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Through the lens of race, otherness, and belonging this research investigates how Muslim Americans are represented in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal between January 2016 and January 2017. By employing content analysis, this research analyzes and compares different tones, frames, messages, and topics used by these two newspapers to create a better understanding of the representation Muslim Americans receive. Through these methods, my research found that there is little difference in the representation of Muslim Americans between two publications with differing political tendencies. Further, the representations given to Muslim Americans in both publications are highly negative with a focus on terrorism and U.S. politics.

During its first term, the Clinton administration articulated trade agreements and summits as part of a broad political project to reformulate the United States role in international relations and reform the domestic political economy. Trade was an element of foreign and domestic policies the administration attempted to articulate at various points as an inevitability, an imperative for the United States as a global leader, a guarantee for a healthy economy and shared prosperity, and a means of spreading democracy and liberalizing economies. The primary sources for this study are speeches and texts from administration officials, yearly reports from the National Security Council, Council of Economic Advisors, and United States Trade Representative. These texts are analyzed using post-Marxist discourse theory, specifically the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Politics is understood as hegemonic, meaning that it is a struggle to stabilize an indeterminate social space through the articulation of relationships between different elements. This study finds that there were two significant aspects of the administration’s hegemonic trade politics in this period. First, trade was inscribed with progressive elements in that it was said to lead to better environmental and labor standards, contribute to more broadly shared economic prosperity, and push authoritarian or illiberal states towards democratic and economic reforms. Second, political conflict over trade liberalization was articulated as a division between isolationists and internationalists.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the importance of selecting feasible and, preferably data-based prior assumptions for the Bayesian time-varying coefficient vector autoregressive model (TVC VAR model for further reference) of Primiceri (2005) and Del Negro and Primiceri (2015). The TVC VAR model would be suitable for quantifying, for example, the impacts of different monetary policy or fiscal policy regimes. The biggest advantage of the TVC VAR model is that it takes into account both changes in economic policy and in the private sector behaviour. The latter feature makes the model very compelling to use, because the private sector plays an important role in facilitating mote stable change in monetary and fiscal policy regimes. In complex mathematical models, such as the TVC VAR model, the objectiveness of the model may be compromised by deliberate selection of parameters. The TVC VAR model uses the Bayesian approach, which means that the researcher’s choice for the prior assumptions for the model plays an important role in the estimation. Unfortunately, Primiceri’s (2005) approach for selecting hyperparameters for the model is poorly explained and difficult to follow. Given that the model depends only for a small number of hyperparameters, it might be possible that the model can be tuned in a predefined way. To investigate whether the TVC VAR model can be tuned according to a researcher’s preferences, I design a proof of concept approach for optimising the hyperparameters of the model according to a set of predefined results. In other words, my research question is: could one tune the TVC VAR model to produce results according to the researcher’s bias? In my proof of concept approach I tune the TVC VAR model for six different targets for the Finnish government consumption multiplier. Given that Finland is a small open economy, Primiceri’s (2005) original hyperparameter values for the United States are not feasible and other values have to be used. The results from my proof of concept analysis show that the TVC VAR model can be tuned for predefined results, which shows that the practical reliability of the model can be easily compromised. My findings highlight the need for a comprehensible, data-based approach for selecting the hyperparameters for the model.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the economic dimension of transnational engagement of the Somali diaspora living in Finland. It is suggested that the social aspect of transnational economic engagement constitutes a major force in creating and reproducing remittance practices as well as the internal diaspora structures. Another objective of this study was to show how the theory of social capital can be effectively utilized in the studies of transnational economic activities. Accordingly, the view of remittances as an act of investment in social networks, which, as a value-laden action, facilitates the perpetual process of social capital (re)production is proposed. It is further argued that social class should be considered in conjunction with gender and ethnicity as factors that lie at the centre of the cycle of capital reproduction. The empirical data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews. The target group can be described as educated and well integrated into the Finnish labour market Somalis that are living in Helsinki and its surrounding areas. With the purpose of enhancing the empirical analysis, two expert interviews were conducted. Both information in printed and online media and the snowballing method were used in order to draw the participants for this study. The research findings revealed how transnational diaspora ties are articulated and enacted in the view of social capital (re)production and remittance practices. The politicized issue of transnational diasporic activities constitute one of the dimensions that shape the way how the subjects in this research relate to diasporic social networks. The perceived dominant role of Somali women in managing transnational support systems called attention to the gendered aspect of social capital. Interestingly, the widespread perception of the scale of women’s participation in remittance practices runs contrary to the existing statistics. Another crucial observation was that not all social ties are ‘mobilisable’, or can be draw upon at any time. In conclusion, it is advocated that more in-depth research on the gender aspect of remittance practices as well as on the nature of the differences between refugee and labour remittances, particularly in terms of social relations that determine them, could significantly enhance the understanding of the topic in question.

