Browsing by Subject "diskursiivinen käytäntö"

The subject of this Master's thesis is the changes in education policy, such as the recent marketization and privatization of education. I explore these extensive structural changes in education at micro level by analyzing the impact of the privatization of immigrant integration training for both employees and students. Based on the data, I try to interpret the practices of integration training from the employees’ point of view. In addition, I consider what kind of subject positions are available for immigrants in the prevailing situation, where the aim is to integrate immigrants into Finnish society through integration policy measures, but where the main goal of education policy is to harness newcomers to the economy as resources. The research data consist of interviews of two teachers and two students and observing the immigration training during a week in a private company in southern Finland. In addition, I interviewed a training manager in another company. The methodological approach of the study is discursive. In recent years, the integration of immigrants has faced strong privatization, which, according to my material, has far-reaching consequences for the lives of both employees and students. The tendering procedure made the training fragmented and weakened teachers' working conditions and resources. Students felt the training useful but, for example, Finnish language teaching had to be improved in order to support the learning of the students' language and terminology in their own field and hence quicken access to vocational studies and work after integration training. The difficulty and lack of recognition of qualifications were also low. Based on the data, the presence of economically motivated speech in education was noticeable, whereby subject positions were conditional to the requirements of cost-effectiveness and marketization. In a market-oriented society, integration practices are at risk of isolating newcomers from society rather than supporting their integration. When designing and developing integration training practices, these should be taken into account in order for immigrants to have the opportunity to be an equal part of Finnish society.

The aim of this study was to explore what kind of agency municipality youth work offers to the youth workers. The study also considers how young people are positioned in the views of youth workers on youth work. The starting point for this study is post-structuralist feminist research and I look at municipality youth work as a discursive practice. Previous research has shown that the therapeutic ethos has spread to support systems and political guidance for young people both in Finland and in other Western countries. Therapeutic ethos has been broadly studied from the perspectives of governmentality, but so far has less attention been paid to research on how people engage its practices. The data consist of five focus group discussions and two workshops, which have been carried out as part of the Youth Work Curriculum project of the City of Helsinki Youth Service. I analysed the data using discursive reading. The results of my research showed how the therapeutic ethos both makes youth workers agency possible and restricts it. The agency of youth workers takes on a contradictory position, at the same time it makes young people’s voluntary action possible, but on the other hand, it aims to guide young people to develop themselves and their emotional skills. By cultivating emotional skills, young people have to operate to meet the current social demands that are demanding people to have good self-esteem, emotional skills and find solutions of themselves. In their views of youth work the youth workers positioned young people in various positions of vulnerability and self-responsibility, where young people have to take responsibility of their choices and confess their own weaknesses.