This article investigates contemporary struggles of class and citizenship in the context of the emergence of right-wing anti-immigrant politics and activism in Finland. The specific aim of the article is to dissect anti-immigrant activism from the perspective of classificatory struggles concerning the ‘biopolitics of disposability’ within the current regime of neoliberal citizenship. Relying on qualitative research of online activism, the article suggests that current forms of anti-immigrant politics can be understood as a part of a process where the assumed ‘underclass’ or surplus people become significant as a ‘constitutive outside’ that defines the contours of respectable citizenship. Anti-immigration activism thus takes part in a twisted or displaced class struggle, in which the class relations imposed by the neoliberal regime, rather than being questioned, are taken for granted and racialized.
AnttilaA.KauranenR.LaunisK.OjajärviJ. (Eds) (2016). Luokan ääni ja hiljaisuus. Tampere: Vastapaino, forthcoming.
2.
AttonC. (2006). Far-right media on the internet: Culture, discourse and power. New Media Society, 8, 573–587.
3.
BerlantL. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
4.
ButlerJ. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London and New York: Routledge.
5.
De GenovaN. (2013). Spectacles of migrant ‘illegality’: The scene of exclusion, the obscene of inclusion. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36, 1180–1198.
6.
FraserN. (2003). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, and participation. In FraserN.HonnethA., Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (pp. 7–109). London and New York: Verso.
7.
GirouxH. (2007). Violence, Katrina, and the biopolitics of disposability. Theory Culture Society, 24, 305–309.
Hommaforum discussion threads: Maahanmuuttajat ja hoitoala (yhdistetty) [MH], 23February2009 – 22September2013. Retrieved from: http://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,2545.0.html (accessed 25 September 2013).
10.
2011-06-26 SK: Mikko Heikka: Suomalaisia köyhiä ajetaan maahanmuuttajia vastaan [Suomalaisia köyhiä], 26June2011 – 28June2011. Retrieved from: http://hommaforum.org/index.php?topic=52328.0 (accessed 25 September 2013).
2013-10-25 Yhteishyvä: Viikon kohokohta / Miten suurperhe viettää lauantaita? [Yhteishyvä], 28October2013 – 6November2013. Retrieved from: http://hommaforum.org/index.php?topic=88919.0 (accessed 7 November 2013).
14.
HorstiK. (2005). Vierauden rajat. Monikulttuurisuus ja turvapaikanhakijat journalismissa. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
15.
HorstiK.NikunenK. (2013). The ethics of hospitality in changing journalism: A response to the rise of the anti-immigrant movement in Finnish media publicity. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16, 489–504.
16.
JensonJ. (2007). The European Union’s citizenship regime: Creating norms and building practices. Comparative European Politics, 5, 53–75.
17.
KeskinenS. (2009). Pelkkiä ongelmia? Maahanmuutto poliittisen keskustelun kohteena. In KeskinenS.RastasA.TuoriS. (Eds), En ole rasisti mutta… Maahanmuutosta, monikulttuurisuudesta ja kritiikistä (pp. 33–45) Tampere: Vastapaino & Nuorisotutkimusverkosto.
18.
KeskinenS. (2013). Antifeminism and white identity politics: Political antagonisms in radical right-wing populist and anti-immigration rhetoric in Finland. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3, 225–232.
19.
KmakM. (2012). Moral schizophrenia of migration to the European Union: Homo Economicus meets bogus asylum seeker. Helsinki Review of Global Governance, 3, 10–13.
20.
KoivulaaksoD.BrunilaM.AnderssonL. (2012). Äärioikeisto Suomessa. Helsinki: Into Kustannus.
21.
LemW. (2013). Citizenship, migration and formations of class in urban France. Dialect Anthropol, 37, 443–461.
22.
LemW.Gardiner BarberP. (2010). Introduction. In LemW.Gardiner BarberP. (Eds), Class, Contention and a World in Motion (pp. 1–20). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
23.
LentinA.TitleyG. (2011). The Crises of Multiculturalism. Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London and New York: Zed Books.
24.
LuryC.WakefordN. (2012). Introduction. A perpetual inventory. In LuryC.WakefieldN. (Eds), Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social (pp. 2–24). London and New York: Routledge.
25.
MaasiltaM. (2012). Epilogi. In MaasiltaM. (Ed), Maahanmuutto, media ja eduskuntavaalit (pp. 159–162). Tampere: Tampere University Press.
MäkinenK. (2012). Becoming Valuable Selves: Self-promotion, Gender and Individuality in Late Capitalism. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
28.
MäkinenK. (2013). Rajoja ja säröjä: Talous maahanmuuttovastaisessa keskustelussa. Poliittinen talous, 1, 9–34.
29.
MäkinenK. (2015). Uneasy laughter: Encountering the anti-immigration debate. Qualitative Research, published online before print 3September. DOI 10.1177/1468794115598193.
30.
MalloyT.H. (2005). The Lisbon Strategy and Ethnic Minorities: Rights and Economic Growth, ECMI issue brief #13, April.
MierinaI.KorolevaL. (2015). Support for far right ideology and anti-migrant attitudes among youth in Europe: A comparative analysis. The Sociological Review, 63 (S2), 183–205.
34.
NousiainenA. (2010). Kukkahattutäti kohtaa kriitikkonsa. Kuukausiliite, 2, 46–52.
35.
OjalaH. (2010). Opiskelemassa tavallaan. Vanhat naiset ikäihmisten yliopistossa. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
36.
PatomäkiH. (2007). Uusliberalismi Suomessa. Lyhyt historia ja tulevaisuuden vaihtoehdot. Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö.
37.
PeckJ. (2010). Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
38.
PenttiläS. (2015). Sinä saat tulla mutta sinä et. Suomen Kuvalehti, 35, 24–31.
39.
ShildrickT.MacDonaldR. (2013). Poverty talk: How people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame ‘the poor’. The Sociological Review, 61, 285–303.
40.
SkeggsB. (1997). Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage.
SoederbergS. (2014). Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population. London and New York: Routledge.
43.
TylerI. (2013). Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. London and New York: Zed Books.
44.
TylerI. (2015). Classificatory struggles: Class, culture and inequality in neoliberal times. The Sociological Review, 63, 493–511.
45.
VallasS. P.CumminsE. R. (2015). Personal branding and identity norms in the popular business press:Enterprise culture in an age of precarity. Organization Studies, 36, 293–319.
46.
WacquantL. (1993). Urban outcasts: Stigma and division in the Black American ghetto and the French urban periphery. International Journal and Urban and Regional Research, 17, 366–383.
47.
WacquantL. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity.
48.
WacquantL. (2010). Crafting the neoliberal state: Workfare, prisonfare, and social insecurity. Sociological Forum, 25, 197–220.
49.
WacquantL. (2012). Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 20,: 66–79.
50.
WilkinsonP.ThelwallM. (2011). Researching personal information on the public web: Methods and ethics. Social Science Computer Review, 29, 387–401.
