Avoin ja vapaa kaikille, varsinkin eurooppalaisille: Suomalaissiirtolaisten utooppinen yhteisö Dominikaanisessa tasavallassa 1929–1944

This article examines coloniality, race and gender in the context of a Finnish vegetarian utopian community at Villa Vásquez in the Dominican Republic. The study explores the community as part of settler colonialism of the Caribbean, a perspective only recently applied to Finnish migration to the Americas. The Finnish community is viewed as part of a Dominican hierarchical structureinto which other ethnic, racialized groups were imagined. Studying of the Finnish settler group as a part of the history of Finnish settler colonialism elucidates not only ways in which the Finnish settlers regardedother ethnic groups in the Dominican Republic, but it also casts light on how they established themselves as part of local society. We analyse the case with empirical
material consisting of newspaper and journal articles by the Finnish migrants as well as other type of written material produced by the settlers themselves. Thus, the small scale migration to the Dominican Republic is contextualized in larger processes and structures of settler colonialism.