This session explores trust and belonging in mundane relationships between people with different backgrounds. This includes questions about how trust and belonging shape these relationships as well as how individuals experience trust and belonging in their everyday relationships. Such relationships may include close relationships (e.g., friends, family, intimate partners), neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances, as well as more distal relationships, such as those formed in the third sector (e.g., NGOs, associations), in institutional contexts (e.g., schools or kindergarten) or on digital platforms.

Relevant questions may include, for example: what material, social or psychological elements hinder trust and belonging in relationships between people with different backgrounds? Which elements, in turn, can support them? How do individuals experience their everyday relationships of such nature; how are trust and belonging connected to these experiences? How do individuals deal with and make sense of mis- or distrust in their everyday relationships? How do close and rewarding relationships between people with different backgrounds develop? Whether and how may feelings of dis- or mistrust prevent one from forming such relationships? How do relationships between people with different backgrounds in everyday life, positive or negative, shape individuals’ sense of belonging and trust in society?

We invite presentations that explore these or related themes in everyday relationships between people with different backgrounds from diverse perspectives, disciplines, and methodological approaches.

It is well known that identifying with a superordinate category can facilitate friendship between people with different backgrounds by highlighting their similarities. However, rewarding friendships may require a subjective sense of belonging to the common category. In this qualitative study, we investigate how an emerging friendship identity, “we-ness”, unfolds over time in accounts of Finnish and immigrant-background befriending dyads where both members are mothers. We understand we-ness to consist of (a) a sense of trust and closeness with the partner, (b) perceived similarity and (c) the assumption that one’s partner shares a similar identification with the relationship as oneself. The data consists of individual interviews with 12 intergroup mother dyads conducted individually three times over a six month period after first meeting each other (N = 72 interviews). Based on narrative analysis with a longitudinal dyadic approach, we constructed four longitudinal dyadic composite narratives: 1) becoming life-long friends; 2) gradually developing a bond as mothers; 3) uniting motherhood, divisive group differences; and 4) differing perspectives on the importance of motherhood. In the first two narratives, the we-ness was shared within the dyad and complementary with motherhood, demonstrating deep feelings of closeness and trust toward the partner and perceptions of a shared worldview (Type 1), or a fairly close bond and some doubts regarding the friendship’s future (Type 2). In the latter two narratives the we-ness was not shared within the dyad, reflecting tensions or incompatibility between we-ness and differing backgrounds of the participants (Type 3) or motherhood (Type 4). The results show that sharing a common category is not always enough to facilitate shared we-ness in friendships between people with differing backgrounds.
Keywords:
befriending, friendship, we-ness, longitudinal dyadic analysis, narrative

International students are often discussed as ideal immigrants who are expected to contribute to Finnish society as highly educated experts after graduation. At the same time, they face difficulties in finding employment that matches their expertise. As previous research has shown the presence of racism in the Finnish labor market, international students’ employment difficulties can be assumed to partly result from discrimination.

Career counseling is often presented as a way to improve international students’ knowledge of the labor market and their position within it. In this study, we examine the interactional dynamics of career counseling sessions involving international students. More specifically, we focus on how racism in the Finnish labor market is (not) communicated in these institutional encounters. The data consist of 16 video- or audio-recorded career counseling sessions, which are analyzed from the perspectives of applied conversation analysis and discursive psychology.

The perspective of non-communication enables the analysis of the non-occurrence of communication events that could have occurred in a given situation. We argue that, as international students are at risk of experiencing racist discrimination, this is a relevant topic in career counseling. However, it is not explicitly brought up in the data. In this paper, we examine situations in which this topic could have been raised and discuss the dynamics and consequences of its non-communication.

Drawing on Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) (Jordan, 2017), this study explores how young service users with migrant backgrounds experience relationship-building with child welfare professionals in out-of-home care (OHC) in Finland. While previous research on young people with migrant backgrounds in child welfare has highlighted participation, language barriers, and institutional inequalities, less attention has been paid to the relational processes through which trust, connection, and relational safety are established, negotiated, and sometimes withdrawn.

