Browsing by Subject "two-way integration"

This thesis analyses the Finnish Government report on the need for a reform in integration promotion (2021:62). The material contains reform proposals to the current act regarding newcomer integration. The chosen method for studying the material is a Foucault-inspired critical discourse analysis which regards policy programmes as producers of problematizations concerning social phenomena. The primary study question of the thesis is ‘what kind of problem newcomer integration is represented to be’. This question is supported by five accompanying questions which elaborate how the representation of the problem has come about, what presuppositions and assumptions underlie the problem representation, what is silenced within the problem representation, what effects does the problem representation create and is there a possibility of thinking about the problem representation differently. The analysis concludes that the problem representation within the policy report presents the process of newcomer integration from an outdated point of view. The process is being represented as something that affects newcomers only and that the receiving society primarily has a coordinating role when it comes to providing efficient public services. The arrival of newcomers is perceived as a positive phenomenon only if newcomers commit to integrating themselves quickly and enter the Finnish labour market as soon as possible. Newcomers are thus treated as economic resources needed for solving Finland’s ongoing socio-economic challenges. The representation does not address the two-way nature of the integration process and thus accepts and reproduces the imbalance of power between newcomers and the receiving society. The proposals within the policy programme focus on creating an integration programme for the initial phase of the integration process and developing the integration service infrastructure so that the integration of newcomers could be achieved within a maximum of two years. In addition to intensifying the speed of the integration process, the analysis shows that demands for the receiving society relate mostly to redefining the responsibilities of officials at different governance levels. Equally, increasing the amount of low threshold integration services are given attention so that newcomers outside the labour market would be reached more efficiently. The analysis indicates that the purpose of this is to gather and manage all human capital that is currently left unattended, mould it into a usable resource and redirect it into the labour market. The analysis concludes that the suggested proposals advocate for increasing control on the lives and identities of newcomers as they are categorized according to their competences and skills i.e., their value to the receiving society. Thus, regardless of the reform on the act concerning newcomer integration, the process is still being thought of as a unidirectional economic process. Key words: Newcomer integration policy, two-way integration, critical discourse analysis, governmentality, biopolitics