Search

This paper explores young women's expectations on future work-family reconciliation in Finland, a Nordic country well-known for the promotion of gender equality. Utilising Sen's capabilities approach, we content-analysed thirty individual interviews to identify differences in women's expectations and their perceived capabilities in future work and care. The results showed that irrespective of their labour market status and educational attainment, the women's expectations were contradictory, reflecting a current Finnish gender culture that embraces both the ideal of shared parenthood and the primacy of maternal care. Between-group differences were also found. The employed women perceived themselves as having the capability to balance work, family and, personal time in the future. The women who were studying and had higher education- and career-related expectations perceived themselves as capable of combating gender inequality in their future working lives. In contrast, the unemployed women perceived their capabilities in both their future work and care as limited, thereby constraining their agency to realise their choices in work-family reconciliation and family decision-making. These findings indicate that Finnish women's expectations on future work-family reconciliation are shaped by institutional, societal and individual socioeconomic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much do young people's daily activities differ according to where they live? As a global generation, young people are disproportionally subject to the risks and insecurity of globalization. However, countries differ in their support for young people's inclusion through economic and social participation. Using time use surveys from Australia, Italy, Finland, France, Korea, Spain, the UK and the USA (n = 23,271), this paper investigates national differences in the amount of time young people (20–34 years) spend on paid and unpaid work, study and leisure in each country. Gender gaps in market work and non-market work were widest in the Anglo and southern European countries. In France and Finland, gender differences in daily market and non-market activity were narrower. Young women spent more daily time in study than young men in all countries except Korea, where study time was highest. Young men and young women in social democratic Finland had more leisure time than young people elsewhere. Results suggest that young people's experience of the consequences of globalization is not universal, but that nation-states remain relevant in determining their welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the ways in which governing bodies at the Finnish national and also European Union levels talk about young people and our shared future in Finland. I use their youth policy documents as material for critical discourse analysis. My argument is that, besides presenting visions of a desired future, these papers also produce and reproduce divisions between young people that reflect gender and class positions. Young people are divided into those who have potential, those who will take care of others' needs, and those who are at risk of marginalisation. I also argue that the Nordic policy tendency to conceive of youth as a resource rather than as a problem is not consistent. Finnish youth policy has changed, firstly because of the changing economic environment - the politics of austerity - and secondly because of Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss how art workshops can be used to examine dimensions of belonging. We draw on our findings of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with unaccompanied refugee minors in Finland. The practical aim of the art project was to offer a platform for transcultural communication and interaction, and to support mutual understanding and solidarity among the refugee minors and Finnish pupils. The collaborative ethnographic approach gave us an opportunity to meet the young people through working together and be equally active members of the group sharing the same classroom. Theoretically we aim to enlarge the understanding of the sense of belonging and the role of the subjective agency of the unaccompanied minors, including everyday participation. We highlight the practices through which the minors can be supported in an embracing manner in their everyday lives in new host societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steady decline of youth participation in society has been a concern for social scientists since the 1970s. Recent research has sought to move beyond concluding this signifies a 'crisis of democracy' or explaining the phenomenon by distinguishing between formal and extra-institutional types of participation by redirecting attention towards everyday life. Through a similar focus on the 'everyday', we seek to enrich our understanding of how youth participation manifests today, by drawing on the rich vein of (post)subcultural theory and the study of everyday youth practices. Specifically, we consider the meaning and role of space in the everyday lives and activism of youth in conflict with social institutions. The article draws on cross-national ethnographic data, from research with stigmatised groups of youth in Croatia, Finland, Spain and Slovakia, collected within the framework of the project. The findings affirm that space is a socially, politically and economically determined category that reflects existing social inequalities and power relations between social groups. At the same time, space is used by the young research participants, often through subcultural practices, for: self-integration; empowerment through the appropriation of public and private space; broadening the spectrum of their capabilities; and active participation aimed at achieving social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we study the association between mental health problems in adolescence and early adulthood and later receipt of social assistance in the capital region of Finland. Using register data and following a cohort of adolescents to their early adulthood, we also examine whether the strength of this association varies according to household income during adolescence. We find that mental health problems from the ages of 16–17 and thereafter were associated with the receipt of social assistance at age 24, and more strongly among those with lower household income during their adolescence. Importantly, the same disorder groups emerged as the most important ones in predicting the use of social assistance across income quintiles. In this sense, we find similarity regardless of parental resources. This evidence is important