ABSTRACT
In 1994, Finland voted to join the European Union, which led to a small-scale exodus towards Europe and also Britain. This chapter aims to address diverse Finnish cultural responses to Brexit, written in Finnish and English and published in Finland and Britain in the period 2016–2020. The effects of bordering manifested in exclusion and anxiety are reported similarly in many other journalistic and media texts telling of the Finnish experience from the perspective of Finnish writers living in Britain. The chapter analyzes Finnish popular cultural perspectives onto Brexit by addressing texts by key politicians and journalists as experts on Britain, journalistic reports of and interviews with Finns living in Britain, self-representation by living in the United Kingdom through a discussion of public blogs and finally two brief creative responses to Brexit. As the Finnish migrants learn that they, too, are constructed in Brexit discourse as ‘inappropriate others’, this transformation into outsiders generates anxiety.
