Neoliberal ‘Flexibility’ and the Discursive Incorporation of Migrant Labour in Public Eldercare in Finland

Abstract

Globally spreading neoliberal doctrines regarding the need to ‘flexibilise’ the allegedly bureaucratic welfare states have been shown to contribute to the ‘flexibilisation’ of care work, involving austerity measures and reliance on migrant labour. Focusing on public eldercare in Finland, this chapter adds to the literature a close intersectional examination of the exploitative ‘coping management’ that the neoliberal discourse underpins. This management style fails to challenge inadequate resources and instead extorts nurses, treating them as disposable routine workers. We argue that coping management is expressed through ‘flexibility talk’ that emphasises personal characteristics rather than formal skills, and that there is an inherent affinity between ‘flexibility talk’ and ‘migrant flexibility talk’. We maintain that the re-articulation of care work as work requiring ‘flexibility’ and therefore particularly fitting for migrants has problematic gendered and racialised implications in the workplace. Our analysis draws on interviews with managers in public eldercare and observations from eldercare units in Finland. We show how the practices and discourses of flexibilisation help care managers to reconcile the practical and ethical dilemmas they face in ways that appear morally and locally sustainable to them. We have observed that care managers do not currently recognise migrant nurses as stakeholders worthy of equal recognition.