Gone with the Wind? : Immigrant Women and Transnational Everyday Life in Finland

Increased mass migration, as a result of economic hardship, natural disasters and wars, forces many people to arrive on the shores of cultures very different from those they left. How do they manage the legacy of the past and the challenges of their new everyday life? This is a study of immigrant women living in transnational families that act and communicate across national borders on a near-daily basis. The research was carried out amongst immigrant women who were currently living in Finland. The research asks how transnational everyday life is constructed. As everyday life, due to its mundane nature, is difficult to operationalise for research purposes, mixed data collection methods were needed to capture the passing moments that easily become invisible. Thus, the data were obtained from photographic diaries (459 photographs) taken by the research participants themselves. Additionally, stimulated recall discussions, structured questionnaires and participant observation notes were used to complement the photographic data. A tool for analysing the activities devealed in the data was created on the assumption that a family is an active unit that accommodates the current situation in which it is embedded. Everyday life activities were analysed emphasizing social, modal and spatial dimensions. Important daily moments were placed on a continuum: for me , for immediate others and with immediate others . They portrayed everyday routines and exceptions to it. The data matrix was developed as part of this study. The spatial dimensions formed seven units of activity settings: space for friendship, food, resting, childhood, caring, space to learn and an orderly space. Attention was also paid to the accommodative nature of activities; how women maintain traditions and adapt to Finnish life or re-create new activity patterns. Women s narrations revealed the importance of everyday life. The transnational chain of women across generations and countries, comprised of the daughters, mothers and grandmothers was important. The women showed the need for information technology in their transnational lives. They had an active relationship to religion; the denial or importance of it was obvious. Also arranging one s life in Finnish society was central to their narrations. The analysis exposed everyday activities, showed the importance of social networks and the uniqueness of each woman and family. It revealed everyday life in a structured way. The method of analysis that evolved in this study together with the research findings are of potential use to professionals, allowing the targeting of interventions to improve the everyday lives of immigrants.

ICT and the Shaping of Society: Exploring Human -ICT Relationships in Everyday Life (summary section only)

This thesis explores the relationship between humans and ICTs (information and communication technologies). As ICTs are increasingly penetrating all spheres of social life, their role as mediators – between people, between people and information, and even between people and the natural world – is expanding, and they are increasingly shaping social life. Yet, we still know little of how our life is affected by their growing role. Our understanding of the actors and forces driving the accelerating adoption of new ICTs in all areas of life is also fairly limited. This thesis addresses these problems by interpretively exploring the link between ICTs and the shaping of society at home, in the office, and in the community. The thesis builds on empirical material gathered in three research projects, presented in four separate essays. The first project explores computerized office work through a case study. The second is a regional development project aiming at increasing ICT knowledge and use in 50 small-town families. In the third, the second project is compared to three other longitudinal development projects funded by the European Union. Using theories that consider the human-ICT relationship as intertwined, the thesis provides a multifaceted description of life with ICTs in contemporary information society. By oscillating between empirical and theoretical investigations and balancing between determinist and constructivist conceptualisations of the human-ICT relationship, I construct a dialectical theoretical framework that can be used for studying socio-technical contexts in society. This framework helps us see how societal change stems from the complex social processes that surround routine everyday actions. For example, interacting with and through ICTs may change individuals’ perceptions of time and space, social roles, and the proper ways to communicate – changes which at some point in time result in societal change in terms of, for example, new ways of acting and knowing things.

Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia

My doctoral dissertation in sociology and Russian studies, Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia, employs a "micro" or "grassroots" perspective on the transition. The study is a collection of articles detailing social networks in five different contexts. The first article examines Russian birthdays from a network perspective. The second takes a look at health care to see whether networks have become obsolete in a sector that is still overwhelmingly public, but increasingly being monetarised. The third article investigates neighbourhood relations. The fourth details relationships at work, particularly from the vantage point of internal migration. The fifth explores housing and the role of networks and money both in the Soviet and post-Soviet era. The study is based on qualitative social network and interview data gathered among three groups, teachers, doctors and factory workers, in St. Petersburg during 1993-2000. Methodologically it builds on a qualitative social network approach. The study adds a critical element to the discussion on networks in post-socialism. A considerable consensus exists that social networks were vital in state socialist societies and were used to bypass various difficulties caused by endemic shortages and bureaucratic rigidities, but a more debated issue has been their role in post-socialism. Some scholars have argued that the importance of networks has been dramatically reduced in the new market economy, whereas others have stressed their continuing importance. If a common denominator in both has been a focus on networks in relation to the past, a more overlooked aspect has been the question of inequality. To what extent is access to networks unequally distributed? What are the limits and consequences of networks, for those who have access, those outside networks or society at large? My study provides some evidence about inequalities. It shows that some groups are privileged over others, for instance, middle-class people in informal access to health care. Moreover, analysing the formation of networks sheds additional light on inequalities, as it highlights the importance of migration as a mechanism of inequality, for example. The five articles focus on how networks are actually used in everyday life. The article on health care, for instance, shows that personal connections are still important and popular in post-Soviet Russia, despite the growing importance of money and the emergence of "fee for service" medicine. Fifteen of twenty teachers were involved in informal medical exchange during a two-week study period, so that they used their networks to bypass the formal market mechanisms or official procedures. Medicines were obtained through personal connections because some were unavailable at local pharmacies or because these connections could provide medicines for a cheaper price or even for free. The article on neighbours shows that "mutual help" was the central feature of neighbouring, so that the exchange of goods, services and information covered almost half the contacts with neighbours reported. Neighbours did not provide merely small-scale help but were often exchange partners because they possessed important professional qualities, had access to workplace resources, or knew somebody useful. The article on the Russian work collective details workplace-related relationships in a tractor factory and shows that interaction with and assistance from one's co-workers remains important. The most interesting finding was that co-workers were even more important to those who had migrated to the city than to those who were born there, which is explained by the specifics of Soviet migration. As a result, the workplace heavily influenced or absorbed contexts for the worker migrants to establish relationships whereas many meeting-places commonly available in Western countries were largely absent or at least did not function as trusted public meeting places to initiate relationships. More results are to be found from my dissertation: Anna-Maria Salmi: Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia, Kikimora Publications, 2006, see www.kikimora-publications.com.

Dispersal and related life history traits in the Glanville fritillary butterfly

Most studies of life history evolution are based on the assumption that species exist at equilibrium and spatially distinct separated populations. In reality, this is rarely the case, as populations are often spatially structured with ephemeral local populations. Therefore, the characteristics of metapopulations should be considered while studying factors affecting life history evolution. Theoretical studies have examined spatial processes shaping the evolution of life history traits to some extent, but there is little empirical data and evidence to investigate model predictions. In my thesis I have tried to bridge the gap between theoretical and empirical studies by using the well-known Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) metapopulation as a model system. The long-term persistence of classic metapopulations requires sufficient dispersal to establish new local populations to compensate for local extinctions. Previous studies on the Glanville fritillary have shown that females establishing new populations are not a random sample from the metapopulation, but they are in fact more dispersive than females in old populations. Many other life-history traits, such as body size, fecundity and lifespan, may be related to dispersal rate. Therefore, I examined a range of correlated traits for their evolutionary and ecological consequences. I was particularly interested in how the traits vary under natural environmental conditions, hence all studies were conducted in a large (32 x 26 m) outdoor population cage built upon a natural habitat patch. Individuals for the experiments were sampled from newly-established and old populations within a large metapopulation. Results show that females originating from newly-established populations had higher within-habitat patch mobility than females from old populations. I showed that dispersal rate is heritable and that flight activity is related to variation in a gene encoding the glycolytic enzyme phosphoglucose isomerase. Both among-individual and among-population variation in dispersal are correlated with the reproductive performance of females, though I found no evidence for a trade-off between dispersal and fecundity in terms of lifetime egg production or clutch size. Instead, the results suggest that highly dispersive females from newly-established populations have a shorter lifespan than females from old populations, and that dispersive females may pay a cost in terms of reduced lifetime reproductive success due to increased time spent outside habitat patches. In summary, the results of this thesis show that genotype-dependent dispersal rate correlates with other life history traits in the Glanville fritillary, and that the rapid turnover of local populations (extinctions and re-colonisations) is likely to be the mechanism that maintains phenotypic variation in many life history traits at the metapopulation level.

