Suvi Keskinen

ANTIFEMINISM AND WHITE IDENTITY POLITICS

Abstract This article analyses how gendered, racialised and classed antagonisms are created in texts by radical right-wing populists and intellectuals connected to the anti-immigration movement and the antifeminist men’s rights movement in Finland. The studied rhetoric focuses on the reproduction of the “white nation” as part of the endangered “Western civilisation”; a feminism “gone too far” and shifts in heterosexual power relations in the postcolonial era. The rhetoric is discussed as political reimaginations that aim to recentre white masculinity in a society that has seen its self-evident and normative position questioned

Limits to Speech? The Racialised Politics of Gendered Violence in Denmark and Finland

The ‘crisis of multiculturalism’ discourse characterises the current political and media debates in many European countries. This paper analyses how liberal arguments, especially gender equality and freedom of speech, are used to promote nationalist and racialising political agendas in Denmark and Finland. It detects the powerful emergence of a nationalist rhetoric, based on the ‘politics of reversal’ and a re-articulation of liberal notions, in the Nordic countries, which have been known for their collectivist welfare state models and commitments to social equality. Through an analysis of case studies in both countries, the paper shows how debates about gendered violence in Muslim families turn into attempts to broaden the discursive space for racialising speech and to individualise racism.

Troublesome Differences—Dealing with Gendered Violence, Ethnicity, and ‘Race’ in the Finnish Welfare State

Forced marriages, honour-related violence, and violence in transnational marriages have been the focus of public interest in the Nordic welfare states for over a decade. The article analyses how authorities and welfare practitioners discuss differences, ‘race’, ethnicity, and gendered violence in families in this sometimes controversial societal setting. Based on 35 interviews with representatives of the police, social work, shelter movement, and NGO-led projects, it is argued that the main ways to approach the issue are ‘culture speech’ and ‘universalist speech’. In culture speech, differences can be constructed as dichotomous and hierarchical (culturalization), but also in a variable and lateral way. The universalist discourse has paradoxical effects. It functions as a counter-force to culturalization, but it also discourages and prevents discussion about how to take into account the different starting-points of the diverse clientele. The welfare state plays an important role in both. While the universalist discourse is embedded in welfare state ideologies, the culturalist discourse (re)produces welfare state nationalism. Finnish authorities and practitioners distance themselves from cultural relativism but have developed forms of practical multiculturalism to reach migrant clients. The dominant discourses are questioned by approaches that emphasize individual and multiple differences.

From welfare nationalism to welfare chauvinism: Economic rhetoric, the welfare state and changing asylum policies in Finland

The article analyses the role and effects of economic cost and welfare state arguments in Finnish immigration politics and policies. It argues for a need to distinguish between welfare nationalist, welfare chauvinist and welfare exclusionist discourses. Through an examination of the immigration programmes of the political parties and parliamentary debates and policy documents mapping the changes in asylum policy in 2009–2011, the article shows that welfare nationalism strongly characterises the way asylum and non-Western migration is treated in Finnish politics. Welfare chauvinism is typical for right-wing populist argumentation, but is also used by individual politicians from other parties and by policy makers. Examples of welfare exclusionism were found in party programmes but not in the policy process. Moreover, it is argued that struggles over welfare benefits cannot be understood without an analysis of the cultural definitions of national belonging.

The politics and policies of welfare chauvinism under the economic crisis

The ongoing economic crisis that emerged in the wake of the global recession in 2008, and was followed by the more recent crisis of the Eurozone, has introduced new themes and remoulded old ways of approaching the welfare state, immigration, national belonging and racism in Northern Europe. This article identifies two main ways of understanding welfare chauvinism: 1) as a broad concept that covers all sorts of claims and policies to reserve welfare benefits for the ‘native’ population; 2) an ethno-nationalist and racialising political agenda, characteristic especially of right-wing populist parties. Focusing on the relationship between politics and policies, we examine how welfare chauvinist political agendas are turned into policies and what hinders welfare chauvinist claims from becoming policy matters and welfare practices. It is argued that welfare chauvinism targeting migrants is part of a broader neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state and of welfare retrenchment.

Re-constructing the peaceful nation: negotiating meanings of whiteness, immigration and Islam after a shopping mall shooting

In many European countries, gendered violence has become a topic frequently used to construct distinctions and hierarchies on the basis of ‘race’ and ethnicity. Focusing on the media coverage and political debates following the shootings at a Finnish shopping mall on New Years Eve 2010, when a former Kosovan refugee killed his ex-girlfriend, four other people and himself, the article analyses the negotiation of difference and the shifting processes of racialisation in relation to whiteness, migrant ‘others’ and Islam. It examines how whiteness figures as a source of differentiation and sameness when the perpetrator is constructed as both a white European and a Muslim ‘other’ from the war-ridden Balkan area. I argue that what was at stake in the debates was the fracture that the event caused to the imagined national identity – Finland as a peaceful, civilised and rational white European nation – and attempts to solve this dilemma by defusing the threat (of violence) and re-installing the (peaceful) national self-image. In the process, the dilemma was solved, first, by a privatisation of the threat originally coined as public and national; and secondly, by emphasising the ‘outsider’ position of the perpetrator: a move that enabled the ‘bad’ to be symbolically excised from the national body.

