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Previous studies suggest that older adults from minority linguistic groups are at a higher risk of experiencing social exclusion, with service exclusion being a highly evident form. This article explores how Swedish- speaking older adults in Finland experience the availability and adequacy of services in their first language and how their experiences are linked to social exclusion. Anchored in the intersection between two dimensions of social exclusion, service exclusion and identity exclusion, this study presents findings from 14 semi-structured interviews with uni- and bilingual Swedish-speaking older adults. The results indicate that inequitable access to services and facing language discordant services can shape experiences of exclusion. The inability to receive everyday services in Swedish further fosters feelings of inferiority and identity discrimination. This study findings contribute to the social gerontological literature on social exclusion and demonstrate how identity intersections with service exclusion.

This article examines changes in the well-being of foreign-language-speaking migrant mothers living in Finland during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Our data consist of 73 mothers’ responses to a qualitative survey conducted between 18 April and 26 May 2020. In our analysis, we employ the division of well-being into three dimensions: having, loving, and being. According to our results, the participating mothers experienced dramatic changes, such as an increased burden of care and domestic work, difficulties helping children with remote studies, health concerns, a lack of free time, isolation from Finnish society and the inability to travel to their country of origin. Family-centered activities helped the mothers to cope in this situation but also caused strains. Based on our findings, we discuss the vulnerabilities these mothers experienced in relation to language, migration background and gender roles.

In a time of welfare state restructuring, migrant background ‘stay-at-home’ mothers have become a politicised social category, constructed as unproductive and socially disengaged. The article examines the ways newly arrived women, who take care of children at home, enact and negotiate their own and their families’ early citizenisation process, with a particular focus on institutional encounters. Drawing on two case stories from the capital region of Finland, I discuss the dynamics of mothers’ claims-making for a transitionary citizenship, from the sphere of the home via social rights based public daycare to language training and education. I conclude that the constrained agency migrant mothers are subjected to, risks shaping a new gendered and racialised order of parenthood and ultimately of citizenship in the transforming welfare states.

Implications from the restructuring of Nordic eldercare include the incorporation of new categories of care workers and a redefinition of the terms of citizenship and participation in working life. Drawing on the idea that policy actors script care worker subjectivities, this article examines print media as a key arena where the cultural imaginary of care work is played out. The media has the potential to accommodate ideological complexity through the possible range of participatory actors. From the scripts promoted through the mediascape, we can learn about the positions understood as being (in)appropriate for migrant care workers. This study draws on the analysis of news and feature stories from 2003 to 2013 in the largest Finnish daily, Helsingin Sanomat, and in the periodical Kuntalehti, published by the Finnish Association of Local and Regional Authorities. The article points to tensions in Finnish media discourse, identifying ambiguous occupational scripts for migrant care workers—rooted in neoliberal repertoires of self-sufficiency and normative individualism on the one hand and helplessness and naivety on the other hand. It draws attention to an unsettling construction whereby migrant care workers are excluded from a long-term contract with the Finnish care labor market, and where social equality is conditioned to global redistribution.

Contemporary citizenship studies have been more concerned with the theory and philosophy of citizenship than with empirical studies. The general objective of this contribution is to broaden the understanding of how notions of citizenship are constructed and re-valued in the social world. The study draws on a qualitative analysis of political elite discourse on Romani issues in the Finnish Parliament from 1989-2003. How issues concerning the Roma are debated elucidates the dilemmas of universal rights and duties within the Nordic welfare model, and the possibilities for cultural diversity within this framework. While the Finnish parliamentary debate accentuated tolerance and the acceptance of difference as strengthening factors for Finnish social citizenship, it was not before the new millennium that the political discourse changed to increasingly stress notions of discrimination and structural inequalities in relation to the incapability to provide for a full an inclusive citizenship as regards the Romani minority.