The study is based on photo-elicited semi-structured interviews with nine service users aged 15-17 living in three OHC institutions across Finland. Data were analysed using thematic analysis informed by RCT. Although the same dataset has previously been used to examine language barriers and hermeneutical injustice, the present analysis focuses on young people’s relational experiences with child welfare professionals.

The quote, “She really listens instead of just giving rehearsed replies,” captures an emerging pattern in the empirical data. Initial analysis suggests that trust may be generated less through professional authority or expertise than through experiences of authentic responsiveness and genuine engagement. Preliminary results indicate that young people actively assess professionals and selectively invest in relationships they perceive as trustworthy, sometimes waiting for “the right person” before seeking support. Initial findings also suggest that withdrawal from professionals may be understood not simply as disengagement or resistance, but as a protective response to experiences of mistrust, surveillance, or relational disappointment.

The study contributes to child welfare and migration research by conceptualising young people as active relational agents and by examining how trust is negotiated in child welfare institutional care. Preliminary findings suggest that migration and language diversity may shape the conditions under which trust, connection, and withdrawal are negotiated, while the relational processes themselves may extend beyond this particular group. The study further demonstrates the value of RCT for understanding relationship-building in child welfare settings.

This article examines the competencies required of authorities and police officers when encountering victims of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), with a particular focus on intercultural competence. More specifically, it asks how intercultural competence can be conceptualised as a core professional competency in authorities’ and police officers’ encounters with SGBV victims, and what dimensions of such competence are required to ensure victim-sensitive and equitable responses. The analysis draws on the Nordic policing context. Adopting a reflexive analytical perspective, the study is positioned as a conceptual contribution. In conceptual research, arguments are not grounded in primary empirical data in the conventional sense; rather, they emerge from the systematic integration and synthesis of existing concepts and theoretical frameworks.

SGBV is a complex and often underreported phenomenon, particularly affecting people from multicultural backgrounds, who may face barriers to accessing support and justice. Public authorities, especially the police, play a key role in protecting victims and ensuring equal access to justice. Failure to report violence can jeopardize victims’ safety and recovery, and experiences of not being believed by police have been linked to adverse health outcomes.

In the Nordic policing context, public trust and institutional legitimacy are closely tied to the quality of police-citizen interactions. Responding effectively to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) requires more than legal and procedural knowledge; it also demands professional competencies such as intercultural competence, cultural safety, trauma-informed practice, and empathetic communication. Research shows that survivors’ trust in the police is strongly influenced by whether they are heard, believed, informed, and treated with dignity throughout the reporting and investigative process. In contrast, victim-blaming, dismissive treatment, and inadequate communication may contribute to revictimisation and reduced engagement with justice processes. Furthermore, studies highlight the importance of police officers’ trauma-related knowledge and their ability to provide supportive responses to survivors. Despite growing recognition of these competencies, Nordic research remains limited in examining how this expertise is developed, enacted, and supported within policing practice, particularly in relation to SGBV, indicating an important gap in the literature.

In research on migration, the importance of networks and communities is embedded in the understanding of how migrants attach to their chosen place of residence. We focus on the concept of the community (la comunidad) and the importance of it in research on migrants and migrant communities. We ask what characterizes the experienced (lack of) “comunidad” among Latin American women living in Helsinki. Our goal is to highlight how migration research focusing on “ethnic” or “national” communities may obscure communal experiences that are loose and project-bound but still provide some sort of care to these migrant women.
The data draw on two ongoing research projects: one focusing on Spanish speaking women and their experiences of the Finnish welfare state, another examining the role of urban social infrastructure in the identity construction processes of cross-cultural children with Latin American backgrounds. We analyze the different needs women face, from navigating bureaucratic systems and finding employment to raising children in the diaspora.

A common element across this trajectory is the fragility of la comunidad, which is sometimes experienced as absent. While struggling to find a sense of belonging in Finland, everyday life is often organized around the family, particularly spouses and children and around what we conceptualize as “punctual communities”. Built around shared projects or common interests rather than national affiliations, these punctual communities are temporally and spatially limited. Nonetheless, they provide moments of belonging and loose social ties that eventually allow reciprocity and care — la comunidad— to emerge among those who produce and sustain these projects.

