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Abstract

Today, education is massively affected by marketisation and the drastic demands of the global economy. Integration training for immigrants has fallen prey to that; immigrants are employed to serve market needs, which has been attributed to the creation of “integration as business”. In the article, the authors examine how integration training for immigrants becomes organised within the current market-oriented policies and practices; which kinds of discourses are represented and utilised through which one becomes an “integrated immigrant” and; what kinds of consequences this orientation has on the subjects involved in integration training. By bringing examples from their ethnographic data on integration training for immigrants, the authors investigate the ways in which marketisation of integration training implies and elicits certain kinds of immigrant and teacher subjectivities, and analyse the ways in which these subjectivities become produced through the plural and contingent discursive practices across different sites of integration.

Keywords

Immigration integration training marketisation projectisation subjectification

Introduction

All over Europe, many current societal debates, including those of education and integration of immigrants, are addressed from the economic perspective. Neoliberal policy agendas that promote markets over the state regulation, and the individual self-interest over the collective good and common well-being, are shared by all European Union (EU) member states as advanced forms of liberal economic and political rationality (e.g. Ball and Youdell, 2008; Brunila et al., 2017; Lundahl et al., 2013). In the education sector, the adopted market-oriented approach can be seen, for example, as an increased participation of the private sector in the delivery of the education service. The emphasis on the economy, money and costs can be interpreted as a result of the neoliberal governance, marketisation and growing centralisation of capital where one’s success or failure is seen as individual responsibility (e.g. Brunila, 2014; Davies, 2005; Furedi, 2009; Keskinen et al., 2009).

A number of researchers of educational sciences have argued that of the Nordic countries, Sweden has gone furthest in the direction of the marketisation of the education sector, whereas Finland has remained more restrictive (e.g. Arnesen et al., 2014; Gordon et al., 2003; Lundahl et al., 2013). Recently, however, also in Finland, the state and municipalities have strengthened partnership and collaboration with the private service providers by outsourcing cross-sectoral educational practices, including the integration training for immigrants (Brunila et al., 2017; Kurki and Brunila, 2014). Consequently, integration training that promotes immigrants’ employment through private investments has generated a widespread support from the ministerial level through EU-sponsored initiatives (e.g. SITRA: Finnish Innovation Fund, 2015).

In this article, we argue that these linkages between the economy, labour market and immigration have involved a new type of governance and partnerships between all levels of government, and resulted in efforts to better utilise integration (and immigrants) for innovation and business purposes (e.g. Council of the European Union, 2014; FMEE: Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy, 2015b; IOM: International Organization of Migration, 2015; see also Brunila and Ryynänen, 2017). We base our argument on our analysis of the current situation and the effects of market-oriented education policies and practices in Finland, with a special focus on the integration training for immigrants. With integration training, we refer to publicly funded educational integration measures that are offered to 17–64-years old immigrants who are enrolled as unemployed jobseekers and/or receive income support from the social welfare services (KELA: Social Insurance Institution of Finland, 2016a). Firstly, we examine how integration training for immigrants becomes organised within the current market-oriented policies and practices of education. Secondly, we investigate which kinds of discourses are represented and utilised by the market-oriented education policies and integration practices through which one becomes an “integrated immigrant”. Thirdly, through the process of subjectification within the integration training we explore what kinds of consequences the market orientation has on the subjects involved. Inspired by the work of Judith Butler (1993, 1997), Bronwyn Davies (2004) and Deborah Youdell (2011), we address integration training for immigrants as discursive practices constituting subjectivity and places for subjectification. We draw on our previous individual and joint analyses of the neoliberal governance, marketisation and subjectification in education (e.g. Brunila et al., 2016, 2017; Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Niemi and Kurki, 2013, 2014), but make particular use of Kurki’s ethnographic study on immigration policies and integration practices in Finland.

Marketisation of education policies and integration practices in Finland

We understand that marketisation has various meanings. In this article by marketisation, we refer to the creation of markets within the education sector, along with the diversification of provision and consumer choice that are seen as the drivers of and check on these markets (Brunila, 2011; Lundahl et al., 2013; Youdell, 2011). The consequences of marketisation reach however far beyond education itself, and therefore, education has become a central site of political struggle. For example, as a result of marketisation in and of education, private sector practices and private sector for-profit players are now established parts of what used to be state-provided education (Ball, 2007). In addition, this tendency does not only impact on what education is expected to do; it also impacts on people involved in education as we will show later in the article.

