Matkalla suomalaiseksi ja hoiva-alan ammattilaiseksi? : Venäläis- ja virolaistaustaisten naisten ja suomalaisuuden kohtaamiset kuulumista rakentamassa

The research examines the process by which a sense of belonging to Finnish society is constructed among women of Russian and Estonian background who are multiply marginalised in Finnish society. It does so by analysing the encounters between their nationality and 'being Finnis'. Attention is focused on the question of what kind of "journey" they take after moving to Finland, how a sense of belonging is constructed especially along the paths followed in education and at work, and what kind of agency is available to them. The thesis is connected with post-colonial research and also draws from studies on citizenship and nationality as well as the social structures of interaction, when analysing careers. As the educational system forms the most central context of the research, the work is also focused on educational sociology. The research methodology includes life history and a narrative approach. The raw data is from thematic interviews concerning the life experiences of women of immigrant backgrounds. They were studying in Finland to be practical nurses or to complete Bachelor of Social Service degree. According to the study, the women had been encountered as alien, strange, and carrying a shade of "otherness". The experience of inclusion in Finnish communities and society turned out to be conditional, an inclusion based on the notion of a citizen worker, which is defined by national needs. The person from abroad is placed in the position of someone who fills gaps in the services of the welfare state. The choice of education in the care sector and the overall necessity of obtaining Finnish education turned out to be socially directed. Gendered structures of education and working life were found to act as a frame in which the decisions of the immigrant women were made. Although national education policy emphasis as an orientation to global labour markets, the immigrant student is placed above all in the position of an object to be made suitable for the Finnish labour market. Citizenship, a goal of education, requires consent to being "socialised" into Finnish society as well as learning to be Finnish. One s only option to negotiate appearing suitable as a member is to construct oneself into someone who adopts Finnish and Western cultural values, values which favour individuality. However, Finnish education is a resource to Finnishness. Finnish education enables a sense of being Finnish, and empowers the job applicant for example, and in addition to providing cultural, human and social capital strengthen inclusion as well. The study confirms the view that the encounter of an immigrant is still characterised by its colonial nature. It shows that encounters with Finns and Finnish society place the person of immigrant background, even one receiving a Finnish education, in the position of "the other". The journey as an immigrant continues. The immigrant has access only to certain predefined subject positions, which limits agency. When categorised as an immigrant, one becomes a per-son who is different and "other", while the sense of belonging as a member of Finnish society without conditions appears to be somewhat unreachable. Yet, new arrivals are capable of acting change. An immigrant woman can challenge the positions offered to her and present herself as strong. Her life story has often included struggle, and she has the fortitude strength to change her circumstances. Key words: life story, post-colonial encounter, nationality, citizenship, the career of immi-grant, position, agency

Modern Societal Impulses and their Nordic Manifestations : On Emancipation and Constraint in Societal Development

The 1980s and the early 1990s have proved to be an important turning point in the history of the Nordic welfare states. After this breaking point, the Nordic social order has been built upon a new foundation. This study shows that the new order is mainly built upon new hierarchies and control mechanisms that have been developed consistently through economic and labour market policy measures. During the post-war period Nordic welfare states to an increasing extent created equality of opportunity and scope for agency among people. Public social services were available for all and the tax-benefit system maintained a level income distribution. During this golden era of Nordic welfare state, the scope for agency was, however, limited by social structures. Public institutions and law tended to categorize people according to their life circumstances ascribing them a predefined role. In the 1980s and 1990s this collectivist social order began to mature and it became subject to political renegotiation. Signs of a new social order in the Nordic countries have included the liberation of the financial markets, the privatizing of public functions and redefining the role of the public sector. It is now possible to reassess the ideological foundations of this new order. As a contrast to widely used political rhetoric, the foundation of the new order has not been the ideas of individual freedom or choice. Instead, the most important aim appears to have been to control and direct people to act in accordance with the rules of the market. The various levels of government and the social security system have been redirected to serve this goal. Instead of being a mechanism for redistributing income, the Nordic social security system has been geared towards creating new hierarchies on the Nordic labour markets. During the past decades, conditions for receiving income support and unemployment benefit have been tightened in all Nordic countries. As a consequence, people have been forced to accept deteriorating terms and conditions on the labour market. Country-specific variations exist, however: in sum Sweden has been most conservative, Denmark most innovative and Finland most radical in reforming labour market policy. The new hierarchies on the labour market have co-incided with slow or non-existent growth of real wages and with a strong growth of the share of capital income. Slow growth of real wages has kept inflation low and thus secured the value of capital. Societal development has thus progressed from equality of opportunity during the age of the welfare states towards a hierarchical social order where the majority of people face increasing constraints and where a fortunate minority enjoys prosperity and security.

