Browsing by master's degree program "Euroopan ja Pohjoismaiden tutkimuksen maisteriohjelma (European and Nordic Studies)"

Tämän pro gradu- tutkielman tarkoituksena on tarkastella turvapaikan turvallistamista niin sanotun ’maahanmuuttokriisin’ aikana vuonna 2015, analysoiden Helsingin Sanomien samaisen vuoden julkaisuja. Tutkielmassa keskitytään siihen, miten turvallisuusdiskursseja kehystetään yleisölle, ja mitä mahdollisia taustalla olevia logiikoita pelon synnyttämiseen liittyen voidaan tunnistaa. Aluksi tutkielmassa esitellään analyysin teoreettinen tausta, turvallistamisteoria ja diskurssiteoria, sekä aiheeseen liittyvä historiallinen ja sosiopoliittinen tausta, jotta tutkielmassa voitaisiin paremmin ymmärtää, kuinka turvallistamisdiskurssit esitettiin yleisölle. Tämän jälkeen tutkielma käsittelee turvallistamista maahanmuutto- ja turvapaikka-asioiden kontekstissa. Tutkielmassa esitellään myös median rooli turvallistamisprosessissa ja tarkastellaan, miten rasistiset ja ksenofobiset logiikat usein vaikuttavat tähän prosessiin. Kirjallisuuskatsaus Pohjoismaissa tehdyistä turvapaikan turvallistamista koskevista tutkimuksista antaa lisätaustaa turvapaikan turvallistamiselle ja esittelee, miten tutkielma osallistuu olemassa olevaan aihetta koskevaan kirjallisuuteen. Tutkielman analyysiosa esittelee tammi-joulukuun 2015 välisenä aikana Helsingin Sanomissa julkaistujen artikkelien analyysin havaintoja. Näitä käsitellään erillisessä keskustelukappaleessa, joka pyrkii vastaamaan johdantoluvussa esitettyihin keskeisiin tutkimuskysymyksiin. Analyysin tulokset osoittivat, että tiedotusvälineet osallistuvat turvallistamisprosessiin tuottamalla ja toistamalla uhkaa ja pelkoa aiheuttavia diskursseja, usein ilman empiiristä tietoa, ja jättämällä huomiotta turvapaikanhakijoiden kokemukset. Analyysi päättelee, että seitsemän toisiinsa kietoutuvaa diskurssia vaikutti pelon ja toiseuttamisen luontiin HS:n artikkeleissa, ja nämä olivat juurtuneet rasistiseen ja ksenofobiseen logiikkaan.

The institutional history of the Finnish Rescue Services dates back to the establishment of volunteer fire brigades in the 19th century, when Finland was a part of the Russian Empire. Throughout the 20th century, the rescue services have been institutionalized as public services. As of 2023, the Rescue Departments have been relocated to a new political and administrative context in the Wellbeing Services County reform. This recent structural reform of the rescue services on a public administrative level has inspired this thesis to explore the role of the Finnish Rescue Services personnel in public administration and policy process. The thesis investigates the applicability of street-level bureaucracy theory and politics-administration dichotomy in the rescue services personnel’s strategy implementation. While there is some research about the societal and cultural significance of the Finnish rescue services, its political and public administrative dimension has received only little attention in the scientific literature. The thesis is conducted as survey research. The research method is quantitative data analysis and theory-driven analysis. The questionnaire data measures the rescue services personnel’s features as classic public administrators and as street-level bureaucrats, and evaluates the personnel’s willingness to implement central strategies of the rescue services. It is argued that the FRS personnel’s involvement in public discussion as street-level bureaucrats is playing a decisive role in realising the rescue services-related strategies. The findings indicate that the rescue services personnel embody ideal-type bureaucratic features and street-level bureaucratic features. However, only the street-level bureaucratic features are dominant in explaining the variation in the personnel’s willingness to implement strategies. It is suggested that the personnel’s stronger participation in political discussion and policy process would result in better strategy implementation level. This thesis contributes to the development of the political and administrative position of the Finnish Rescue Departments and strengthens their role as active partakers in the public sphere.

