Romani Rejection Letters

The Finnish Romani community is better educated than before and willing to join the workforce, but they can’t find employment that correlates with their education. The problem is systemic and ingrained racist prejudices held by the majority of Finns. The names and appearance of Romani people disqualifies them in the preselection phase, even if their education and experience are at the same level as other applicants.

To help Finland’s Romani people find employment, Romako opened an employer pool, from which people can check whether the company their applying for is willing to hire people of Romani descent. Our goal was to start a national discussion about the topic and to get as many companies to join the pool as possible.

Rejection letters are an easy and painless way to let applicants know that they weren’t selected. They are typically extremely generic and rarely state any reason as to why employment wasn’t gained. They are also an easy tool to hide systemic racist prejudices that exist within our society.

We returned rejection letters collected from the Romani community, accompanied with our own attachment.

The letters were accompanied with an attachment, that made the recipient think about their own prejudices. The attachment also acted as an invitation to join the employer pool if the applicant’s Romani background wasn’t an issue.

The letters were returned directly to the original sender, as they have the power to decide on employment within their company.