

You may not know but in Finland there are only a few immigrants and even fewer refugees. With a falling birth rate and an ever expanding population of the elderly, not to mention the very costly and outdated welfare state, we really need immigration. At the same time  we are trying to avoid the mistakes in the integration process we see elsewhere in Europe – and even Sweden.

As you may know, we have our share of the right wing populist movements and this year is a local election year. Along with the Greece mess, there is going to be some heated discussions about immigration and the EU.

So, here I am in Vaasa and I am starting to realize all the stuff I forgot home.

I have some nice clothes for tomorrow but I forgot my “better shoes” so I’ll have to pull this of wearing green jack boots with yellow ties. Also, I have no toothpaste. All I have to snack is a bag of candy and some ED. Great. What I do have is a good collection of technology. There are at least two devices with 3G connections and this computer is wired to the hotels WiFi network. Everything I do is connected to this technology.

Since the long train ride here and the relatively lax day tomorrow, I thought I could take some time of from my research but no, technology follows me everywhere. And since my writing process is not going so good, all this electricity and connectedness is starting to hurt my head.

But I don’t complain, I love it. When I finish watching Reel Steal I hope to fall a sleep and dream of electronic sheep.