Transnational death: practices of death and remembrance in the transnational everyday on the Finnish-Russian border

In our group, we study death, which is the existential and inevitable event of life, in the context of immigration and transnationalism. We look at death from three perspectives. First, we focus on care practices and social policy, asking how immigrants die and how they care for the dying. What does actually happen in multicultural end-of-life care and what is required of it? Does care change in the context of immigration and transnationalism? Second, in terms of cultural research, death provides a fruitful basis for exploring the formation of identities in present-day Finland, where transnational networks and landscapes are common and mundane. Which deaths are considered relevant and remembered? Which deaths are forgotten and why? How are different deaths represented? Third, history research provides perspectives that allow us to question the nation-state’s heroic or sacrificial ways of remembering ”their own” and forgetting the deaths of “others”.