Jaanika Kingumets

I am a social anthropologist fascinated by the developments of social, cultural and political life in communities on both sides of the Gulf of Finland. I’ve been working on a wide range of topics and conceptual frameworks including transnational and translocal mobility and migration, (post-)Soviet subjectivities, home-making, ethnic/racial hierarchies, state and hopes. Above all I am interested in studying ordinary people’s everyday practises leaning on ethnographic explorations, social media ethnography and in-depth interviewing.

My PhD research entitled „From Paradise to the Town of no Hope: Home-making among the Soviet-era Russian-speakers in Narva, Estonia“ (funded by Kone Foundation between 2010-2016) explored the everyday practices of home-making of a migrant population. This study shed light on the process by which Narva turned from a place of hope and development into a place of uncertainty and injustice in the experiences of the Soviet generation.

In 2018-2020 I worked for research and arts collaboration project (DIARA) that investigated the discursive constructions of ethnic and racial hierarchies in Facebook groups of Estonian- and Russian-speaking migrants in Finland.

In 2022-2023 I conducted ethnographic research in Meri-Pori in Western Finland, focusing on residents' everyday experiences of their neighbourhood's industrialisation, de-industrialisation and re-industrialisation.

From January 2024, I run my individual postdoctoral project that investigates Finnish and Estonian women's financial subjectivities.

From September 2024, I also work part-time as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Helsinki, Unit of Social and Public Policy, in the Academy of Finland funded project Critical Nodes: Migrant Workers within Labour Networks (NodeWork).