La competencia profesional del profesor de matemáticas

The first decisive results from the empirical analysis pertain to the data collected from the period I have reconstructed as the first of critical turning points in the consolidation of neo-populist advoca-cy (for more detailed discussion on the critical turning points, see chapter 3.2). The point of departure in the analytical narrative ad-vanced in this study is that common features in the articulation of welfare nationalism first manifested in the political rhetoric as part of the politicization of the role of the welfare state in the management of immigration during the early 2000s.

Facing challenges in the maintenance of the universalist welfare state in the globalized era, the Perussuomalaiset – together with doz-ens of MPs across the party political spectrum of the Finnish parlia-ment – sought to secure public profile as resourceful politicians by presenting themselves as authors of prudent immigration legislation

through which globalized challenges can be tackled. By narrating several potential immigration-related challenges, the parliamentar-ians sought to draw attention to the importance of their own work in the development of the Aliens Act of 2004, thereby emphasizing the necessity of a heightened role of the state in the management and control of immigration.

This early statist narrative was picked up by the Perussuomalaiset party during the second turning point, neo-populist mainstreaming of the welfare nationalist political agenda, in the end of the first de-cade of the 2000s. By presenting immigration as one of the most pressing socio-political challenges for the welfare state – one that politicians have not yet dared to tackle properly – the neo-populists were able to position themselves as the blue-and-white alternative to the old parties. Rallying around the welfare state as the symbol of national pride – and the reason why it is like “winning the jackpot in a lottery” to be born in Finland – the neo-populists sought to downplay their associations to nationalist radicalism and present a mainstreamed version of welfare nationalist politics. Narrating welfare nationalism as the neo-populist set of tools for tackling problems of immigration that the other parties have not dared to address properly, the neo-populists could position themselves as the representatives of the interests of “the normal Finnish people.”

It must be noted, though, that the parliamentarians in the high political arena who emphasized the state’s role in immigration control employed statist narratives to reach highly divergent conclusions and normative assessments concerning immigration to Finland. Some of the addresses to the parliament floor that sought to establish guide-lines for the legislative process interpreted immigration as a dire challenge while others conceptualized immigration as an exceptional opportunity for the Finnish welfare state. Regardless of whether the MPs related to immigration primarily as an untapped labour resource or a socio-political item of expenditure, their addresses commonly employed instrumentalist narratives that emphasized its potential ma-terial implications, the costs and the gains of immigration. Very few exact figures featured in the instrumentalist narratives, however, and the costs and gains were instead quantified with imprecise expressions and adjectives. This feature of the early instrumentalist narratives was also adopted in neo-populist narratives of political mobilization.

While occasionally marked by the hope of reaping great econom-ic gains through successful implementation of immigration politeconom-ics in the future, the early instrumentalist narratives commonly priori-tized the prevention of the ill-effects of immigration. This emphasis was justified by referring to the notion that Finland had only very recently become a country of immigration, arguably rendering the Finnish welfare state highly fragile during the period of transition from a relatively homogeneous monoculture to a diverse society.

A shared concern for the future of the country was most explic-itly assessed with regard to accentuation of the economic hurdles for financing the welfare redistributions at the core of the welfare state. The emphasis on prudent management of welfare spending commonly manifested in the immigration debates as demands for stricter mechanisms for assessing the need of asylum. The prolifera-tion of these demands contributed significantly to the conflaprolifera-tion of the categories of the immigrant and the asylum seeker. When im-migration in general was narrated as an item of expenditure for the welfare state, immigrants were perceived in dichotomizing terms in the high political arena. On the one hand, there were the im-migrants in legitimate distress, and on the other, there were the

“welfare shoppers” and those who submitted bogus applications for asylum. By promising the public to be stringent with the taxpayers’

monies by preventing economic redistribution to the “undeserving”

immigrants, the MPs in the high political arena in the beginning of the 2000s and the neo-populist during the 2011 elections alike positioned themselves as important proponents of policy solutions.

Without them, the inflow of aspirant immigrants to Finland could excessively burden the public spending and deteriorate the position of the Finnish people.

There is one important commonality related to the way in which

“the Finnish people” is invoked in immigration debates analyzed in the first two critical turning points and during the third one – mediatized catalysis of neo-populist identity-work – examined in the final empirical chapter. In each of the five data sets, welfare nationalist and neo-populist narratives frequently use the ambig-uous term “Finns.” In Finnish, this term denotes both the group consisting of ethnic Finns only as well as the civic community of Finnish citizens. The narrative analysis advanced in three chapters

suggests that this ambiguity is often intentional in the immigra-tion debates. It allows discussants to simultaneously appeal to more radical constituencies with a strong ethno-nationalist “Finns first”

agenda, and the majority of moderate civic republicans who were prepared to accept the extension of universalist politics of welfare redistribution to immigrants and other ethnic minorities (if only on arguably “culture blind” terms). In the data collected from the scandal debates, the neo-populist online discussants further oper-ationalized this category in narratives that juxtapose “the real peo-ple” with the corrupt political elite and the unpatriotic opponents of the neo-populist advocates. This conceptualization of the people was employed commonly in the public stories seeking to legitimate neo-populist advocacy against its critics, suggesting that those who do not consider neo-populists as their representatives do not belong in the great majority of patriotic Finnish people.

While the costs and gains approach and the concern for the future of the welfare state permeated much of the early immigra-tion debates across the party political spectrum, there was much variation in mechanisms through which immigration was narrated as a particularly significant challenge for the welfare state in the early high political debates. In addition to the direct costs of im-migration, many politicians – especially the right-wing conserva-tives – were also concerned with the implications of immigration to the sense of national solidarity among the people. By suggesting that the heterogenization of the Finnish society is largely immi-gration-induced, conservatives were able to narrate their political agenda as based on common Finnish values, thereby reinforcing an exclusionary conceptualization concerning the boundaries of be-longing to the national community.

In neo-populist political mobilization of the welfare national-ist political agenda, much of the nationalnational-ist boundary-work and the emphasis on civic solidarity were, however, justified through instrumentalist narratives. For example, the outspoken rationale given for assimilating immigrants into “the Finnish culture” in the Perussuomalaiset electoral programme was that the bonds of soli-darity among the citizens of the same nation are instrumental in maintaining the people’s willingness to pay taxes and preserve the welfare state as the crown jewel of healthy national pride. In the

next subsection, I discuss in more detail how this idealized legacy of an empowering and ubiquitous welfare state is invoked as the rally-ing point of welfare nationalist politics and neo-populist collective identity.

7.2 The Idealized Legacy of the Welfare State as the Narrative