for better understanding the mechanisms between circumstances during adolescence and later socioeconomic outcomes, including benefit use, yet the underlying factors should be studied further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, more people than usual claimed asylum in Finland, inspiring many artists to organise photography workshops with refugees and migrants. This article examines in what respects participatory photography can promote social inclusion for migrant youth and what aspects need more attention. It is based on a Finnish research project titled Young People in the Limelight, which investigated ways to support social inclusion, participation and multiliteracies by vulnerable youth through youth work. The action study included five participatory photography workshops with mixed groups of migrants and Finns, most of them between the ages of 15 and 22. The data consist mainly of observation diaries and interviews. In participatory photography, social inclusion is usually understood as 'having a voice'. Besides this, it was also discovered that participatory photography can facilitate social inclusion by providing experiences of informal, interpersonal acceptance, by increasing perception of the photographer as a skilful person, by solidifying a sense of belonging to a group and society and by facilitating familiarisation with new spaces and local culture. The study suggests that experimenting with and analysing participatory photography as a facilitator of social inclusion from the perspectives of listening, transcultural interaction and spatiality should occur more in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores young Finns' transition pathways into education and work over a 9-year period (from the age of 18 to 26), with a special focus on difficulties with labour market attachment. The data were derived from national registers comprising all men (29,383) and women (27,784) born in 1987. Their labour market attachment was investigated using trajectory analysis with four variables (employment, education, unemployment, social security allowances) from 2005 to 2013. We identified 10 trajectory groups, of which 7 in men and 8 in women were categorised as 'mainstream paths', reflecting relatively smooth transitions. The other trajectory groups were considered to assume 'straying paths': 11% of both men and women followed these paths. The size and nature of these paths differed between men and women: it seems that men more often have serious difficulties with labour market attachment than women do. Overall, the results of the multiple variable trajectory analyses suggest that cross-sectional inspections of the Finnish register data overestimate the proportion of NEETs, particularly among men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is yet known of how personal identity processes of exploration and commitment develop beyond adolescence and how they interact with developmental tasks of young adulthood. Employing the DIDS (The Dimensions of Identity Development Scale; commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth, exploration in depth and ruminative exploration) in a longitudinal sample of Finnish young adults (measurement at age 24 and 29; N = 854, 63% women), the results of this study suggested 1) that identity commitment and exploration levels, in general, decrease over time, 2) that success in developmental tasks but not sex moderate this development, and 3) that among developmental tasks, parenthood is the strongest predictor of changes in identity processes over time. The results support a view of personal identity as a dynamic process moderated by contextual factors beyond adolescence and have practical implications for social security provision in an increasingly precarious labour market. Political decisions that support young adults' trust in the future and a sense of continuity by strengthening different forms of social security are called for. A debate on values related to success is also needed to lessen the emotional costs of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the gender differences in disposable incomes of teenagers during a 30-year period 1983–2013, using large nationally representative survey data. Since the gender pay gap in working life has been rather persistent in Finland and the EU, it was necessary to see whether the gap persists in teenagers’ incomes as well. Although teenagers do not receive much income from work, they adapt to the structures of society during their teenage years and learn gender roles in consumption, education, and working life. Our results reveal that the gender pay gap has been rather persistent in Finland, particularly among 14- and 16-year-old teenagers. It is only among 18-year-olds that the gender difference in income has narrowed. There were interactions between gender and socio-economic indicators such as the father's education and family's place of residence. The persistent gender pay gap cannot be explained solely by wage differences in any age group, because full-time work of teenagers is nowadays very rare, and in Finland they do not work very much even part-time. Although it is rather obvious that boys get higher incomes than girls from external work, the allocation of money by parents seems to be unequal, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on findings from a study, which aimed to gain insight into young people's depression as a part of their life course by analysing written accounts of 81 young Finnish people who self-identified as having been depressed. The participants’ accounts were seen as reflecting both their actual life and their narrative interpretations of it in relation to the prevailing normative conceptions regarding youth. The accounts can be grouped into four main story types. The story type referred to asgrowing up on a sidetrackdepicts depression as having its origins in childhood adversities that hinder the realisation of normative goals.Falling off the trackdepicts how a young person's life can be derailed as a result of experiences that cause or exacerbate depression. In the storymissing the track, depression is intertwined with one's experience of failure in meeting normative expectations, whereas the storyquestioning the trackfeatures the problematisation of such expectations. The results underscore the importance of tackling different adverse conditions in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in a timely fashion, as well as the importance of therapy, counselling and guidance, which help young people to manage difficulties and depression in their life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]