FINNS IN AUSTRALIA: FAMILY MEMORIES AND EVERYDAY HERITAGE ON FACEBOOK

Abstrakti

In 2018, a Facebook group was founded for “those Finns who left loved ones and the life they knew behind and immigrated to Australia - some to return home and the others to stay”. I had awaited such a group since 2012, when I first became interested in how Finnish descendants explore and represent their history in Australia. The group’s focus is less on nostalgia and more on highlighting the largely invisible role of Finnish immigrants in Australian history. In this article, I examine the group’s hybrid memory practices as everyday, vernacular history-making and discuss methodological and ethical challenges of studying these types of Facebook groups.