Essays on Economic Integration and Labour Demand

This dissertation consists of an introductory section and three essays investigating the effects of economic integration on labour demand by using theoretical models and by empirical analysis. The essays adopt an intra-industry trade approach to specify a theoretical framework of estimation for determining the effects of economic integration on employment. In all the essays the empirical aim is to explore the labour demand consequences of European integration. The first essay analyzes how labour-demand elasticities with own price have changed during the process of economic integration. As a theoretical result, intensified trade competition increases labour-demand elasticity, whereas better advantage of economies of scale decreases labour-demand elasticity by decreasing the elasticity of substitution between differentiated products. Furthermore, if integration gives rise to an increase in input-substitutability and/or outsourcing activities, labour demand will become more elastic. Using data from the manufacturing sector from 1975 to 2002, the empirical results provide support for the hypothesis that European integration has contributed to increased elasticities of total labour demand in Finland. The second essay analyzes how economic integration affects the impact of welfare poli-cies on employment. The essay considers the viability of financing the public sector, i.e. public consumption and social security expenses, by general labour taxation in an economy which has become more integrated into international product markets. The theoretical results of the second essay indicate that, as increased trade competition crowds out better economies of scale, it becomes more costly to maintain welfare systems financed by labour taxation. Using data from European countries for the years 1975 to 2004, the empirical results provide inconsistent evidence for the hypothesis that economic integration has contributed to the distortion effects of welfare policies on employment. The third essay analyzes the impact of profit sharing on employment as a way to introduce wage flexibility into the process of economic integration. The results of the essay suggest that, in theory, the effects of economic integration on the impact of profit sharing on employment clearly depend on a trade-off between intensified competition and better advantage of economies of scale. If product market competition increases, the ability of profit sharing to improve employment through economic integration increases with moderated wages. While, the economic integration associating with market power in turn decrease the possibilities of profit sharing with higher wages to improve employment. Using data from the manufacturing sector for the years 1996 to 2004, the empirical results show that profit-sharing has a positive impact on employment during the process of European integration, but can have ambiguous effects on the stability of employment in Finland.

Rural Income Generation and Diversification : A Case Study in Eastern Zambia

Rural income diversification has been found to be rather the norm than the exception in developing countries. Smallholder households tend to diversify their income sources because of the need to manage risks, secure a smooth flow of income, allocate surplus labour, respond to various kinds of market failures, and apply coping strategies. The Agricultural Household Model provides a theoretical rationale for income diversification in that rural households aim at maximising their utility. There are several elements involved, such as agricultural production for their own consumption and markets, leisure activities and income from non-farm sources. The aim of the present study is to enhance understanding of the processes of rural income generation and diversification in eastern Zambia. Specifically, it explores the relationship between household characteristics, asset endowments and income-generation patterns. According to the sustainable- rural-livelihoods framework, the assets a household possesses shape its capacity to seize new economic opportunities. The study is based on two surveys conducted among rural smallholder households in four districts of Eastern Province in Zambia in 1985/86 and 2003. Sixty-seven of the interviewed households were present in both surveys and this panel allows comparison between the two points of time. The initial descriptive analysis is complemented with an econometric analysis of the relationships between household assets and income sources. The results show that, on average, 30 per cent of the households income originated from sources outside their own agriculture. There was a slight increase in the proportion of non-farm income from 1985/86 to 2003, but total income clearly declined mainly on account of diminishing crop income. The land area the household was able to cultivate, which is often dependent on the available labour, was the most significant factor affecting both the household-income level and the diversification patterns. Diversification was, in most cases, a coping strategy rather than a voluntary choice. Measured as income/capita/day, all households were below the poverty line in 2003. The agricultural reforms in Zambia, combined with other trends such as changes in rainfall pattern, the worsening livestock situation and the incidence of human disease, had a negative impact on agricultural productivity and income between 1985/86 and 2003. Sources of non-farm income were closely linked to agriculture either upstream or downstream and the income they generated was not enough to compensate for the decline of agricultural income. Household assets and characteristics had a smaller impact on diversification patterns than expected, which could reflect the lack of opportunities in the remote rural environment.

