Natural settler colonialists? Salla Tuori, ‘Settler Colonial Mentality in Narratives of Finnish Migrants in Brazil: Exploring Gender and Race Identifications’, in Shirley Anne Tate, Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, Palgrave, 2022, pp. 467-484 | settler colonial studies blog

Natural settler colonialists? Salla Tuori, ‘Settler Colonial Mentality in Narratives of Finnish Migrants in Brazil: Exploring Gender and Race Identifications’, in Shirley Anne Tate, Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, Palgrave, 2022, pp. 467-484

12Mar22

Abstract: Until very recently settler colonialism was not a relevant consideration for Nordic trans-Atlantic migration. Drawing on archival data, this article explores migration from Finland to Brazil in the early to mid-twentieth century. A large proportion of the small number of Finnish migrants to Brazil were part of establishing, or living in, a utopian community in the small town of Penedo. In this chapter a decolonially informed approach is used to explore Finnish migrants’ understandings of race and gender in mid-twentieth century Brazil. The chapter shows how a white Finnish middle-class migrant in the 1950s already understands “equal gender relations” as a Finnish and European feature, and as a marker of modernity, illustrating “settler colonial mentalities”.

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