In the global imaginary, Nordic exceptionalism evokes images of egalitarian, progressive societies with inclusive welfare state models and of global ‘good citizens’.
A prevailing stereotype and powerful branding tool, Nordic exceptionalism has also driven postwar regional identities with homogenous cultures and religions. When people think of Finland, for example, they often imagine snowy landscapes, Moomin trolls, reindeer, and a very content society. But in the last year, Finland has been shaken up by falling exports, the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis.
How has the Finnish populace responded to these major challenges in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape? In the last year, a centre-right government came to power extolling xenophobic, heteronormative and militaristic values while proposing brutal cuts to the welfare state that are expected to dramatically increase child poverty and precarity, while reducing social and healthcare services and support for the most vulnerable. The government intends to fundamentally curtail workers’ rights, especially the right to stage political strikes, as well as slash housing, income and child benefits, and tighten up restrictions on immigrants.
This reflects a fundamental shift from the welfare to the workfare state, in which a person’s worth no longer rests on their social citizenship in the community but is reduced to their ability to work and survive conditions of economic insecurity. In one of the most rapidly ageing societies in the Global North, there have been fierce debates about the need for increased labour migration, for enhanced social services for the aged, disabled and unemployed, and the future of social security pensions for young workers. But openly racist and pro-Nazi sympathies have come out of the shadows and into the mainstream discourse, perhaps reflecting a new stage in the Finnish public arena where such language and imagery has become normalised. While it is significant that many politicians and business leaders have taken an anti-racist stance, it is equally worth noting that many of them have placed the emphasis of their concern on the harm caused to Finland’s national brand rather than on the everyday traumatic experiences of racialised people in Finland.
Decades of neoliberal austerity have hardened attitudes, with people often judging one another as ‘winners’ or ‘losers’, and openly discriminating against racial and other minorities, as evidenced by a recent EU survey. According to Amnesty International, Finland has one of the most unequal healthcare systems in the industrialised world, with access to dentistry and reproductive services particularly lacking. Amnesty International further underlined the need for more human rights protections for asylum-seekers, refugees and women subjected to intimate partner violence and rape. All of these issues have rippled through the lived experiences of diverse populations in different ways, causing trust to plummet in the Finnish welfare state – the very cornerstone of Nordic exceptionalism.
Years of financial crises and the policies of austerity have created a harsh climate for social work, in Finland and throughout the world, to fulfil its mission to promote social justice. Many social workers in Finland who have long felt comfortable in their statutory service-providing roles are uneasy about the ethical challenges and moral dilemmas they face in implementing the new policies and practices. In an increasingly polarised Finland, many exist in sociopolitical bubbles separate from other groups of people in society, and lack knowledge and empathy about the struggles of others living in poverty, with racialised identities and coping with a range of health issues.
With the cumulative impact of cuts and heavy workloads, the silence of social workers can be a defensive – or even traumatised – response to working in neoliberal circumstances where burnout, micromanagement, lack of wellbeing support and despondency prevail. Yet, we can see a growing number of Finnish social workers challenging the new austerity measures, restrictive definitions of social work, and deficit thinking about diverse populations. Many are speaking out and venturing into political arenas to advocate for service users. Together with an emerging broad-based student movement, which has united around opposition to budget cuts, the promotion of environmental justice and support for Palestinians, there have been calls among social work students for more anticolonial, queer and multiracial perspectives in the core curriculum.
The Icelandic scholar Kristín Loftsdóttir has written that ‘focusing on the margins of Europe is not only important in order to understand the construction of margins but also to deepen the understanding of the “project of Europe”’. Examining how decades-old visions of Nordic exceptionalism are confronting the dual challenges of growing neoliberal ethnonationalist political coalitions and liberatory social movements offers unique perspectives on how Nordic futures are being constructed.
Certainly, the Finnish welfare state has never been a panacea for social wellbeing. Indeed, it has deep histories of immersion in colonial, eugenicist ideologies and practices. Although neoliberalism has hollowed out many parts of the welfare state, it remains at the core of Finnish identity because of its promise of social solidarity to provide care and protection to all who reside in Finland. Yet with the prevailing discourse of public resource scarcity at a time of growing wealth inequality, efforts to restrict access to the welfare state have intensified. As many have spoken out for a more expansive notion of Finnish identity that includes diverse Indigenous Sámi, Roma, queer and multifarious ethnic and racial expressions of belonging, neoliberals have marshalled ethnonationalists to pose unprecedented challenges to the very existence of the welfare state.
Decolonising social work is a process that requires critical inquiry into the history of colonialism, extractive capitalism and Eurocentric knowledge construction. It further calls for self-reflection and action, namely implementing a decolonial praxis that challenges how oppressive structural power dynamics play out at all levels of care, and reimagining what a caring society could be. New efforts to explore, better understand and implement decolonial praxis in social work has important implications for the future of a more inclusive and diverse Finland that centres the radical possibility of care and healing.
Kris Clarke is Professor of Social Work at the University of Helsinki.
Decolonising Social Work in Finland edited by Kris Clarke, Leece Lee-Oliver and Satu Ranta-Tyrkkö is available for £85.00 here on Bristol University Press. Or £29.99 for the EPUB.
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