Mathematical Aspects of Financial Markets with Frictions

Frictions are factors that hinder trading of securities in financial markets. Typical frictions include limited market depth, transaction costs, lack of infinite divisibility of securities, and taxes. Conventional models used in mathematical finance often gloss over these issues, which affect almost all financial markets, by arguing that the impact of frictions is negligible and, consequently, the frictionless models are valid approximations. This dissertation consists of three research papers, which are related to the study of the validity of such approximations in two distinct modeling problems. Models of price dynamics that are based on diffusion processes, i.e., continuous strong Markov processes, are widely used in the frictionless scenario. The first paper establishes that diffusion models can indeed be understood as approximations of price dynamics in markets with frictions. This is achieved by introducing an agent-based model of a financial market where finitely many agents trade a financial security, the price of which evolves according to price impacts generated by trades. It is shown that, if the number of agents is large, then under certain assumptions the price process of security, which is a pure-jump process, can be approximated by a one-dimensional diffusion process. In a slightly extended model, in which agents may exhibit herd behavior, the approximating diffusion model turns out to be a stochastic volatility model. Finally, it is shown that when agents' tendency to herd is strong, logarithmic returns in the approximating stochastic volatility model are heavy-tailed. The remaining papers are related to no-arbitrage criteria and superhedging in continuous-time option pricing models under small-transaction-cost asymptotics. Guasoni, Rásonyi, and Schachermayer have recently shown that, in such a setting, any financial security admits no arbitrage opportunities and there exist no feasible superhedging strategies for European call and put options written on it, as long as its price process is continuous and has the so-called conditional full support (CFS) property. Motivated by this result, CFS is established for certain stochastic integrals and a subclass of Brownian semistationary processes in the two papers. As a consequence, a wide range of possibly non-Markovian local and stochastic volatility models have the CFS property.

Foreign Capital and Finland : Central government's first period of reliance on international financial markets, 1862-1938

The main objective of the study is to evaluate the Finnish central government s foreign borrowing between the years 1862 and 1938. Most of this period was characterised by deep capital market integration that bears resemblance to the liberal world financial order at the turn of the millennium. The main aim is to analyse the credit risk associated with the state and its determination by evaluating the world financial market centres perception of Finland. By doing this, the study is also expected to provide an additional dimension to Finland s political and economic history by incorporating into the research the assessments of international capital markets regarding Finland during a period that witnessed profound political and economic changes in Finnish society. The evaluation of the credit risk mainly relies on exchange-rate risk free time series of the state s foreign bonds. They have been collected from quotations in the stock exchanges in Helsinki, Hamburg, Paris and London. In addition, it investigates Finland s exposure to short-term debt and Moody s credit ratings assigned to Finland. The study emphasises the importance of the political risk. It suggests that the hey-day of the state s reliance on foreign capital markets took place during last few decades of the 19th century when Finland enjoyed a wide autonomy in the Russian Empire and prudently managed its economy, highlighted in Finland s adherence to the international gold standard. Political confrontations in Finland and, in particular, in Russia and the turbulence of the world financial system prevented the return of this beneficial position again. Through its issuance of foreign bonds the state was able to import substantial amounts of foreign capital, which was sorely needed to foster economic development in Finland. Moreover, the study argues that the state s presence in the western capital markets not only had economic benefits, but it also increased the international awareness of Finland s distinct and separate status in the Russian Empire and later underlined its position as an independent republic.

Studies on Wage Differentials and Labour Market Transitions

This thesis consists of four studies. The first study examines wage differentials between women and men in the Finnish manufacturing sector. A matched employer-employee data set is used to decompose the overall gender wage gap into the contributions of sex differences in human capital, labour market segregation, and residual within-job wage differentials. The topic of the second study is the relationship between the extended unemployment benefits and labour market transitions of older workers. The analysis exploits a quasi-experimental setting caused by a change in the law that raised the eligibility age of workers benefiting from extended benefits. Roughly half of the unemployed workers with extended benefits are estimated to be effectively withdrawn from labour market search. The risk of unemployment declined and the re-employment probability increased among the age groups directly affected by the reform. The third study provides an empirical analysis of a structural equilibrium search model. Estimation results from various model specifications are compared and discussed. The last study is a methodological study where the difficulties of interpreting the results of competing risks hazard models are discussed and a solution for a particular class of models is proposed. It is argued that a common practice of reporting the results of qualitative response models in terms of marginal effects is also useful in the context of competing risks duration models.

