Browsing by Author "Muuronen, Matias"

This paper analyzes the political response to a series of strikes by Finnish nurses in 2022, specifically focusing on the parliament's debate over the Patient Safety Act. Two research questions guide the study. The first reflects on the framing of political action in relation to the strikes by asking the following: what kind of political subjects are created in the parliamentary debate on the Patient Safety Act? The second question is centered on the positionality of the nurses’ strike in relation to the government and the legal structures of the state: how are the nurses’ strikes positioned in relation to the government in the Committee proposal? Using political discourse analysis and drawing from literature on biopolitics, the paper evaluates the political rhetoric in the parliament and its positioning of the nurses in relation to legislative practices. The research material consists of parliamentary discussions on the Patient Safety Act and the Social Affairs and Health Committee’s proposal on the legislation. I argue that the parliamentary rhetoric displaces the nurses from any temporal or spatial relationship with the state, while positioning the striking nurses as an external threat. Thus, the parliamentary response depoliticizes the strikes by locating the action solely in the sphere of zoe. This is accomplished, for instance, by proposing legislation which shifts the prerequisite for emergency work from an unpredictable event to industrial action directed at municipal health care. A further examination reveals two alternative approaches for studying the state response to the strikes. In a reading following Agamben, the nurses’ strikes challenge the governments’ exercise of sovereign power in managing public health crises. Here, power is seen as emanating from a central sovereign. Through Michel Foucault’s reading - which highlights the dispersive character of power - one reaches an alternative approach in which the nurses’ strikes challenge the governments’ biopolitical discourse of healthcare as a national security issue. Overall, the text offers an analysis of the complex relationship between the state, the nurses and the strikes, highlighting the different ways in which political subjects are created and situated within moments of political upheaval.