Browsing by Author "Rantanen, Visa"

This master’s thesis studies the Finnish migrant integration programme. Integration is a manifold concept. The term is used referring to many different aspects of social inclusion of migrants and ethnic minorities. This paper deals with the integration of newly arrived and/or unemployed migrants in Finland, through compulsory language training and workfare type internship practice – in this case publicly funded services delivered by a private training company. The research applies ethnographic participant observation data to Foucault-scholarship influenced governmentality theory. Governmentality refers modern use of state power, where governance of populations is increasingly delegated to grassroots societal actors, such as private companies, and mechanisms of state control have shifted away from direct coercion and command, into soft power of subjectification. Contributions from governmentality research allows situating ethnographic data into a wider framework of changing rationalities behind population management. Combining ethnographic research with analysis derived from governmentality theory allows relating macro-sociological analysis of social power to micro-sociological accounts of everyday life, habits and working conditions. The main aim of integration training is to increase the employability of its participants. My research describes how integration training seeks to subjectify its students as workers, or more precisely, how teaching a self-managing and disciplined worker subjectivity as a general soft-skill is embedded within language teaching. This active, flexible and service oriented worker subjectivity is reflected in classroom teaching and feedback, but also normalized in the role of the teacher. Integration training is also a place of learning, making friends, and multicultural expression. As an ethnographic study this is also a portrayal of integration training as a work place and a community. The teachers’ working conditions widen their role beyond just educators, to also carers and administrative assistants, whose work involve negotiating between the competing requirements of these roles throughout the working day.