This thesis examines the role of markets in speeches made by Ministers of Finance Iiro Viinanen and Jyrki Katainen in the plenary sessions of the Finnish parliament in 1991-1994 and 2007-2010. The aim of this study is to analyse political discourses in speeches made about state budget proposals during two economic crises, the depression of the 1990s and the Global Financial Crisis. The thesis employs Bob Jessop’s Cultural Political Economy approach to view crises as moments of contestation for hegemonic discourses and ideologies, and an opportunity to examine political and social change in the age of neoliberalism through speech. Both crises were also characterised by the contestation of the relationship between Finland and the EU, first centred around accession to the EU and in particular the role of EMU convergence criteria in designing economic policy, and in the second crisis on the nature of centre-periphery relations amid the Eurozone crisis. The purpose of this research has been to uncover the way in which ministerial speeches reflect the neoliberalisation of Finland through a specific national context, which is characterised in particular by the relationship between the state and individual, the moral nature of economic decision-making, the increasing influence and power of the civil service on decision-making through the Ministry of Finance, and the gradual replacement of defence policy by economic policy as the defining factor of Finland’s independence and sovereignty. The thesis explores these concepts through the use of Theo van Leeuwen’s conceptualisation of discourse as the recontextualisation of social practices, analysing the speeches using a comparative and thematic perspective. The analysis finds that while the Ministers of Finance did not draw on discourses of legitimation by authority with regards to the Ministry of Finance, the consistent themes during both periods drew heavily on themes of absolute necessity, responsible decision-making, moralistic attitudes towards the Finnish citizen, and constructions of unity of the Finnish people. Both Ministers also referred to market forces, investor confidence, and trust as existential questions for the sovereignty of the nation and emphasised the need for permanent changes in Finland towards the direction of a neoliberalised market economy. Similarly, the Ministers appeared to draw on paternalist understandings of the state as a shepherd of its people, a guardian of a small nation against predatory international forces, and yet a reasoned disciplinarian of an irresponsible child. The study concludes that in particular the discourses on which the Ministers draw that rely on moralistic and paternalistic articulations of the relationship between the state and the individual can be seen as indicative of the national context of neoliberalisation in Finland. Furthermore, the extent to which the crises are framed as learning opportunities varies, though both Ministers consistently refer to the permanence of the changes (structural in particular) to be made to the Finnish economy, and in differing ways envision a new age in Finland, nonetheless one of credibility, responsibility, and a stable market economy. The study also offers new avenues for research, particularly for the wider debate in parliament and crisis construals therein, in addition to using the theory and the methods of this thesis to analyse other crises, perhaps non-economic in nature, such as the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, the thesis also suggests that further research could be conducted on the paternalistic and moralistic aspects of ministerial politics in particular.

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.

Climate policy is contentious by nature bringing forth global environmental concerns, challenging the economic structures, and emphasizing the role of humans in anthropogenic climate change. In Europe, at national levels of governance, right-wing populist and nationalist actors have been identified as climate hostile articulating skepticism of the overall issue, how it is governed, and how it impacts the people. With the rise of populism in Europe right-wing populist actors are organizing in the European Parliament (EP) where the similarities and differences in climate hostility come to play in the transnational decision-making forum. The right-wing populist and nationalist parties from the Member States of the Union are represented on a transnational level in the European Parliament by Members of Parliament in a political group called Identity and Democracy. This thesis deploys the method of post-foundational discourse analysis to analyze how the political group of Identity and Democracy uses the elements of right-wing populism in the climate policy discourse at the European Parliament. A distinct medium of communication by the political group is plenary booklets, which will be used as material in the analysis. The second aim of the research is to use the chosen method to assess the impact of the political group in the climate policy discourse. The scope of the thesis and the angle of approaching climate hostility through the political groups of the EP set the research apart from previous research. The key research outcomes show how anti-elitism, people’s sovereignty, and skepticism create patterns that consist of counter-hegemonic articulations aiming to reshape the meaning of Eurocentric climate policies. This formulates the climate policy stance of the political group. This stance is limited to only criticizing the climate action of the EU and does not offer any substantial contribution to the policy debate. However, it does manage to create an antagonism in the discourse where the climate action is juxtaposed as harmful to people and industries in the EU Member States. In conclusion, this study sheds light on how Identity and Democracy as a right-wing populist group actively shape the discourse on climate policy in the European Parliament with counter-hegemonic acts aiming to reshape the meaning of Eurocentric green growth. This thesis successfully addressed two research questions that pertain to how a single political group can influence climate policy discourse.

