Browsing by Subject "Finnishness"

There has been a vivid public debate in Finland about the women and children who have been staying at al-Hol camp in Syria after the collapse of the ISIS caliphate. This thesis investigates the public debate in the media about these Finnish women and children. Using the method of qualitative content analysis, I examine 117 articles from Helsingin Sanomat from the period from May 1st to December 31st, 2019. My aim is to analyze the key issues that are raised in the debate; how the women and children are depicted; and the linkages between this debate and the changes taking place in the larger Finnish context. These changes involve on the one hand the society becoming more multi-religious, and on the other hand the rise of right-wing populism, anti-immigration, and Islamophobia. The theoretical basis of my analysis is the concept of othering in social sciences, namely the act of creating and using oppositional categories of ‘us’ versus ’them’, which are, for example, based on religion or race. The results show that the women are depicted as ’the dangerous Muslim other’ who could pose a security threat if they are brought back to Finland. These depictions are also shaped by the larger Finnish context, where there are contestations especially around religious diversity that is increasingly becoming a characteristic of society, about Finnishness as a modern identity, and about the challenges of Muslim communities today. My analysis also shows that while children’s rights and wellbeing remain an important goal of Finnish policies and legal obligations, the rights of the Finnish children in the camp have been contested in this debate. This is partly because of legal complexities regarding their repatriation to Finland, and partly because of a security-oriented perspective that sees some of the children as suspects and their relationship with their mothers as a problem. Overall, the analysis shows that the debate about these women and children at al-Hol is not just about whether the people should be repatriated, but about the current changes in Finnish society and the anxieties related to these changes.

In recent decades, the visibility of Finland has been increasing in Japan. It might even be almost impossible not to notice “Finland” in everyday life. -Products with Moomin characters, trendy Finnish style saunas, Finnish words used in brand or product names and Finnish themed facilities. But what kind of themes spring to mind when Finland is mentioned? What images are attached to Finland, or how is Finland talked about in everyday life? This study investigates what Japanese people post about Finland and what kind of representations of Finland appear on Japanese Twitter, as well as how the Japanese society is represented through these discussions. For the data collection, the search word and command “フィンランド min_faves: 1000” was used, in order to find tweets that included the Japanese word for Finland, フィンランド, and which had accumulated more than 1000 likes. The final data amounted to 364 tweets posted on Twitter between September 16th 2020 and November 7th 2022. The analysis was conducted in two separate phases; in the first phase, themes of the tweets which appeared in the data were identified by using qualitative content analysis (QCA), and in the second phase, representation analysis was conducted together with QCA in order to find out how Finland is represented on Japanese Twitter, and what kind of meanings are attached to Finland. The analysis identified the following themes that often appear in the tweets about Finland: Nature, travel destination, history, national defence, brands, art, language, customs, education as social welfare, school, work-life balance, gender equality, and mindset. The representations of Finland found in the data were: The ideal model for Japan (a model for a fair society/ a model for a happier life), magical and consumable Finland, a small but brave and a strong country, and questioning “the dream country Finland”. The analysis also found that the images of Finland are constructed to fit the narratives of Japanese people. “The dream country Finland” was created by Japanese people’s fantasies and ideals and it was used to criticize some aspects of the Japanese society: the Japanese government, politics, social welfare, working style, national defence, among others.