Kansalaisuus työyhteisön arjessa : Maahanmuuttajien kertomuksia työelämästä

Citizenship in the everyday of a work community. Immigrants narratives of working life. Through globalisation and the mobility of workforce, citizenship has gained new forms, and the mere legal definition of citizenship no longer gives a comprehensive view of the citizenship of an individual. Also the social, cultural and financial dimensions of it are related to the concept of citizenship. In Finland, full citizenship is promoted, according to the Integration Act and social security system, by the requirement that immigrants should mainly get their livelihood through work. In my study I approach citizenship on four levels: the global, national, work community and private levels. In the study, the global has constituted the largest possible context, which refers to the local affects of global processes. The local and the global come together in the research in that globalisation is realised on the local level, i.e. in small communities such as work communities. The objective of the study is to examine how the citizenship of immigrants who live and work in Finland is constructed in the everyday life of a work community. The most central concept of the study is cultural script, which is based on prevailing forms of knowing, and which are constructed in different ways in different times and cultures. Conflicts of scripts in the working life and difficulties in understanding and applying them are in the centre of the study. In the study, the working life experiences of immigrants are approached through narrative research. The research material consists of the working life narratives of nine immigrants who live and work in Finland permanently. Each interviewee has been interviewed 2 4 times so the research material consists of 26 interviews. The material has been analysed from the points of view of perception, feeling and action. Deborah Tannen s and William Labov s as well as Matti Hyvärinen s method of expectancy analysis to locate cultural scripts has been utilised to organise the research material. In addition, David Herman s concepts of participatory roles and event types formed in narratives have been used in the analysis of the material. The basis in the analysis is that the world, events and experiences do not define the available processes; they are always culturally and individually anchored choices of the speaker and narrator. The most important results of the study are related to the gap between globalisation and everyday life. The discussion about the future need for workforce due to the changing population structure as well as about the benefits for national economy brought by internationalisation has continued in Finland for years. However, the working life narratives of the immigrants interviewed for the study show that an average citizen and member of a work community does not immediately encounter the macro level benefits in, for example, the mobility of workforce. In most of the working life narratives there was a point in speaking and saying, in which the immigrant worker either dares to speak or falls silent. Sometimes the courage to speak was related to language skills but more to the courage to be seen and to be part of a Finnish work community. Other workers that either speak their colleague with an immigrant background into a part of their work community or marginalise the colleague with their silence have an important role in a Finnish work community. In several working life narratives, the script of the Finnish working life and work community, the way to work, was opened to the immigrant and the so-called script exchange did not take place. The study shows that working life experiences and inclusion and exclusion built on the working life have an important role in the construction of active citizenship. The detailed analysis of the working life experience narratives gives new, relevant research data about citizenship as inclusion.