Substance flow analysis in Finland : Four case studies on N and P flows

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are essential elements for all living organisms. However, in excess, they contribute to several environmental problems such as aquatic and terrestrial eutrophication. Globally, human action has multiplied the volume of N and P cycling since the onset of industrialization. The multiplication is a result of intensified agriculture, increased energy consumption and population growth. Industrial ecology (IE) is a discipline, in which human interaction with the ecosystems is investigated using a systems analytical approach. The main idea behind IE is that industrial systems resemble ecosystems, and, like them, industrial systems can then be described using material, energy and information flows and stocks. Industrial systems are dependent on the resources provided by the biosphere, and these two cannot be separated from each other. When studying substance flows, the aims of the research from the viewpoint of IE can be, for instance, to elucidate the ways how the cycles of a certain substance could be more closed and how the flows of a certain substance could be decreased per unit of production (= dematerialization). In Finland, N and P are studied widely in different ecosystems and environmental emissions. A holistic picture comparing different societal systems is, however, lacking. In this thesis, flows of N and P were examined in Finland using substance flow analysis (SFA) in the following four subsystems: I) forest industry and use of wood fuels, II) food production and consumption, III) energy, and IV) municipal waste. A detailed analysis at the end of the 1990s was performed. Furthermore, historical development of the N and P flows was investigated in the energy system (III) and the municipal waste system (IV). The main research sources were official statistics, literature, monitoring data, and expert knowledge. The aim was to identify and quantify the main flows of N and P in Finland in the four subsystems studied. Furthermore, the aim was to elucidate whether the nutrient systems are cyclic or linear, and to identify how these systems could be more efficient in the use and cycling of N and P. A final aim was to discuss how this type of an analysis can be used to support decision-making on environmental problems and solutions. Of the four subsystems, the food production and consumption system and the energy system created the largest N flows in Finland. For the creation of P flows, the food production and consumption system (Paper II) was clearly the largest, followed by the forest industry and use of wood fuels and the energy system. The contribution of Finland to N and P flows on a global scale is low, but when compared on a per capita basis, we are one of the largest producers of these flows, with relatively high energy and meat consumption being the main reasons. Analysis revealed the openness of all four systems. The openness is due to the high degree of internationality of the Finnish markets, the large-scale use of synthetic fertilizers and energy resources and the low recycling rate of many waste fractions. Reduction in the use of fuels and synthetic fertilizers, reorganization of the structure of energy production, reduced human intake of nutrients and technological development are crucial in diminishing the N and P flows. To enhance nutrient recycling and replace inorganic fertilizers, recycling of such wastes as wood ash and sludge could be promoted. SFA is not usually sufficiently detailed to allow specific recommendations for decision-making to be made, but it does yield useful information about the relative magnitude of the flows and may reveal unexpected losses. Sustainable development is a widely accepted target for all human action. SFA is one method that can help to analyse how effective different efforts are in leading to a more sustainable society. SFA's strength is that it allows a holistic picture of different natural and societal systems to be drawn. Furthermore, when the environmental impact of a certain flow is known, the method can be used to prioritize environmental policy efforts.

Suomalaisten yritysten vapaaehtoinen sosiaalinen vastuu : Sidosryhmäviitekehys yritysten ja ulkoisten sidosryhmien edustajien näkemyksissä