This thesis looks at the development of young Finns’ confidence in education between 1999 and 2013. The purpose of the thesis is to explore how economic turbulence in the form of booms and busts affects young people’s perceptions of the link between education and employability. The starting point of this research is the rapid expansion of education in Finland and its effects on the labour market. The average educational level of Finns has increased dramatically in a short period of time. Educational expansion has not only resulted in a better educated population, but has also had its effects on unemployment levels of the highly educated, as well as the number of individuals who are over-educated for their jobs. When the supply of educated labour has come to exceed the demand for it, education no longer guarantees a job, but is increasingly necessary to better position oneself on the labour market. Previous research in the field has largely focused on the link between educational credentials and employability, as well as youth transitions from education to the labour market. Such transitions from education to employment are often aided by work experience acquired during one’s studies. Furthermore, while education alone may no longer be enough for a smooth transition, those young people with higher levels of education are still better off than their less educated counterparts. This thesis will focus more on young people’s own perceptions of the relationship between education and employability rather than observing their school to work transitions. While youth expectations of the labour market are increasingly researched, this thesis offers a new perspective by introducing the concept of ’confidence in education’. Young people’s confidence in education is still very much under researched in the sociology of education as well as sociology of work. The data utilised in this study is a collection of Finnish Youth Barometers from 1999 (N=1251), 2007 (N=1903), and 2013 (N=1903). The Finnish Youth Barometer is an annual survey that collects data on young people’s attitudes and values. This research will utilise two survey questions regarding young people’s confidence in education. The aim of this thesis is to see if there are differences in how young people have responded to these questions in 1999, 2007, and 2013. In addition to the development of young people’s confidence in education over time, this thesis will also look at how one’s confidence level in education may depend on their age or primary activity. The methods include descriptive statistics for the chosen variables as well as the Kruskal-Wallis test, which is used to analyse between group differences. Results show that young Finns’ confidence in education follows the development of the Finnish economy. While confidence in education has remained at a high level between 1999 and 2013, there seem to be clear differences in the level of confidence when comparing times reflecting economic busts (1999 and 2013) with a time of economic prosperity (2007). Furthermore, there are also observable differences between young people in education and those who are in employment. Confidence in education is higher among young people who are still in education when compared to those in employment. This is reinforced by the result that confidence in education is higher among the younger age groups than the older ones; the younger age groups are more likely to still be in education, while the individuals in the older age groups are more likely to have already acquired some work experience. These results show that confidence in education is linked to developments in the economy: young Finns had higher confidence in education during the economic busts of the 1990s and the most recent economic and financial crisis that started in 2008. The fact that confidence in education is higher in times of economic turmoil signals that the value of education has not decreased as the average educational level has increased. In fact, education seems to maintain its value, especially during bad times. Educational credentials give an individual a competitive advantage in an overcrowded labour market where supply of labour exceeds demand. In addition, the fact that confidence levels are lower among those young people who are either already in employment, or have more likely already had work experience, signals that experienced realities of the labour market may not match with previous beliefs that education better’s one’s employability. More research is needed to better examine the reasons why confidence in education diminishes as a young person ages.

