Browsing by study line "Studieinriktning i humanistiska vetenskaper"

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.

Both immigration and gender equality are crucial topics in contemporary Swedish socio-political discourse and reflect the nation's commitment to progressive values. However, as this thesis argues, the intersection of these two domains and their impact on marginalized communities, particularly women of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, requires deeper investigation. This thesis examines the landscape of Swedish gender equality strategies with a focus on addressing racial/ethnic disparities within the realm of gender equality. It uses Carol Bacchi's six-question approach and draws theoretical framework from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Norman Fairclough's and post-structuralist discourse theories. The study analyses documents such as the “Handbook: Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy” and the “Implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Sweden: Statistical Review 2019, 2020, 2021” documents. Through a systematic exploration of language use, problem representations and discursive strategies, the research uncovers both commendable efforts and inherent limitations within Swedish gender equality policies. The analysis reveals that although Swedish gender equality strategies demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity, they often fail to fully incorporate the diverse experiences of women from various ethnic and racial backgrounds. While recognizing intersecting discriminations, the Swedish feminist foreign policy tends to adopt a Western-centric perspective and overlook crucial cultural nuances. Similarly, the statistical reviews highlight challenges faced by immigrant women but perpetuate overly simplistic narratives that attribute these problems to immigrant communities alone, thereby ignoring foreign women's agency and resilience in their cultural identities. The research also identifies a "we-for-them" narrative that is embedded within Swedish societal dynamics and is subtly reinforced through language and representations used within policy discourse. This narrative frames the Swedish institutions and values as inherently superior and, as a result, reinforces existing power dynamics and undermines genuine efforts toward inclusivity and equality. The thesis discovers that while Swedish gender equality strategies hold promise, their effectiveness depends on a nuanced understanding of the context and a commitment to inclusivity. The portrayal of vulnerability attributed solely to cultural norms oversimplifies complex realities and risks the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes. Moving beyond simplistic narratives and embracing more comprehensive and inclusive approaches seem to be essential for realizing genuine empowerment and social change for all women in Sweden.

This study is meant to tell the story of the Scandinavian Communist Federation and its threat to Moscow’s status within the Communist International. An organization of Nordic Communist Parties within the Communist International. The circumstances of its creation in 1924 coincide with the shift of politics within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the death of Lenin. The Scandinavian Communist Federation was not organized centrally by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) but by the member parties themselves. Forcing the ECCI to change its statutes and creating together with the Balkan Communist Federation a precedent. The initial assessment by the ECCI is that these two federations serve two different purposes. While it was clear that the Balkan Communist Federation longed to create a Yugoslavian/Pan-Baltic superstate, such is not clear for the Scandinavian Communist Federation. The only intent which is clear is the wish to organize as a “Scandinavian Battlegroup” and coordinate one struggle together. The Scandinavian Communist Federation was met with skepticism by the national Communist Parties and was therefore not fully fledged supported by its members. Only the Norwegians seemed seriously committed. Also, on the side of the ECCI, there have been some considerations about an ever-increasing fragmentation of the Communist International, due to contradiction with national ambition by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its tighter grip on the ECCI. This paper examines the ideological Realpolitik of the Soviet state and its effect on the Scandinavian Communist Federation, but also the ideological feasibility of a Scandinavian nation-state.

Immigration remains among the most salient topics in the socio-political debate in a dynamically transforming Europe, which is reflected in the scholarly interest in the theme. However, as this thesis argues, the attention paid to anti-immigration and pro-immigration poles of the debate is not equal and the agency of immigrants in providing knowledge on the issue pertaining to them directly is relatively neglected in academia. “Tales of Our Own” strives to explore the characteristics of pro-immigration and immigrant-made discourses and investigate their relationships with the dominant hostile narratives around immigration emerging in the context of the current populist upsurge. The thesis conceptualizes populism as an antagonizing mode of articulation that provides a stylistic framework for arguments inciting the process of othering. Immigrants in these circumstances constitute perfect ‘Others’, excluded through many novel narratives guising straightforward xenophobia under the mask of neoliberal values. Exploring an underdeveloped discursive frontier with regard for its authorship contributes to the study of the immigrant response and substantial argumentation in the debate. Moreover, it follows the objective of reclaiming immigration as it recuperates the voices of the very actors of it – those ‘on the move’. Finland is introduced as a specific case study for this research. Investigating its political climate, self-perception, and international reputation allows for an additional inquest into the studied discourse’s role in contesting the hegemonic narratives about the country. The way the hosting state and society are presented in the examined data subjects the notion of Finnish exceptionalism to scrutiny. The thesis applies a Rhetoric Performative Analysis of contents published around the Finnish parliamentary elections of 2015, 2019, and 2023 in Migrant Tales – an online, immigrant-led blog community. This method is highly advantageous for the study of antagonisms, as it is interested in the logic of equivalence (belonging) and exclusion manifested in rhetorical practices such as the use of tropology (figurative language). Drawing from Postfoundational Discourse Analysis, it assumes that the frontiers are formulated in a struggle to colonize the recurring discursive signifiers with certain meanings. The dissertation discovers that the pro-immigration discourse is highly politicized and carries a solid agenda while remaining interactive with the competing anti-immigration narratives. The immigrants are narrated as experts of their own struggle, while Finland is narrated in a bi-polar manner, both as their cherished home and as a place of exclusion and suffering. The analysis demonstrates how the debate on immigration and, more specifically, its participants contest the notion of Finnish exceptionalism on one hand and yearn for its upkeeping, on the other.

This study examines the concept of Nordic added value in Nordic cultural cooperation through the case study of the Nordic Culture Fund. This study aims to understand how the Nordic culture fund implemented the concept and to identify regionalist logic utilised during this process. By doing so, this work aims to contribute to the scholarship on the Nordic added value, exploring its practical application within the cultural sector of Nordic cooperation. To achieve this goal, non-negative matrix factorisation topic modeling was used to analyse a collection of policy documents and web pages of the Nordic culture fund published between 2002 to 2023. This study found a shift in how the concept is operationalized, alongside its regionalist logic. Initially, the Fund emphasised internal Nordic collaboration, based on heritage identity to foster the sense of Nordic community and legitimise Nordic cultural cooperation. However, since the late 2010s, the focus shifted towards the global context, integrating neoliberal values to promote Nordic culture on the global stage. This extension of scale from the regional to global level illustrates a relational characteristic of Nordic added value. By mapping the aforementioned shifts of the concept, this study contributes to the holistic understanding of the Nordic added value.