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is no longer only an issue of companies but a concern shared by e.g. the European Union, the International Labour Organization, labour market organizations and many others. This thesis examines what kind of voluntary corporate social responsibility exceeding the minimum level set in the legislation can be expected from the Finnish companies. The research was based on the interviews of some representatives of Finnish companies and of external stakeholders. Earlier Finnish empirical research on the topic has solely analysed the stakeholder thinking and the ethics of the views of the company representatives. The views of the external stakeholders brought ht up a much more versatile perspective on the voluntary corporate social responsibility of the companies. That is the particular surplus value of this research. This research, founded on stakeholder thinking, evaluated what kind of starting points and ideas on responsibility the views of the representatives of the companies and the external stakeholders were based on the voluntary social responsibility. Furthermore, the research also investigated how their views about the corporate social responsibility indicated the benefits achieved on the cooperative actions with different partners - for example companies, communities and public administration. To fulfil the aims of the research, the following questions were used as part tasks in mapping the basic foundations and starting points expressed by the representatives of the companies and the external stakeholders: 1) How do laws, directions concerning social responsibility of companies, and opinions and demands of the stakeholders guide and affect the voluntary corporate social responsibility? 2) How can companies assume voluntary corporate social responsibility in addition to their core functions and without compromising their profitability, and how does, for example, the tightening competition affect the possibility of taking responsibility? 3) What kind of ethic and moral foundations is the corporate social responsibility based on? 4) What kind of roles can companies have in securing and promoting the well-being of citizens in Finland and on the global market as one subsystem of the society? The views on the voluntary corporate social responsibility of nine big companies, one medium-sized company and one small company, all considered responsible pioneer companies, were studied with surveys and half-structured theme interviews between 2003 and 2004. The research proceeded as a theory-bounded study. The empirical material and the previous stakeholder thinking theories (Takala 2000b, Vehkaperä 2003) guided the thesis and worked abductively in interplay with each other during the research process. (Tuomi, Sarajärvi 2002.) The aims and the methods of the research and the themes of the interviews were defined on the basis of that information. The aims of the research were surveyed qualitatively with the strategy of a multiple case study. Representatives from nine big peer companies and nine external stakeholders were interviewed with half-structured themes between 2004 and 2005. The external stakeholders and the peer companies were chosen with the "thinking" of theoretical replication by Yin, according to which the views of the representatives of those groups would differ from those of the pioneer companies and also from those of each others. The multiple case study supports analysing the internal cohesion of the views of different groups and comparing their differences, and it supports theoretical evaluation and theory-building as well. (Yin 2003.) Another reason for choosing the external stakeholders was their known cooperation with companies. The spoken argumentations of the company and stakeholder representatives on the voluntary social responsibility of the companies were analysed and interpreted in the first place with an analytic discourse analysis, and the argumentations were classified allusively into the stakeholder discourses in three of the part tasks. In the discourse analysis, argumentations of the speech is seen to be intervowen with cultural meanings. (Jokinen, Juhila 1999.) The views of the representatives of the pioneer companies and the external stakeholders were more stakeholder-orientated than the views of the representatives of the peer companies. For the most part, the voluntary corporate social responsibility was seemingly targeted on single, small cooperation projects of the companies and external stakeholders. The pioneer companies had more of those projects, and they were participating in the projects more actively than the peer companies were. The significant result in this research was the notion that, in particular, the representatives of the pioneer companies and external stakeholders did not consider employing and paying taxes to be enough of reciprocal corporate social responsibility. However, they still wanted to preserve the Finnish welfare model, and the interviewees did not wish major changes in the present legislation or the social agreements. According to this study, the voluntary corporate social responsibility is motivated by ethical utilitarianism which varied from very narrow to very wide in relation to benefits achieved by companies and stakeholders (Velasquez 2002, Lagerspetz 2004). Compared with the peer companies, more of the representatives of the pioneer companies and of external stakeholders estimated that companies in their decision-making and operations considered not only the advantages and the benefits of the owners and other internal stakeholders, but also those of the external stakeholders and of the whole society. However, all interviewees expressed more or less strongly that the economic responsibility guides the voluntary responsible actions of the companies in the first place. This kind of utilitarian foundation of behaviour appeared from this research was named as business-orientated company moral. This thesis also presents a new voluntary corporate social responsibility model with four variables on the stakeholder discourses and their distinctive characteristics. The utilitarian motivation of a company s behaviour on their operations has been criticized on the grounds that the end justifies the means. It has also been stated that it is impossible to evaluate the benefits of the utilitarian type of actions to the individuals and the society. It is expected however that companies for their part promote the material and immaterial well-being of the individuals on the global, national and local markets. The expectations are so strong that if companies do not take into account the ethical and moral values, they can possibly suffer significant financial losses. All stakeholders, especially consumers, can with their own choices promote the responsible behaviour of the companies. Key words: voluntary corporate social responsibility, external stakeholders, corporate citizenship, ethics and morality, utilitarianism, stakeholder discourses, welfare society, globalisation