Integration Services in the Municipality of Inari

The revised Integration Act (681/2023) entered into force on January 1, 2025, simultaneously with the reform of TE services. With the reform of the Integration Act, the overall responsibility for promoting integration was transferred to municipalities. The aim of the Integration Act is to strengthen the employment of immigrants, their skills supporting employment, language proficiency, and participation in society. Additionally, the Act seeks to promote equality, non-discrimination, and positive interaction between different population groups. Well-functioning municipal basic services support integration, and municipalities are responsible for ensuring that services are suitable for immigrants. The municipality must provide low-threshold guidance and counselling to immigrants and integration clients to help them find the services and activities they need.

The municipality is responsible for organizing the initial phase of integration services, which include:

• assessment of service needs and skills related to integration
• preparation of an integration plan
• multilingual civic orientation
• integration training and other education/services that support Finnish and Swedish language skills, literacy, societal and working life skills, employment, and entrepreneurship, including final language proficiency testing in integration training
• guidance and counselling during the integration programme

For jobseekers, the above-mentioned services are provided by the employment authority. The Municipality of Inari is part of the North and East Lapland employment area, with Sodankylä as the responsible municipality. Contact information of the employment area: Yhteystiedot | Sodankylän kunta

For immigrants outside the labour force, the Municipality of Inari is responsible for organizing services. The municipality has made an agreement with the North and East Lapland employment area to procure multilingual civic orientation and integration training also for integration clients outside the labour force. Interpretation services are arranged when necessary for immigrants who do not speak Finnish.

As part of the "Smooth Transition to Arctic Life" project (2019–2021), Inari has described a service path for labour migrants, which is a vision of smooth settlement services built based on the needs of immigrants. The service path was last updated in 2025 to reflect the current situation. It outlines the mandatory steps and actions that a labour migrant will encounter when moving to Inari. The service path is available in English and serves both immigrants and the parties guiding and cooperating with them. The service path can be found here: Make Inari Your Home

Integration contact person:
Wellbeing Coordinator Leena Korhonen / leena.korhonen@inari.fi / 040 643 4305