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2.1 The city’s foreign nationals

Immigrant refers to the general concept of a person who has a permit or right of resi-
dence to live in Finland. 'Immigrant' refers to the general concept employed to describe all
persons who have moved to the nation. Rovaniemi integrates people who have moved to
the town on various rationales. The integree obtains information and skills for managing in
the community and in work life as well as support for maintaining his/her own language

and culture.

Immigrants include, for instance:

Refugees received by the municipality Rovaniemi receives people on an annual

basis who are regarded as refugees by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and

have been granted an entry permit. A positive residence permit can also be obtained by a

person seeking asylum or via family reunification.

Returnees Former and current Finnish nationals have moved to Rovaniemi –

for the most part those returning from Sweden and some Ingrian Finns.

Via marriage Many families representing two or more cultures live in Ro-
vaniemi.

Employees Foreign labour totals, on average, over 500 people per year.

Students Rovaniemi has about 670 international students on a yearly basis

who either study for a Finnish degree or part of a foreign degree at the University of Lap-
land and Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences.

2.2 Nationalities and languages

Nationality other than Finnish (people) Other language than Finnish, Swedish or Sámi
as mother tongue (total no. of speakers)

Russia (204) Russian (351)

Sweden (114) Chinese (111)

Myanmar (110) English (110)

China (99) Farsi (106)

Iraq (93) German (80)

Afghanistan (65) Kurdish (76)

Germany (55) Arabic (71)

Somalia (46) and Thailand (46) Thai (54)

TABLE 1: Nationalities and foreign languages in Rovaniemi (Statistics Finland, 31 Dec. 2012)

People representing over 90 nationalities (1,424 people) reside in Rovaniemi. Over 71 lan-
guages are spoken in the city. A total of 1,662 people speak languages other than Finnish,

Swedish or Sámi. (Statistics Finland, 31 Dec. 2012)

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