Fewer people granted Finnish citizenship in 2018

Finnish citizenship was granted to 9,211 foreign citizens permanently resident in Finland in 2018 and the number is 3008 or 25 percent lower compared to the number of previous year, according to Statistics Finland.

In 2018, Finnish citizenship was granted by far most often to citizens of Russia, numbering 1,766 of those who were granted Finnish citizenship.

The number, however, was 992 fewer than in the year before. Somali citizens were the second largest group of recipients of Finnish citizenship, numbering 856 followed by Iraqis 621 and Estonians 541.

Of the persons having received Finnish citizenship, 4,876 were women and 4,335 men.

The average age for women was 28.8 years and 27.7 years for men. Among the persons having been granted Finnish citizenship, 2,712 were aged under 18 and 227 were older than 65.

Examined by five-year age groups, the number of persons having received citizenship was highest among those aged 30 to 34, in all 1,446 persons, representing 16 per cent of all those who received Finnish citizenship.

In 2018, altogether 97 per cent of those having been granted Finnish citizenship retained their former citizenship. At the end of 2018, there were 125,843 persons permanently resident in Finland who held the citizenship of some other country in addition to Finnish citizenship.

Of them, 21,757 were native-born citizens of Finland who have been granted citizenship in another country and 104,086 were foreign citizens who have been granted Finnish citizenship.

The largest dual nationality groups at the end of 2018 were citizens of Russia, 31,697, Sweden, 8,058, Somalia, 6,416, Estonia, 5,814, and Iraq, 4,780.