Enlargement is the most important foreign policy tool of the European Union. Beyond changing the geographical borders of the Union, enlargement also concerns EU’s self-other relations, bringing to the fore the definitions of “European” space, values and norms. Recent, critical approaches to European and EU studies have called scholars to pay attention to the colonial roots of the EU, arguing that EU as an agent in the global arena and its neighbourhood cannot be understood outside or separate from colonial discourses. Drawing from this perspective as well as from the rich literature on the Europe’s historical relation to East and the current accession states in the Balkans, this thesis asks (how) is the EU’s enlargement policy postcolonial. To explore, understand and critically assess the normative assumptions that are embedded in enlargement policies, this thesis uses post-structuralist discourse theory (PDT) and the logics approach by Jason Glynos and David Howarth (2007) that offers a more specific application of the PDT in empirical analysis. The analysis approaches four most recent EU enlargement policy papers from three angles: what is taken as granted (social logic), what is challenged or institutionalized (political logic) and how the policies are argued for (fantasmatic logic). The analysis in this thesis brings the postcolonial theoretical concepts into the context of enlargement policies and demonstrates the diversity of the forms in which colonialist assumptions in enlargement policy can play out in practice. Enlargement and the EU’s relation to the Balkans emerges from the material as paradoxical and contradictory, producing ambivalence on the Western Balkan’s standing in relation to Europe through a discursive double move of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion.

This study examines the way in which four key European social partner organisations - ETUC, BusinessEurope, SGI Europe and SMEunited – frame the issue of platform work, shedding light on the differences and similarities between the employer and employee organisations. The context of the study is the European Commission legislative proposal “Directive on Improving Working Conditions in Platform Work”, published in December 2021, following several national court decisions and intense political debate. Recent policy initiatives taken by the Commission have increasingly paired the regulation of digital platforms with the wider social policy aims of the EU and simultaneously granted a central role for the European social partners, whose positions on digitalisation have not been much researched. This thesis aims to contribute to filling this research gap and extend our knowledge on social partners’ positions on platform work, digitalisation and employment. The data consists of 35 policy documents, collected from the websites of the four organisations. Through frame analysis, four key frames on platform work were identified. “Platform work as historical continuation of precarious work” -frame, employed by the employee side, constructs platform work as precarious work, and its digital aspects as inherently exploitative. “Platform work as flexible work” -frame, used by the employer side, constructs platform work as a personal choice of the self-employed workers. “Platform work as not a separate category” -frame, is employed by both employer and employee organizations, employers using it to support their position on the self-employed status of the workers and the employee side opposing it. Last, “platform work as new type of work” -frame presents platform work as inherently innovative line of business ultimately benefitting everyone, if the potential is not hampered with regulation. The social partner organisations bring forward competing understandings on digitalisation and its implications for labour, which supports the conception of platform work regulation as an extremely contested area of political action. The contestation between the organisations highlights the role of framing as a political act. The organisations are not only competing for platform work to be understood in a certain way, but also for the future arenas on which the policy discussions on platform work are held.

This master’s thesis examines how foreign-language-speakers’ view the impact of linguistic skills in their prospects in the Finnish labor market. The research also aims to map out the experiences such workers have had of Finnish workplaces and Finnish trade unions. The thesis assesses the prospects foreign-language-speaking workers have for participation in the workplace, trade union and the Finnish labor market. The thesis uses a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. The first round of data was collected via an online survey produced in cooperation with the Service Union United (PAM) during the author’s traineeship with the Union. Based on the survey data two rounds of interviews were conducted and a total of 12 foreign-language-speaking members of PAM interviewed. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. In the analysis, Bridget Anderson’s concepts of the ‘Good Citizen’ and the ‘Migrant’ in contrast to the former are employed. Joseph Gumperz’s concept of the ‘Speech Community’ is utilized in the analysis of what is the role of linguistic skills on a worker’s prospects in the Finnish labor market. Additionally, Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital are used as rough measurements of an individual’s ability to make use of one’s social and cultural resources. The findings in this thesis suggest that linguistic skills have an impact on a workers’ prospects in the Finnish labor market. Linguistic competence is suggested to form a barrier between the native-speaking and the foreign-language-speaking workforce in Finland. The results suggest that lack of linguistic skills is perceived to have a negative impact on a workers’ attempt to find work, to participate and to belong to the ‘Speech Community’ of the workplace and the trade union.

