Abstract
The chapter examines the ways in which eldercare managers (e.g. head nurses, home care supervisors and ward managers) in Finland can justify the increasing recruitment of foreign-born workers to lower-level eldercare jobs that are decreasingly attractive to Finnish-born workers. The question asked is: How can eldercare managers discursively cope with the potential criticism according to which the prevailing recruitment and employment tendencies exploit actors in structurally disadvantaged labor market positions? Our analysis demonstrates how eldercare managers can maintain affectively appealing impressions of their own actions by constructing foreign-born workers as subjects who are inherently interested in eldercare work and less interested in wages and working conditions. When eldercare managers’ self-presentations depend on these win-win narratives, foreign-born workers’ abilities to mobilize counter-narratives at their workplace are highly limited.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
In the extracts, brackets signal removed passages or added clarifications and underlining indicates that a word was emphasized by the speaker.
References
Aalto, A. M., Elovainio, M., Heponiemi, T., Hietapakka, L., Kuusisto, H., & Lämsä, R. (2013). Ulkomaalaistaustaiset lääkärit ja hoitajat suomalaisessa terveydenhuollossa: haasteet ja mahdollisuudet. National Institute for Health and Welfare.
Adhikari, R., & Melia, K. M. (2015). The (mis)management of migrant nurses in the UK: A sociological study. Journal of Nursing Management, 23(3), 359–367.
Ailasmaa, R. (2015). Terveys- ja sosiaalipalveluiden henkilöstön kansainvälinen liikkuvuus 2012. National Institute for Health and Welfare.
Anderson, B., & Ruhs, M. (2010). Migrant workers: Who needs them? A framework for the analysis of staff shortages, immigration and public policy. In M. Ruhs & B. Anderson (Eds.), Who needs migrant workers? Labour shortages, immigration, and public policy (pp. 15–52). Oxford University Press.
Burr, V. (2003). Social constructionism. Routledge.
Cangiano, A., & Walsh, K. (2014). Recruitment processes and immigration regulations: The disjointed pathways to employing migrant carers in ageing societies. Work, Employment & Society, 28(3), 372–389.
Carter, J. (2000). New public management and equal opportunities in the NHS. Critical Social Policy, 20(1), 61–83.
Clarke, C. A., Brown, A. D., & Hailey, V. H. (2009). Working identities? Antagonistic discursive resources and managerial identity. Human Relations, 62(3), 323–352.
Cleland Silva, T. (2018). Transnational management and globalised workers: Nurses beyond human resources. Routledge.
Dahle, R., & Seeberg, M. L. (2013). Does she speak norwegian? Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(2), 82–90.
Gallo, E., & Scrinzi, F. (2016). Outsourcing elderly care to migrant workers: The impact of gender and class on the experience of male employers. Sociology, 50(2), 366–388.
Gavanas, A. (2013). Elderly care puzzles in Stockholm: Strategies on formal and informal markets. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(2), 63–71.
Hellgren, Z. (2015). Markets, regimes, and the role of stakeholders: Explaining precariousness of migrant domestic/care workers in different institutional frameworks. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 22(2), 220–241.
Henriksson, L., & Wrede, S. (2012). The making of medico-managerial care work culture in public home care for the elderly. Perspectives on care at home for older people. In C. Ceci, K. Björnsdóttir, & M. E. Purkis (Eds.), Homecare: International and Comparative Perspectives (pp. 171–185). Routledge.
Karsio, O., & Anttonen, A. (2013). Marketisation of eldercare in Finland: Legal frames, outsourcing practices and the rapid growth of for-profit services. In G. Meagher & M. Szebehely (Eds.), Marketisation in nordic eldercare: A research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequences (pp. 85–126). Stockholm University.
Koivuniemi, S. (2012). Maahanmuuttajataustainen koulutettu hoitohenkilöstö sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon työyhteisöissä. Tehy ry.
Kröger, T., Van Aerschot, L., & Puthenparambil, J. M. (2018). Hoivatyö muutoksessa. Suomalainen vanhustyö pohjoismaisessa vertailussa. University of Jyväskylä.
Lamont, M., & Swidler, A. (2014). Methodological pluralism and the possibilities and limits of interviewing. Qualitative Sociology, 37(2), 153–171.
Larja, L., Warius, J., Sundbäck, L., Liebkind, K., Kandolin, I., & Jasinskaja-Lahti, I. (2012). Discrimination in the Finnish labor market: An overview and a field experiment on recruitment. Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
Laurén, J., & Wrede, S. (2008). Immigrants in care work: Ethnic hierarchies and work distribution. Finnish Journal of Ethnicity & Migration, 3(3), 20–31.
Lutz, H. (2018). Care migration: The connectivity between care chains, care circulation and transnational social inequality. Current Sociology, 66(4), 577–589.
McGoey, L. (2012). The logic of strategic ignorance. The British Journal of Sociology, 63(3), 533–576.
McGovern, P. (2007). Immigration, labour markets and employment relations: Problems and prospects. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 45(2), 217–235.
