About me
My key areas of expertise relate to political engagement and representation among migrant minorities, youth and women. I am especially interested in political socialisation within these groups, particularly the development of political efficacy and the transmission of political values and attitudes within families, and how these factors shape political participation and the building of political careers.
During 2026–2030, I am the Principal Investigator of the Research Council of Finland-funded project The Migrant Finnish National Election Study (MIG-FNES). In this project, we examine political orientations, democratic attitudes, and participation among migrants with Russian, Estonian, Somali, Iraqi, and Vietnamese backgrounds in the 2027 Finnish parliamentary elections. At its core lies the question of how Finnish democracy would change if voting rights in the parliamentary elections were extended to all permanent residents, including non-citizens. The project collects survey data from naturalised citizens and non-citizens living permanently in Finland. MIG-FNES is conducted as part of the Finnish National Election Study (FNES) and harmonised with European migrant election studies, enabling comparisons with both the Finnish majority population and other European countries. Registry data on voting further complement the survey. The project provides new knowledge on the legitimacy of citizenship-based representative democracy.
I am also involved in the research project Discontinuities in Intergenerational Transmission of Political Values in Finland (DISCO), which is funded by The Kone Foundation and The Finnish Cultural Foundation. DISCO is focused on investigating the congruence of political values between millennials and their parents in Finland. Our research aims to explore three key aspects: (1) Whether millennials and their parents ascribe identical or similar meanings to established political cleavages and political identities in contemporary Finland, (2) How factors such as the political engagement of parents, modern parenting styles, and gender influence value congruence within families, and (3) How the transmission of values differs in migrant families compared to native Finnish families.