Abstract
Näre analyses the increased use of domestic services in contemporary Europe and the Nordic countries, with a focus on Finland. She examines how the use of domestic services has been justified in Finland in parliamentary debates on tax credits on domestic services and in interviews with representatives of private cleaning companies. The chapter argues that an ideological shift has taken place in Nordic countries and in Finland in that employment of a cleaner is no longer stigmatised, but has become normalised in dual-earner families and among those of older age. This ideological shift is indicative of a wider social change that Näre terms ‘neoliberal citizenship’ (that is, the marketisation of citizenship), which has paved the way for increased privatisation of services and the privatisation of risk and responsibility according to neoliberal ideals.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This research has been funded by the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland project, ‘The Shaping of Occupational Subjectivities of Migrant Care Workers: A Multi-Sited Analysis of Glocalising Elderly Care’ (2011–2015) (project no. 251239).
- 2.
Since the 1990s, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Sweden have implemented national policies that aid the private employment of domestic and care workers, including tax rebates, voucher systems and employer social contribution exemptions (Morel, 2015).
- 3.
By the logic of the market, I understand various ‘discursive and material practices closely aligned with market liberalism and articulated around notions of flexibility, individual freedom and responsibility’ (Fournier, 2000, p. 77).
- 4.
Of the population of 5.4 million people, 4.5 % spoke another mother tongue than one of the three official languages (Finnish, Swedish or Sami), and 3.4 % of the population living in Finland were foreign nationals (Statistics Finland, 2011). These figures are small compared to the average of the other 27 EU countries (6.4 %).
- 5.
The Finnish language does not distinguish between genders. The third person, hän, which the interviewee uses, does not reveal whether the interviewee is referring to a man or a woman.
References
Aalto, K. (2015). The Finnish tax reduction for domestic costs: Consumption patterns. In N. Morel & C. Carbonnier (Eds.), The political economy of household services in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Aalto, K., & Varjonen, J. (2010). Käyttäjäkokemuksia kotitalouspalveluista: mistä laadulle takuu? [User experiences of household services: Who can guarantee the quality?]. Working Papers 122/2010. National Consumer Research Centre, Helsinki.
Abrantes, M. (2014). What about the numbers? A quantitative contribution to the study of domestic services in Europe. International Labour Review, 153(2), 223–243.
Anderson, B. (2000). Doing the dirty work? The global politics of domestic labour. London: Zed Books.
Anderson, B. (2013). Us and them? The dangerous politics of immigration control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bhambra, G. (2007). Rethinking modernity. Postcolonialism and the sociological imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bikova, M. (2010). The snake in the grass of gender equality. In L. Widding Isaksen (Ed.), Global care work. Gender and migration in Nordic societies (pp. 49–68). Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (2007). The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Bosniak, L. (2009). Citizenship, noncitizenship, and the transnationalization of domestic work. In S. Benhabib, V. Coopan, & J. Resnick (Eds.), Citizenship, borders and gender: Mobility and immobility. Yale: Yale University Press.
Brown, W. (2003). Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. Theory and Event, 7(1).
Cingano, F. (2014). Trends in income inequality and its impact on economic growth. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 163. OECD Publishing. doi:10.1787/5jxrjncwxv6j-en
Clarke, J. (2004). Changing welfare, changing states: New directions in social policy. London: Sage.
Coser, L. (1973). Servants: The obsolescence of an occupational role. Social Forces, 52(1), 31–40.
Cox, R. (2004). The servant problem. Domestic employment in a global economy. London: I.B. Tauris.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fjell, T. I. (2010). Doing gender equality. Cleaners employed in Norwegian middle-class homes. In L. Widding Isaksen (Ed.), Global care work. Gender and migration in Nordic societies (pp. 97–114). Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
Fournier, V. (2000). Boundary work and the (un)making of the professions. In N. Malin (Ed.), Professionalism, boundaries and the workplace (pp. 67–86). London: Routledge.
Fraser, N. (2009). Feminism, capitalism and the cunning of history. New Left Review, 56(March–April), 97–117.
Gavanas, A. (2010). Who cleans the welfare state? Migration, informalization, social exclusion and domestic services in Stockholm. Research Report 2010:3. Institute for Future Research, Stockholm.
Gavanas, A. (2013). Elderly care puzzles in Stockholm: Strategies on formal and informal markets. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(2), 63–71.
Häkkinen Skans, I. (2011). Kotitalouspalveluiden verovähennykset Suomessa ja Ruotsissa [Tax reductions on domestic services in Finland and Sweden]. Valmisteluraportit [Preparatory Reports] 11/2011. Government Institute for Economic Research, Helsinki.