Misra, J., Woodring, J., & Merz, S. N. (2006). The globalization of care work: Neoliberal economic restructuring and migration policy. Globalizations, 3(3), 317–332.
Nordberg, C. (2016). Outsourcing equality: Migrant care worker imaginary in Finnish media. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 6(3), 101–118.
Näre, L. (2013). Ideal workers and suspects. Employers’ politics of recognition and the migrant division of labour in Finland. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(2), 72–81.
Näre, L., & Nordberg, C. (2016). Neoliberal post colonialism in the Media: Constructing Filipino nurse subjects in Finland. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(1), 16–32.
Nieminen, S. (2011). Kuulumisen politiikkaa: Maahanmuuttajasairaanhoitajat, ammattikuntaan sisäänpääsy ja toimijuuden ehdot. University of Tampere.
Niska, M. (2015). Who is serving whom? An agency-for perspective on enterprise promotion in rural Finland. University of Helsinki.
Olakivi, A. (2017). Unmasking the enterprising nurse: migrant care workers and the discursive mobilisation of productive professionals. Sociology of health & illness, 39(3), 428–442.
Olakivi, A. (2018). The relational construction of occupational agency. Performing professional and enterprising selves in diversifying care work. University of Helsinki.
Olakivi, A. (2020). The problematic recruitment of migrant labor: A relational perspective on the agency of care work managers. Current Sociology, 68(3), 333–352.
Olakivi, A., & Niska, M. (2017). Rethinking managerialism in professional work: From competing logics to overlapping discourses. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(1), 20–35.
Olakivi, A., Van Aerschot, L., Puthenparambil, J.M., Kröger, T. (2021). Ylikuormitusta, lähijohtajan tuen puutetta vai vääränlaisia tehtäviä: miksi yhä useammat vanhustyöntekijät harkitsevat työnsä lopettamista? Yhteiskuntapolitiikka, 86(2), 141–154.
Shutes, I., & Walsh, K. (2012). Negotiating user preferences, discrimination, and demand for migrant labour in long-term care. Social Politics, 19(1), 78–104.
Silverman, D. (2017). How was it for you? The Interview Society and the irresistible rise of the (poorly analyzed) interview. Qualitative Research, 17(2), 144–158.
Statistics Finland. (2019). Labour statistics on migrant and foreign-born employees available on request. http://www.stat.fi.
Torres, S. (2017). Fobbing care work unto ‘the other’—what daily press reporting shows. Sociologisk forskning, 54(4), 319–322.
Vaittinen, T. (2017). The global biopolitical economy of needs: Transnational entanglements between ageing Finland and the global nurse reserve of the Philippines. University of Tampere.
Vartiainen, P. (2019). Filippiiniläisten sairaanhoitajien polut Suomeen: Tutkimus oppimisesta ja työyhteisöintegraatiosta kansainvälisen rekrytoinnin kontekstissa. University of Tampere.
Waldinger, R., & Lichter, M. I. (2003). How the other half works: Immigration and the social organization of labor. University of California Press.
Walsh, K., & Shutes, I. (2013). Care relationships, quality of care and migrant workers caring for older people. Ageing & Society, 33(3), 393–420.
Weicht, B. (2011). Embodying the ideal carer: The Austrian discourse on migrant carers. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 5(2), 17–52.
Wetherell, M. (2013). Affect and discourse–What’s the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice. Subjectivity, 6(4), 349–368.
Wrede, S. (2010). Nursing: Globalization of a female-gendered profession. In E. Kuhlmann & E. Annandale (Eds.), Palgrave handbook of gender and healthcare (pp. 437–453). Palgrave Macmillan.
Wrede, S., Nordberg, C., & Forsander, A. (2010). Etnistyvä eriarvoisuus ja keinot kohti tasa-arvoa. In S. Wrede & C. Nordberg (Eds.), Vieraita työssä: työelämän etnistyvä eriarvoisuus (pp. 274–283). Gaudeamus.
Wrede, S., & Näre, L. (2013). Glocalising care in the nordic countries: An introduction to the special issue. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(2), 57–62.
Wrede, S. Näre, L., Olakivi, A., Nordberg, C. (2021, accepted for publication). Neoliberal ‘flexibility’ and the discursive incorporation of migrant labour in public eldercare in Finland. In N. Piper & C. Mora (Eds.), The palgrave handbook of gender and migration: Global perspectives. : Palgrave Macmillan.
Yeates, N. (2009). Globalizing care economies and migrant workers: Explorations in global care chains. Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Olakivi, A., Wrede, S. (2021). Pragmatic Inattention and Win-Win Narratives: How Finnish Eldercare Managers Make Sense of Foreign-Born Care Workers’ Structural Disadvantage. In: Horn, V., Schweppe, C., Böcker, A., Bruquetas-Callejo, M. (eds) The Global Old Age Care Industry. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2237-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2237-3_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-2236-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-2237-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)