Developing Theoretical Perspectives On Racialisation and Migration

* E-mail: suvkes@utu.fi # E-mail: rikkean@ruc.dk The number of studies approaching research on migration from the perspectives of racialisation and postcolonialism has increased considerably in the Nordic countries since the Millennium. These studies have produced important empirical knowledge and theoretically informed analyses of the histories and current processes in the Nordic societies, as well as of different diasporic communities living in the region. However, the theoretical approaches have often been borrowed from Anglo-American literature, while theoretical discussions and elaborations within the Nordic region have been scarcer. This Special Issue Developing Theoretical Perspectives on Racialisation and Migration engages in and develops theories on migration, racialisation and postcolonialism from the Nordic context, bearing in mind that ‘Norden’ is not an isolated region but part of global processes through multiple transnational connections and postcolonial power relations. Moreover, we seek to highlight how concepts and theoretical approaches on migration and racialisation need to be adjusted to and elaborated in a context characterised by welfare state ideologies and institutions, notions of allegedly homogeneous nations and claims of exemplary achievements in gender and socio-economic equality, as well as neoliberal policies. This Special Issue provides insights into how existing theories on racialisation and migration can be developed, revised and revisited – especially in relation to questions on how race and ethnicity intersect with the categories of gender, sexuality, class and age. The articles examine and discuss how the concepts race, racialisation and whiteness can be used for analysing the histories and current trends in the Nordic countries and what are the different ways of understanding and defining these concepts. Moreover, the contributions explore how postcolonial and decolonial theories can shed light on a geographical context that is often considered to be an outsider to colonial processes, since the countries’ role in colonising non-European territories was relatively small – at least in comparison to colonial powers like Great-Britain, France and the Netherlands. Research has, however, shown the ‘colonial complicity’ (Keskinen et al. 2009) of the Nordic countries that has built upon participation in colonial economic and cultural endeavours as well as the embracement of ideologies that place Europe as the cradle of civilisation, thus superior to (what is discussed as) the non-western world. The emphasis on the Nordic countries’ outsider position, has also meant that colonial histories and structures of racism have been, and still are, largely ignored or presented as insignificant in the Nordic public discourse. Along the discussions of migration and racialisation, the articles explore nation-state formations and constructions of national identity in the Nordic region, both as a consequence of migration and as a reaction to migration. The perspectives of racialisation and postcolonialism/ decoloniality are extremely timely today. A number of studies have shown how the Nordic countries were a part of the colonial world order (e.g., McEachrane & Faye 2001; Keskinen et al. 2009; Loftsdottir & Jensen 2012; Rud 2016), participating in slave trade (Larsen 2008; Weiss 2016), development of racial biology (Hübinette & Lundström 2014) and exhibition of the racialised others (Andreassen 2015), as well as benefiting from colonial trade relations and (re)producing colonial representations (Sawyer & Habel 2014). Thus, racialisation and the processes of creating inequalities on the basis of racial categorisations are in no way new phenomena in the Nordic countries. However, such processes have taken new forms and penetrated all arenas of the society following the increased migration from non-western countries since the 1960s. In recent years, the Nordic societies have witnessed the rise of neo-nationalism, right-wing populism and racist movements that today bear considerable effect on governmental policies, political parties, and mainstream and social media (e.g., Hervik 2011; Horsti & Nikunen 2013). Public debates on migration and integration of minorities frequently portray Muslims and non-western minorities in a manner that reproduces colonialist and Orientalist discourses – ranging from the threatening to the exotified (e.g., Bredström 2003; Lundström 2007; Nielsen 2014). Simultaneously, the racialised

Intergenerational negotiations on (hetero)sexuality and romantic relationships – views of young people and parents in multi-ethnic contexts

ABSTRACT This article focuses on intergenerational negotiations on young people’s (13–19 years) sexuality and romantic relationships in families where one or both of the parents have migrated to Finland. By utilising the theoretical framework of intersectionality and negotiability of family relationships, we seek to diversify the often problem-oriented and culture-related examinations of ethnic minority families and young people’s position in them. Methodologically, we draw on interview data relating to both young people and parents. In addition to the vast heterogeneity in practices and ideals, the analysis shows that while conflicts and miscommunication between generations do occur, the intergenerational negotiations for the most part are described as consensual and based on trust. Young people are allotted considerable agency by their parents, and also demonstrate a high degree of agency, whether they are complying with their parents’ views or questioning them. Their negotiations also reflect and are conditioned by their position in the hierarchies of Finnish society.

The social control of young women’s clothing and bodies: A perspective of differences on racialization and sexualization

Public discourses and culturalist research often present patriarchal social control as the key element of minority youth’s family relations. They focus on conflicts related to young women’s sexual reputation when discussing Muslims and nonwestern minorities. Social control is often connected to honor-related violence and applied to assumptions of how young women are oppressed by their family members. In this article, we problematize such a connection and approach social control as a broad phenomenon that shapes social life and is exercised by several actors. The article elaborates a perspective of differences on social control, building on feminist theories of intersectionality, and distinguishing between different dimensions of social control (formal/informal, public/private). This theoretical framework is then applied to the empirical analysis of different elements of social control related to young women’s clothing and bodies. It is argued that the framework enables examination of the multifaceted dynamics of gendered, racialized, and age-related social control without falling into the trap of culturalist knowledge production.