The EU has been in the recent decades one of the most important innovators globally. However, due to the recent events in its external environment, such as supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19, third-country dependencies and external geopolitical pressures, its position in global innovation is challenged. These developments are often discussed under the headline “strategic autonomy”, which refers to the EU’s capacity to act autonomously in key strategic policy areas. As capacity to innovate is what crucially undergirds the EU’s economic power, the EU’s innovation policy plays a fundamental role in achieving strategic autonomy. Yet, peer reviewed study of the implications of strategic autonomy for EU innovation policy has remained thus far uncharted. This thesis asks: how the discourse on strategic autonomy frames EU innovation policy? To answer the research question, this thesis deployed a framing analysis in parallel with qualitative content analysis. This approach was applied to policy documents published by the European Commission in the period of 2019-2023. This thesis aimed to investigate the extent to which strategic autonomy has influenced EU innovation policy. Secondly, the thesis explored how the concept(s) inform policymakers about the identified problem and examines the policy justifications that arise from this assessment. The qualitative content analysis found that the discourse on strategic autonomy has become increasingly relevant for the EU innovation policy, showcasing high levels of frequency in the use of the concept in the policy area. Moreover, a closer look at the use of the concept revealed that not only is the concept invoked frequently, but has only become highly influential for the shaping of the policy. In addition, an overarching framing could be identified that perceives the environment external to the EU being increasingly hostile and competitive, complicated by antagonisms towards the rules-based world order. From this assessment arises novel policy justifications for international cooperation in R&I. Also, EU innovation policy is increasingly interested in securing autonomous capacity to innovate and have access and control of critical technologies. In terms of international cooperation, a balancing act between openness and assertiveness could be observed. The analysis also had implications for internal developments as the EU is showing a much more active role in directing funding to critical sectors to enhance its industrial capacity and competitiveness.

The Finnish population is quickly aging. The aging of the population is reflected in the Finnish economy and in the availability of skilled workers in several fields. The governmental focus has consequently in recent years concentrated on increasing the immigration of the highly skilled in the country. The growing fields such as the technology industries in which the need of highly skilled immigrants is emphasized in the governmental aims are still statistically dominated by men. As such, female immigrants are still often discussed in the context of female dominated industries such as the care work industries. This thesis consequently aims to emphasize the position of highly skilled immigrant women in the traditionally male-dominated industry of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in Finland. Intersectionality as coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s focuses on the advantages and disadvantages in the lived experiences of different identity groups. Originating from considerations of challenges faced by African American women in the United States, intersectionality has since then expanded to depict the challenges on various groups. The theory will be consequently utilized in this thesis to depict the experiences of highly skilled immigrant women in the field of STEM in Finland, with immigrant women being seen as an often-marginalized group. Qualitative interviewing acts as the selected methodology of the thesis with five individuals working in the field of STEM being interviewed for the thesis. The interviewees were selected to represent different backgrounds, with the aim being portraying the possibilities and challenges faced by the interviewed individuals comprehensively in a manner of a case study. The data collected through the interviews is assessed through four analytical categories of education, bureaucracy, language skills and social networks. With each category being taken into the analysis separately, the individual impact of each in the labor market position as well as the societal position and the perception of these by the interviewees is being considered. Despite the international nature of the field of STEM, the analysis reveals there to still exist factors favoring native Finns in the labor markets. Furthermore, similar challenges are faced by people coming from within the EU and outside of the EU with for instance non-Finnish education and work experience impacting interviewees coming from both backgrounds. The differing experiences of the interviewees illustrate that the idea and reality of the (dis)advantages that are essential to intersectional thinking are not implicitly tied to persons who are viewed to belong to the groups seen often be the most burdened. The results of the analysis consequently demonstrate the non-universal character of migrating for certain purpose and oppose the traditional image of intersectional concerns associated with certain groups. Nevertheless, to reach a more comprehensive idea of the position of immigrant women in the Finnish field of STEM research with more extensive sample of data is needed. With the number of the highly skilled likely growing in the near future, understanding the position of highly skilled female migrants within such group will also become more emphasized both academically and societally.