Connections between organizational engagement and internal communication have gained much interest in recent years, due to existing evidence suggesting that employees who engage with their organization affect organization’s effectiveness and that, in turn, internal communication can influence organizational engagement. However, there is little evidence about such connection seen from an employee perspective and therefore, this study sought to explore linkages between employee organizational engagement and internal communication, on the basis of experiences of employees. This thesis draws on theoretical concepts such as knowledge workers, internal communication and organizational engagement as well as on an empirical research inspired by principles of grounded theory. The research analyzed twelve semi-structured interviews to employees working for a global knowledge-based organization; aiming at exploring the factors that had the potential to influence their engagement with the organizational; their key expectations towards internal communication and the implications that their overall experiences suggest for the practice of internal communication. Key findings indicated that organizational engagement can be influenced by organization-level internal communication and suggested that, while there cannot be a universal internal communication strategy to engage employees with their organization, the responsibility to engage and to achieve effective internal communication which supports engagement needs to be shared by all members of the organization, whereby employees’ accountability and empowerment is central. The findings also suggested a revision of the role of leaders and managers of the organization and the role of the function of internal communication. Overall, this study suggested that, in the relationship between organizational engagement and internal communication, seen from an employee perspective, both the organization and the employees could have significant gains.

In the past decades, sanctions have become a vital part of the European Union’s (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). To better understand decision-making within the CFSP, this work focuses on how the EU sanctions against Russia are upheld. It does so through the lens of the Netherlands and Finland, two small countries in the EU. The study concentrates on the way small countries participate in sanctions regimes, which is important due to the required unanimity for upholding sanctions. Both domestic dynamics for participating in sanctions as well as attitudes towards European cooperation are taken into account. By conducting a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) on parliamentary debates in Finland and the Netherlands from 2016, the study compares the interests and focus of national politicians when sanctions are under discussion. The material consists of approximately 170 units of coding per country, which originate from around 15 debates throughout the year. The results offer new insight into some of the factors affecting decision-making of small states in sanctions. The data shows that the Netherlands has a stricter stance towards upholding sanctions on Russia, whereas Finnish politicians highlight the impact of sanctions on Finland. In general, both the Netherlands and Finland are in favour of upholding sanctions, but strongly differ domestically in the way they go about the sanctions. In conclusion, this study finds that small EU countries present themselves as strongly supporting EU unity when sanctions are in place. Nevertheless, these countries differ significantly in domestic preferences, meaning that they participate in sanctions regimes through different means.

This thesis is an ethnographic study examining how widely claimed and officially recognized indigenous autonomy is construed and practiced in a state-promoted nature conservation program taking place in four indigenous Chinantec communities in the state of Oaxaca, south of Mexico. This study is based on a four-month stay in two of the communities, San Antonio Analco and San Pedro Tlatepusco, during the spring of 2016. Fieldwork consisted of participant observation and semi-structured interviews. In this study, questions of autonomy and dependence are examined in a frame of political ecology focusing on the motives and actions of territorial control by varied actors including, besides the communities, state and its institutions, environmental actors and beings of nature. Understanding of these motives and forms of control is sought through anthropological theories of state control towards minorities, indigenous analysis on environmental change and theories of autonomy in relations and dependence. Mexico has a long history of homogenizing institutional politics of indigenismo, which have been argued to continue in today’s wide offering of social and development aid programs for rural populations. This view is expanded to cover programs of environmental protection. In this thesis, personified territorial control and territorial sanctification are argued to determine Chinantec motives towards environmental care and explain the good condition in which these tropical forests can be found today. These forms of control and sanctification have undergone historic syncretic transformations making environmental and social changes locally understandable and leading to the current environmental aspirations towards nature conservation. Syncretic, evangelic transformations are argued to explain differences in the attitudes of the two communities towards nature conservation. Personified territorial control has incorporated environmental actors into local cosmovisions and forms of territorial control. In this study, it is analyzed how green politics have been able to promote and decline new kinds of autonomy in relations and in dependence. These processes have allowed the communities some material benefits, “development”, and ways to defend their territories. Still, as this study suggests, these politics and the benefits they provide have not been able to obviate inequalities and the discrimination prevalent in Mexico as well as globally. Instead, these programs have sometimes even increased and reconstrued the pre-existing national and global inequalities, as could be found out living in the communities of Analco and San Pedro, “the zone of high marginalization”.

