To understand the reality of racial and ethnic profiling in Finland, one must begin with the lived experiences of those subjected to it. Encounters with law enforcement that single out individuals on the basis of skin color, accent, or perceived “foreignness” are more than fleeting inconveniences. They are moments of humiliation, exclusion, and fear. For those stopped in public spaces and forced to prove their legitimacy, the experience leaves a mark: it disrupts the innocence of moving freely in society and replaces it with a constant awareness of being watched and potentially criminalized.
These encounters are not rare anomalies. They illustrate how policing practices in Finland—whether openly admitted or officially denied—draw upon racialized assumptions of who “looks Finnish” and who does not. When police justify stops by describing suspects as “foreign-looking” or “non-Finnish speaking,” they reveal how appearance alone is operationalized as a marker of suspicion. The very language used, terms like poikkeavan näköinen (abnormally or unusually looking), underscores how whiteness operates as the normative baseline for Finnishness.
The Denial of Profiling and Its Consequences
Officially, Finnish police deny engaging in ethnic profiling. Yet, in interviews, officers have stated candidly that they approach individuals who “look foreign” or switch to English if someone does not respond in fluent Finnish. Such statements are themselves textbook definitions of profiling, but they rarely spark outrage or institutional accountability. When mainstream media reports on stop-and-search operations, the perspectives of those targeted often remain absent. Instead, the official police narrative dominates, justifying profiling as necessary for tackling crime or irregular migration.
This lack of recognition is deeply consequential. If profiling is not admitted to exist, there can be no legal remedies or institutional reforms. Finland’s legal framework does not even recognize race or ethnicity as formal categories, which further complicates how victims can contest discriminatory treatment. In practice, the burden falls on individuals who have been profiled to report their experiences to the very institutions that carried out the profiling.
Profiling as a Structural Issue
It is tempting to attribute profiling to the prejudices of individual officers. Yet this explanation overlooks how law enforcement operates within broader structures of nationalism, migration control, and racialized belonging. Profiling is not simply the result of bad judgment—it is a systemic practice rooted in the assumption that Finnishness is visually identifiable. This assumption reflects a deeper ethno-nationalist logic: to be “truly Finnish” is to be white.
The consequences are visible in large-scale operations where police, border guards, and other authorities stop hundreds of “foreign-looking” individuals in public spaces like shopping centers or transport hubs. Though such sweeps may occasionally identify a handful of people with outstanding warrants, the overwhelming majority of those stopped are innocent. Yet they are subjected to public scrutiny and the implicit message that they do not fully belong.
The Broader European Context
Finland is not unique in this regard. Across Europe, racial and ethnic profiling has intensified in the wake of global terrorism, migration crises, and the securitization of borders. Countries like Denmark, France, and the UK have faced criticism for institutionalized stop-and-search practices disproportionately targeting racialized minorities. In this sense, Finnish profiling is part of a wider European trend, though made more insidious by the national denial of its existence.
The comparison highlights another paradox: while governments openly acknowledge the need for migrant labor to sustain aging societies, they simultaneously criminalize and marginalize those same populations through discriminatory policing. Profiling thus not only violates individual dignity but also undermines the very integration and social participation that policymakers claim to support.
Contesting Profiling and Imagining Alternatives
Challenging ethnic profiling requires more than condemning isolated incidents. It demands rethinking the categories of belonging on which policing relies. If Finnishness continues to be defined narrowly through whiteness, law enforcement will reproduce exclusion no matter what official guidelines state.
Recent initiatives such as The Stopped project, funded by the Kone Foundation, attempt to document experiences of profiling and generate new data for public debate. By centering the voices of those targeted, such projects confront the culture of denial and bring empirical evidence to a space where anecdotal dismissal has long prevailed. They also highlight the need for broader legal and policy frameworks that explicitly prohibit profiling and hold authorities accountable.
Toward a More Just Society
The challenge, ultimately, is to move beyond individualizing the problem and to recognize profiling as a structural practice that reflects deeper racialized hierarchies in Finnish society. It destabilizes personal security, fractures trust in law enforcement, and undermines democratic principles of equality before the law.
If the question at stake is who counts as a Finn, then the answer cannot be left to the arbitrary judgments of police officers on the street. Instead, it must emerge from a collective reimagining of Finnishness as inclusive rather than exclusionary, and of public safety as something achieved through trust and equality rather than suspicion and control.
The question remains: will Finland continue to deny the existence of profiling, or will it face the uncomfortable truths necessary to build a society where belonging is not measured by the color of one’s skin?
