The structure of this dissertation is as follows. In the next, rather brief, chapter, I introduce the sociohistorical context in which my research participants’ lives take place in more detail, including a sketch of Finnish immigration policies and integration practices. In chapter 3, I present my methodological choices: my approaches to fieldwork and the analysis of data, and dwell on ethical questions. In chapter 4, I lay out the theoretical premises of my work. I briefly introduce the past and present history of political anthropology, before moving on to concentrate on the concept of agency and its problematics in more detail. I look at three different ways of approaching agency, and on that basis delineate my own approach in subchapter 4.3.
Following this outline of the empirical context and theoretical framework for the dissertation, I present my ethnographic material and analysis. This section is divided into three main chapters that each concentrate on an aspect of agency: the first on encounters of differentiation (answering research question 1), the second on the young men’s immediate strategies in these encounters (research question 2a), and the third on their long-term projects (research question 2b). These chapters are, in turn, each divided into three subchapters, concentrating on a given situation in the lives of my three main research participants, Emanuel, Manasse, and Afrax, but also opening from that particular example to a more comprehensive view of the ways young refugee background men are encountered in Finnish society and on the ways they react and act in response. All the subchapters follow the same logic: In the beginning, a brief excerpt from my fieldwork is presented to crystallize the subject
matter of each chapter and to indicate to the reader which young person and what situation the chapter deals with. In the body of the text, I analyze what is going on in these situations, expanding the scope of my analysis to other situations and youths in order to provide context and depth. Some subchapters also include an epilogue:
these introduce the young persons’ interpretations of the themes addressed in the chapter, which, in some cases, differ from my own, and also contrast the analysis with the subsequent course of their lives. The last chapter of the dissertation pulls together my analysis and argument and sketches out their implications.
A note on personal pronouns: I use the singular they (they/them/their) when speaking of persons whose gender I either don’t know or don’t want to reveal due to anonymization, or who use they as their pronoun themselves. A note on quoting discussions in my data: I have both recorded discussions, notes taken on the spot during discussions, and notes written afterwards. In order to distinguish between verbatim quotes from quotes relying on my memory, I use double quotes (“quote”) to mark the former, and single (‘quote’) for the latter. In longer dialogues, the absence of quotation marks indicates verbatim quotes; use of single quotation marks quotes that might not be exactly verbatim (as for example in the opening vignette of this introduction).
2 INCLUSION/EXCLUSION: FINLAND AS A LIBERAL WELFARE STATE
Emanuel: My personal social educator, my sweet personal social educator.
Elina: Sweet personal social educator.
Emanuel sends small kisses to a woman in a photo he shows me, making me laugh.
Elina: She was really important for you. Here in the family group home.
Emanuel: Yeah, and still is.
In the photo, Emanuel stands next to a blonde, middle-aged woman. They both smile a little and look straight at the camera. As quite a tall young man he is considerably taller than she is. She stands in a very upright position, one knee slightly bent, the other leg tall and straight. She has put her left arm around his waist, which is at a comfortable level for her. Her fingers peek from between his left side and left arm.
Emanuel, for his part, has put his right arm around her shoulders, and his palm rests on her right upper arm. He leans slightly on her shoulder and rests his right temple almost on the top of her head. He has to bend both knees a bit to be able to hug her this way, and his right side and her left side touch each other for the whole length of their sides and thighs. She stands there carrying slightly the weight of his body, which he rests on her head and shoulder, and, a little plump, she seems all the more strong, steady and trustworthy―somehow keeping her professional role even in this intimate hug. Emanuel, on the other hand, leans on her, almost curling around her: a tall, slender and slightly collapsed figure.
The context for this research is Finland, a liberal welfare state, one of the Nordic countries that all (albeit varyingly) have followed the “Third Way” policy: that of reconciling extensive welfare systems with liberal markets. As Sipilä et al. (2009, 182;
187–188) argue, while globalization, transition to post-industrial society and an ageing population have challenged the (Finnish) welfare state in considerable ways and inflicted deterioration in public services, it has not been abandoned and the principle of universalism―the assurance of the availability of benefits and services to all citizens―is still pursued. Also, non-citizens are granted some services: citizens of other EU-countries, nationals of a so-called “third country” (i.e. non-EU country) who have a residence permit in Finland, and asylum seekers waiting for a decision on their asylum applications are all entitled to get certain public services and benefits.
What these rights are depends on the status of the individual, and the system is rather
complicated in its precision and detail. These details are not the point here, and I will not go into them; what is essential is the way the welfare state structures the lives of my research participants in Finland. For a brief description of this one could paraphrase Barker (2012, 16), who argues that the Swedish (which, she underlines, is at one and the same time exemplary of and in some details different from Nordic states in general) welfare state “[...] functions as both a universal but exclusionary model.” By this she means that the Nordic welfare state is very generous, if you belong to it, and marginalizing and depriving if you are not recognized as belonging to it. Moreover, the welfare state itself is, “[...] preserved and made sustainable for those in the inside by limiting the access from the outside”, and the structural barriers to belonging are high and hierarchical, “[...] particularly to those deemed ‘other’, ‘un-deserving’, or members of particular ethnic groups.” (Ibid., 17.) In this sense, the Nordic welfare state can be understood to be Janus-faced: its generosity towards the people recognized as insiders is one side of the coin, the other side of which is the exclusion and criminalization of others.