Today, companies are facing an increasing amount of stakeholder demands. These demands often include environmental, societal, ethical, political, and economic themes that are commonly addressed in companies through corporate social responsibility and value communication. The aim of this research was to discover how large Finnish companies are responding to stakeholder demands through value communication on their websites, by recognizing how companies communicatively constitute their corporate social responsibility and how companies appeal to stakeholders through value communication on company websites. Studying large Finnish companies is significant and this study enabled recognizing what is perceived and showcased as important in these companies and how these companies with big audiences and a lot of influence are aiming to impact their stakeholders. This research was conducted as a qualitative content analysis and the material for the analysis was collected from the company websites of four large Finnish companies: Marimekko, UPM, Valio, and Elisa. In total the collected data consisted of 36 pages of textual material and included different types of organizational documents of the companies, such as strategy statements, sustainability reports, and info pages. Qualitative content analysis is a flexible and systematic research method that is based on categorizing the research material based on a coding frame. The method was well suited for this research, since it enabled making sense of the large amount of textual material and recognizing potential patterns and relationships between themes. According to the results of this study, large Finnish companies respond to stakeholder demands by constituting corporate social responsibility through the communication of societal, economic, and ethical themes, and impact on stakeholders. The results are remarkable in providing in-depth information about how these themes are communicated by the companies. Some themes are communicated by all the companies and in similar ways, while some themes are communicated in differing company-specific ways. In addition, companies respond to stakeholder demands by appealing to stakeholders through value communication to gain and maintain legitimacy, adapt to the environment, and cope with fuzziness. Companies use value communication to gain and maintain legitimacy and adapt to the environment more than to cope with fuzziness. The results of this study showed that some themes of corporate social responsibility are perceived and showcased as important widely in all the studied companies, while some themes are only relevant for certain companies’ whose stakeholders voice those specific demands. These results can be especially meaningful to other Finnish companies. In addition, the results of this study providing information on how companies aim at appealing to their stakeholders can be meaningful to company stakeholders and help them be more critical and conscious towards companies’ value communication.

The discourses of Young Muslim men in the West have tended to focus on marginalisation, deviancy and threat. Often the voices of the targets of these stigmatizing discourses are not heard and thus, they do not have the possibility to re-define or resist the dominant discourses. This Thesis investigates how young Muslim men living in Finland, surrounded by discourses of threat and marginalisation, construct Muslimness and how they position themselves and others in that construction. The data was collected by semi-structured thematic group interviews, conducted in small groups or dyads, with 12 young men aged from 18-29 years. The data was analysed using a Critical Discursive Psychological approach, focusing on how the young men are constructed and positioned by the larger societal discourses and how they respond to these constructions, as well as on how they construct their identities in the immediate interaction situation. The analysis focused on three concepts; interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions, which all shed a light on how identities are constructed and negotiated in interaction in relation to the sociocultural context. In the data 3 interpretative repertoires, 3 ideological dilemmas and 5 subject positions were distinguished. The results show that the participants negotiate their identities in relation to various actors, as well as in relation to relevant identity categories such as gender and generation. In their talk, it can be distinguished that they sometimes accept and repeat, yet sometimes question and re-define how Muslimness is constructed in the societal discourses.