Domestic labour relations in India : Vulnerability and gendered life courses in Jaipur

This study explores labour relations between domestic workers and employers in India. It is based on interviews with both employers and workers, and ethnographically oriented field work in Jaipur, carried out in 2004-2007. Combining development studies with gender studies, labour studies, and childhood studies, it asks how labour relations between domestic workers and employers are formed in Jaipur, and how female domestic workers trajectories are created. Focusing on female part-time maids and live-in work arrangements, the study analyses children s work in the context of overall work force, not in isolation from it. Drawing on feminist Marxism, domestic labour relations are seen as an arena of struggle. The study takes an empirical approach, showing class through empiria and shows how paid domestic work is structured and stratified through intersecting hierarchies of class, caste, gender, age, ethnicity and religion. The importance of class in domestic labour relations is reiterated, but that of caste, so often downplayed by employers, is also emphasized. Domestic workers are crucial to the functioning of middle and upper middle class households, but their function is not just utilitarian. Through them working women and housewives are able to maintain purity and reproduce class disctinctions, both between poor and middle classes and lower and upper middle classes. Despite commodification of work relations, traditional elements of service relationships have been retained, particularly through maternalist practices such as gift giving, creating a peculiar blend of traditional and market practices. Whilst employers of part-time workers purchase services in a segmented market from a range of workers for specific, traditional live-in workers are also hired to serve employers round the clock. Employers and workers grudgingly acknowledged their dependence on one another, employers seeking various strategies to manage fear of servant crime, such as the hiring of children or not employing live-in workers in dual-earning households. Paid domestic work carries a heavy stigma and provide no entry to other jobs. It is transmitted from mothers to daughters and working girls were often the main income providers in their families. The diversity of working conditions is analysed through a continuum of vulnerability, generic live-in workers, particularly children and unmarried young women with no close family in Jaipur, being the most vulnerable and experienced part-time workers the least vulnerable. Whilst terms of employment are negotiated informally and individually, some informal standards regarding salary and days off existed for maids. However, employers maintain that workings conditions are a matter of individual, moral choice. Their reluctance to view their role as that of employers and the workers as their employees is one of the main stumbling blocks in the way of improved working conditions. Key words: paid domestic work, India, children s work, class, caste, gender, life course

Le naturalisme finlandais : Une conception entropique du quotidien

Le naturalisme finlandais. Une conception entropique du quotidien. Finnish Naturalism. An Entropic Conception of Everyday Life. Nineteenth century naturalism was a strikingly international literary movement. After emerging in France in the 1870s, it spread all over Europe including young, small nations with a relatively recent literary tradition, such as Finland. This thesis surveys the role and influence of French naturalism on the Finnish literature of the 1880s and 1890s. On the basis of a selection of works of six Finnish authors (Juhani Aho, Minna Canth, Kauppis-Heikki, Teuvo Pakkala, Ina Lange and Karl August Tavaststjerna), the study establishes a view of the main features of Finnish naturalism in comparison with that of French authors, such as Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert. The study s methodological framework is genre theory: even though naturalist writers insisted on a transparent description of reality, naturalist texts are firmly rooted in general generic categories with definable relations and constants on which European novels impose variations. By means of two key concepts, entropy and everyday life , this thesis establishes the parameters of the naturalist genre. At the heart of the naturalist novel is a movement in the direction of disintegration and confusion, from order to disorder, from illusion to disillusion. This entropic vision is merged into the representation of everyday life, focusing on socially mediocre characters and discovering their miseries in all their banality and daily grayness. By using Mikhail Bakhtin s idea of literary genres as a means of understanding experience, this thesis suggests that everyday life is an ideological core of naturalist literature that determines not only its thematic but also generic distinctions: with relation to other genres, such as to Balzac s realism, naturalism appears primarily to be a banalization of everyday life. In idyllic genres, everyday life can be represented by means of sublimation, but a naturalist novel establishes a distressing, negative everyday life and thus strives to take a critical view of the modern society. Beside the central themes, the study surveys the generic blends in naturalism. The thesis analyzes how the coalition of naturalism and the melodramatic mode in the work of Minna Canth serves naturalisms ambition to discover the unconscious instincts underlying daily realities, and how the symbolic mode in the work of Juhani Aho duplicates the semantic level of the apparently insignificant, everyday naturalist details. The study compares the naturalist novel to the ideological novel (roman à these) and surveys the central dilemma of naturalism, the confrontation between the optimistic belief in social reform and the pessimistic theory of determinism. The thesis proposes that the naturalist novel s contribution to social reform lies in its shock effect. By means of representing the unpleasant truth the entropy of everyday life it aims to scandalize the reader and make him aware of the harsh realities that might apply also to him.

