Beware, the Lifestyle Refugees Are Coming
It’s not bad enough for you to come steal our resources.
In the past 10-ish years, I’ve seen people move to the right politically every single time I go home to Finland.
Whether it was a friend from high school criticizing the government for letting in asylum seekers or making jokes about Muslims, or men defending sexual assaulters, Finland has been slowly but surely Trumpifying.
But I’m still surprised by the things otherwise rational Finns now think are true. One of these things is a concept we call elintasopakolainen, or “lifestyle refugee”, that someone said in a conversation about immigration.
It’s not bad enough for you to come here
The term lifestyle refugee means someone who doesn’t really move because they need to, but because they want to.
Because they’re interested in the amazing quality of life of the best country in the world. And we just don’t have enough to share. (Sound familiar, people in the US?)
It’s obviously a derogatory term, and it got thrown around a lot during the Syrian refugee crisis. It’s what Finnish people say when they consider that someone to not really be doing bad enough to need to flee.