Drawing on sensory ethnographic research in a Vietnamese-owned nail salon catering to middle-class customers in Helsinki, the paper traces the journeys through which manicurists acquire and develop their skills, from apprentice to expert. It explores the different “battles” that migrant workers (most women) must cope with, negotiate, or resist not only within the nail salon itself, such as in the encounters with clients involving time pressure, work demands, proximity and intimate interactions, but also in their relationship with other manicurists, salon owners, and especially in negotiating their own sense of self, dignity, belonging, and embodied experiences in the workplace. Feminist phenomenology is a theoretical approach that examines lived experiences in the relation to gender, and social structures. It understands the body not as a neutral biological entity, but as a socially and politically constituted site where cultures, norms, social discourses, and power relations are experienced, embodied, internalized, and negotiated through everyday life (Ahmed, 2014; Butler, 1990, 2022; Young, 1980). For migrant women, these processes intersect with gender, race, and class, as occupational skills and qualifications may not be recognised as equivalent professional capital in the host society (Anderson, 2000; Parreñas, 2001). These barriers are more particular in the beauty service industry, where the body is exploited and emotion labour is commercialised and controlled in encounters with customers (Hochschild, 2012; Kang, 2020; Vu, 2022). Building on these perspectives, the paper draws attention to the question: In those exploited working conditions, how do embodied skills become a foundation for workers’ sense of self-worth? By engaging with feminist epistemology, it focuses on embodied skills involved in producing women’s sense of self-worth in nail salons from the over 300 hours observing in a nail salon in downtown Helsinki.

Formal inclusion in schools, universities, and workplaces does not necessarily translate into everyday belonging. Relationships across different backgrounds are also built through informal sociality—at parties, school trips, student events, and after-work gatherings, where friendships, networks, and shared experiences develop. This paper explores how dominant practices of informal social life can challenge the sense of belonging among Muslim women of Iraqi and Afghan backgrounds who have grown up in Finland.

The paper draws on data from a broader grounded theory study comprising 31 interviews with Muslim women in Finland. The present analysis focuses on eleven Muslim women of Iraqi and Afghan backgrounds who were born in Finland or spent substantial parts of their childhood and adolescence there. The analysis focuses on the women’s experiences of informal social life, particularly how opportunities and constraints for participation were connected to their sense of belonging.

Two interrelated features were especially significant. Alcohol was often central to parties, student events, and after-work gatherings. For women who wished to participate while maintaining their religious boundaries, the centrality of alcohol often limited access to occasions where friendships were formed and social networks strengthened. Mixed-gender and embodied forms of sociability, including dancing and particular forms of physical interaction between women and men, also came into tension with their religious boundaries. Together, these practices created boundaries around some forms of participation, even without explicit rejection.

The findings suggest that the boundaries of belonging are not always produced through explicit rejection or institutional exclusion. They can also emerge through unequal opportunities to participate in ordinary social activities through which friendships are formed and social connections strengthened. By shifting attention from formal inclusion to informal sociality, the paper highlights an often-overlooked dimension of how belonging is shaped in everyday life in societies marked by migration.

How trust configures in the access to and use of mental health services among migrants in Finland? People with migrant backgrounds use mental health services less than their needs require, and less than the majority population. Language barriers, digitalisation of services, and stigma related to mental health issues can limit access, but also lack of trust is a pertinent challenge. Yet little is known about how trust is built, lost, and rebuilt in digital mental health care. This presentation responds to the need to understand how trust configures in mental health care, focusing on how trust shapes migrants’ willingness to disclose mental health concerns and engage with services.

The presentation draws upon ongoing research on Migrants, Ethnic Minorities, and Digital Mental Health Support in Finland. Empirically, the analysis draws on interviews (N=37) with three groups of interlocutors: (1) people with migrant or ethnic minority backgrounds (2) interpreters involved in mental health consultations; and (3) professionals supporting migrant and ethnic minority mental health. Drawing on sociological theories of trust and feminist new materialisms, especially iiiKaren Barad’s agential realism, it understands trust as emerging through relationships, language, digital technologies, and institutional practices.