Kaveriporukasta liiketoiminnaksi : Tuotannon häiriöt ja organisaation oppiminen nopeasti muuttuvassa yrityksessä

In the 1990 s the companies utilizing and producing new information technology, especially so-called new media, were also expected to be forerunners in new forms of work and organization. Researchers anticipated that new, more creative forms of work and the changing content of working life were about to replace old industrial and standardized ways of working. However, research on actual companies in the IT sector revealed a situation where only minor changes to existing organizational forms were seen .Many of the independent companies faced great difficulties trying to survive the rapid changes in the products and production forms in the emerging field. Most of the research on the new media field has been conducted as surveys, and an understanding of the actual everyday work process has remained thin. My research is a longitudinal study of the early phases of one new media company in Finland. The study is an analysis of the challenges the company faced in a rapidly changing business field and the attempts to overcome these challenges. The two main analyses in the study focus on the developmental phases of the company and the disturbances in the production process. Based on these analyses, I study changes and learning at work using the methodological framework of developmental work research. Developmental work research is a Finnish variant of the cultural-historical activity theory applied to the study of learning and transformations at work. The data was gathered over a three-year period of ethnographic fieldwork. I documented the production processes and everyday life in the company as a participant observer. I interviewed key persons, video and audio-taped meetings, followed e-mail correspondence and collected various documents, such as agreements and memos. I developed a systematic method for analyzing the disturbances in the production process by combining the various data sources. The systematic analysis of the disturbances depicted a very complex and only partly managed production process. The production process had a long duration, and no single actor had an understanding of it as a whole. Most of the disturbances had to do with the customer relationships. The nature of the disturbances was latent; they were recognized but not addressed. In the particular production processes that I analyzed, the ending life span of a particular product, a CD-ROM, became obvious. This finding can be interpreted in relation to the developmental phase of the production and the transformation of the field as a whole. Based on the analysis of the developmental phases and the disturbances, I formulate a hypothesis of the contradictions and developmental potentials of the activity studied. The conclusions of the study challenge the existing understanding of how to conceptualize and study organizational learning in production work. Most theories of organizational learning do not address qualitative changes in production nor historical challenges of organizational learning itself. My study opens up a new horizon in understanding organizational learning in a rapidly changing field where a learning culture based on craft or mass production work is insufficient. There is a need for anticipatory and proactive organizational learning. Proactive learning is needed to anticipate the changes in production type, and the life cycles of products.

Towards the Breaking Day : An Ethnography of Belian Curing Rituals among the Luangans of Indonesian Borneo

Towards the Breaking Day is an ethnography of belian, an exceptionally lively tradition of curing rituals performed by the Luangans, a politically marginalized population of swidden cultivators of Indonesian Borneo. The principal purpose of the study is to explore the significance of belian rituals in practice. It asks what belian rituals do socially, politically, and existentially for particular people in particular circumstances. Departing from conventional conceptions of rituals as ethereal liminal or insulated traditional domains, it demonstrates the importance of understanding rituals as emergent within their specific historical and social settings, and highlights the irreducibility of lived reality to epistemological certainty. Each chapter of the book represents an analysis of a concrete ritual performance, exemplifying a diversity of ritual genres, stylistic modalities and sensual ambiences, ranging from low-keyed, habitual affairs to drawn-out, crowd-seizing community rituals and innovative, montage-like cultural experiments. The study is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in non-Christian Central Luangan communities in which ritual and everyday life are complexly intermixed. It is intended as a contribution to the anthropological study of ritual and to the ethnography of Borneo religion in which the study of shamanistic life rituals has been overshadowed by a long-standing fascination with death and funerary rites.

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.