Halsaa, B., Roseneil, S., & Sümer, S. (2012). Remaking citizenship in multicultural Europe: Women’s movements, gender and diversity. In B. Halsaa, S. Roseneil, & S. Sümer (Eds.), Remaking citizenship in multicultural Europe: Women’s movements, gender and diversity (pp. 1–20). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hiilamo, H. (2015). The politics of domestic outsourcing in Finland and Sweden. In N. Morel & C. Carbonnier (Eds.), The political economy of household services in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hindess, B. (2002). Neo-liberal citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 6(2), 127–143.
Isaksen, L. W. (Ed.) (2010). Global care work. Gender and migration in Nordic societies. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
Jokela, M. (2015). Macro-level determinants of paid domestic labour prevalence: A cross-national analysis of seventy-four countries. Social Policy and Society. Available at CJO 2014. doi:10.1017/S1474746414000487.
Kristensen, G. K. (2015). A fair deal? Paid domestic labour in social democratic Norway. In A. Triandafyllidou & S. Marchetti (Eds.), Employers, agencies and immigration. Paying for care (pp. 207–226). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Lister, R. (2003). Citizenship: Feminist perspectives (2nd ed.). New York: New York University Press.
Lister, R., Williams, F., Anttonen, A. I., Bussemaker, J., Gerhard, U., Heinen, J., et al. (2007). Gendering citizenship in Western Europe. New challenges for citizenship research in cross-national context. Bristol: Policy Press.
Lutz, H. (2008). Migration and domestic work. A European perspective on a global theme. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Lutz, H. (2011). The new maids. Transnational women and the care economy. London: Zed Books.
Määttä, A. (2008). Piikana Suomessa [Maid in Finland]. In T. Selin (Ed.), Filippiinit. Myrskyjen ja mahdollisuuksien saaristo [The Philippines. Archipelago of storms and possibilities] (pp. 121–138). Helsinki: Like.
Misra, J., Woodring, J., & Merz, S. (2006). The globalization of care work: Neoliberal economic restructuring and migration policy. Globalizations, 3(3), 317–332.
Morel, N. (2015). Servants for the knowledge-based economy? The political economy of domestic services in Europe. Social Politics, 22(2), 170–192.
Näre, L. (2012). Moral economies of reproductive labour. An ethnography of domestic and care labour in Naples, Italy. SSKH Skrifter, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki.
Näre, L. (2013). Ideal workers and suspects: Employers’ politics of recognition and the migrant division of care labour in Finland. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(2), 72–81.
OECD (2010). International migration outlook. Geneva: OECD.
Palenga-Möllenbeck, E. (2013). New maids—New butlers? Polish domestic workers in Germany and commodification of social reproductive work. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 32(6), 557–574.
Platzer, E. (2006). From private solutions to public responsibility and back again: The new domestic services in Sweden. Gender & History, 18(2), 211–221.
Rodriguez, R. M. (2010). Migrants for export: How the Philippine state brokers labour to the world. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sassen, S. (2003). The feminisation of survival: Alternative global circuits. In M. Morokvasic-Müller, U. Erel, & K. Shinozaki (Eds.), Crossing borders and shifting boundaries. Gender on the move (pp. 59–78). Opladen: Leske and Budrich.
Somers, M. (2008). Genealogies of citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stasiulis, D., & Bakan, A. (1997). Negotiating citizenship: The case of foreign domestic workers in Canada. Feminist Review, 57(Autumn), 112–139.
Statistics Finland. (2011). Population structure. Retrieved June 7, 2012, from http://www.stat.fi/til/vaerak/index_en.html
Triandafyllidou, A., & Marchetti, S. (Eds.) (2015). Employers, agencies and immigration. Paying for care. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Varjonen, J., Aalto, K., & Leskinen, J. (2007). Täsmällistä, ammattitaitoista ja edullista—kuluttajapalautetta kotitalousmarkkinoille [Prompt, professional and inexpensive—Customer feedback to household service markets]. Kuluttajatutkimuskeskuksen julkaisuja 2/2007. Helsinki: National Consumer Research Centre.
Wacquant, L. (2012). Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism. Social Anthropology, 20(1), 66–79.
Williams, F. (2014). Making connections across the transnational political economy of care. In I. Shutes & B. Anderson (Eds.), Migration and care labour. Theory, policy and politics (pp. 11–30). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Williams, F., & Brennan, D. (2012). Care, markets and migration in a globalising world: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of European Social Policy, 22(4), 355–360.
Williams, F., & Gavanas, A. (2008). The intersection of childcare regimes and migration regimes: A three-country study. In H. Lutz (Ed.), Migration and domestic work. A European perspective on a global theme (pp. 13–28). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Näre, L. (2016). Neoliberal Citizenship and Domestic Service in Finland: A Return to a Servant Society?. In: Gullikstad, B., Kristensen, G., Ringrose, P. (eds) Paid Migrant Domestic Labour in a Changing Europe. Citizenship, Gender and Diversity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51742-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51742-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51741-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51742-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)