Encounters. ETMU is an open community. Etmu provides opportunities for coming together and sharing urgent, research-based, critical and subversive knowledge. It brings together researchers from different disciplines, institutions, and career stages– for instance at the yearly Etmu Conference. Anyone can become an ETMU member and have access to the ETMU mailing list.
Transdisciplinary. ETMU supports and disseminates high-quality, innovative, open-access, and critical understanding of issues of migration, belonging, geo-politics, modernity-/coloniality. ETMU does so by supporting the functioning of the Nordic Journal of Migration Research and making research accessible through the ETMU blog.
MUltiplicity. ETMU strives to be an ally for minoritized groups within academia and in society to create space for conversations and dialogue, amplifying marginalized voices and forms of knowledges– for instance through the Etmu award.
Background of ETMU
Finnish research on ethnic relations and international migration has been growing quickly since the 1990s, when immigration to Finland started to increase more rapidly. The Syreeni Research Program (2001–2003), funded by the Academy of Finland, brought together a broad spectrum of researchers working on questions related to international migration and ethnic relations. Partly on the basis of Syreeni, scholars working in this field saw it necessary to establish a scientific society to promote interdisciplinary research. The first steps in this direction were taken in October 2002, in conjunction with the Nordic Migration Research Conference held in Helsinki, when a group of scholars, with the lead of Annika Forsander, gathered together to form a plan for the founding of the society. During the winter of 2002–2003, a group of researchers met several times and made preparations for the founding. ETMU was officially established at the House of Science and Letters in Helsinki on June 2, 2003.