The presentation contributes to scholarship on ethnic and migration studies by revealing the often invisible work of building trust in migrant communities. It further discusses its implications for more inclusive digital mental health services for migrants in Finland. The findings show that trust is central to both communicating mental health concerns and accessing support. Fear of institutions, confidentiality concerns, and stigma related to mental health issues complicate trust in mental health services. However, community leaders often act as trusted intermediaries, helping migrants navigate services; likewise, the presence of interpreters with migrant backgrounds can strengthen trust. Yet interpreters and community leaders often conduct significant affective labour without adequate support or recognition.

Keywords: trust; digital mental health; migration; digital exclusion; agential realism; qualitative
research; Finland

This paper examines how transnational migration trajectories shape young adults’ (18–22 years) experiences of belonging, inclusion/exclusion, and spatial attachment in Tampere, Finland. It asks: How do everyday spatial practices and encounters across difference influence young migrants’ sense of place attachment and their emerging understandings of environmental citizenship and sustainability? The study draws on triangulated geo-social data, including digital mapping activities, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and a “Letter to My Future Self” exercise. The study includes 13–15 participants with diverse transnational mobility backgrounds living and studying in Tampere. Preliminary findings suggest three key insights. First, environmental inclusion is strongly supported by urban infrastructures and access to nature, which together foster intuitive engagement with sustainable everyday practices and strengthen place attachment. These practices, particularly walking, cycling, recycling, and engagement with urban green spaces provide situated entry points for performing environmental citizenship as embodied and everyday practice. Second, social inclusion is more uneven in the current material, yet not uniformly constrained. While environmental sustainability is readily enacted through spatial practices, social and cultural belonging is experienced in more differentiated ways, shaped by varying experiences of inclusion and exclusion and by uneven opportunities for embedded participation. However, data also indicate future-oriented expectations of social belonging in Tampere. Third, belonging is multi-sited. Transnational ties mean that attachment to Tampere coexists with sustained emotional and social connections elsewhere, producing asynchronous forms of place attachment and social belonging. The paper contributes to the conference theme of trust and belonging by showing that environmental inclusion, social inclusion, and belonging do not necessarily develop at the same pace. It highlights how urban nature and sustainable infrastructures foster place attachment, while social belonging is shaped by both inclusionary and exclusionary dynamics alongside transnational attachments.

Keywords: transnational youth migration; urban belonging; place attachment; everyday spatial practices; environmental citizenship; social sustainability

International migration is driving the growth of many European cities, making local populations increasingly diverse. However, intergroup contact and a shared sense of belonging do not necessarily increase in parallel: encounters between different groups of residents may be avoided, interactions may be perceived as unpleasant, and boundaries between groups may remain impermeable. The persistent challenge of residential segregation has prompted policymakers to consider ways of strengthening social connectedness at the neighbourhood level. To support these efforts, a deeper understanding of the characteristics and correlates of social connectedness in urban contexts is needed. The potential benefits are substantial, as recent research suggests that not only individuals’ own sense of belonging to a community, but also the average level of identification among community members, can serve as a “social cure” for a range of psychosocial challenges. We conceptualise social connectedness as a subjective sense of belonging and a psychological bond between individuals and groups. It is assessed through five neighbourhood-related dimensions: sense of belonging, neighbour relationships, attitudes towards diversity, perceptions of intergroup relations, and perceived safety. Using Helsinki as a case example, we draw on recent survey datasets collected in neighbourhoods with varying socio-economic profiles and levels of ethno-cultural diversity. Our objectives are to (1) examine the associations between neighbourhood socio-economic characteristics and social connectedness, and (2) analyse the roles of socio-economic (dis)advantage and neighbourhood social connectedness in shaping residents’ self-reported well-being. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for cities seeking to harness the potential of social connectedness in increasingly diverse urban neighbourhoods.