In Finland, integration training for immigrants has been predominantly state-maintained and publicly funded¹ having a multitude of forms ranging from language training to pre-vocational training and training through work. In general, integration training reflects the educational practices through which immigrants are expected to integrate into the host society; that is, to learn the skills needed to actively participate in societal activities, such as education and work (e.g. FMEE: Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy, 2016b). Until recently, the Finnish education authorities favoured public educational institutions organising integration services, including integration training (e.g. Uusikylä et al., 2005). In the spring of 2015, however, a remarkable change of course occurred when the Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY-centres), who are responsible for financing the integration training, shifted their strategy according to the guidelines of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy (FMEE) and reduced the importance of quality of training to 25% while that of price was increased to 75%². This change gave an immediate rise to the public concern, as what followed was that the private sector consulting companies swept away the incumbent public educational institutions in the competition, and a large number of teachers lost their jobs to the private sector consultants. For instance, the Finnish Trade Union of Education (OAJ) and teachers themselves pointed out in their public contentions that the new tendering strategy undermined the development of integration training as the long-standing networks of cooperation between different levels of stakeholders were now discarded. The Union representatives demanded also that the Ministry of Education and Culture should take over the coordination of integration training from the FMEE, which had supported the ELY-centres in favouring the price over quality (OAJ: Trade Union of Education in Finland, 2015). As for teachers, they were more concerned about losing their jobs, or alternatively being forced to become consultants, as the private consulting companies that won the bidding were known to hire teaching staff without sufficient qualifications and teaching experience. Teachers were worried that the business-oriented approach to integration training would change their position as teachers profoundly, and in addition their employment would increasingly be dependent on the “integration market” (e.g. Lounavaara et al., 2015; Palttala, 2015).

In addition to the private service providers penetrating into the integration sector, another phenomenon related to the marketisation worth attention is the increase of project-based activities. This phenomenon, described as projectisation (e.g. Brunila, 2009, 2011), refers to the change of welfare politics towards market-oriented interventions as part of the transnational EU policies. At the national level in Finland, this has resulted in steering domestic funds towards projects that reflect EU policies in order to meet the demands of the growing global market (Brunila, 2011; Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Rantala and Sulkunen, 2006; Sjöblom, 2009). A great number of integration measures are funded with short-term project funding of the European Social Fund (ESF) through the FMEE and ELY-centres. Interestingly, based on our previous analyses (e.g. Brunila et al., 2017; Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Niemi and Kurki, 2013, 2014), it seems, that the fragmentation of integration measures into market-oriented projects have actually hindered immigrants proceeding “forward” from the integration phase to further education and employment (see also Teittinen, 2017).

Against this background, in this article, we examine with the concept of subjectification (e.g. Butler, 1990, 1997; Davies, 2004; Davies et al., 2001; St. Pierre, 2000; Youdell, 2011) how subjects involved in integration training – especially immigrants and their teachers – constitute their subjectivities within the market-oriented discourses. Utilising the concept of subjectification in the analysis means rejecting the understanding about a subject as a natural, abiding, self-evident individual, and seeing the subject as a discursive constitution who appears to be abiding and natural, not because they are so, but because the on-going discursive practices create this illusion. Thus, we are interested in examining the processes through which certain kinds of immigrant subjectivities become constituted, the variety of subject positions available within integration training and how the subjects of integration training come to occupy particular subject positions within the market-oriented discourses.

An important concept related to subjectification is that of subjectivity, which is taken as a subject’s particular sense and experience of herself: “who” the subject of integration training is, can and might be (e.g. Davies, 2000; Ikävalko, 2016; Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Niemi and Mietola, 2017; Youdell, 2006). Subjectivities become possible in certain discourses and are by no means arbitrary, something that the subject can choose herself. For example, in the integration discourses there is often only one possible subject position available for subjects considered as “immigrants”, that of an “Other”, in which every subject of immigration policies and integration practices becomes to be positioned (Kurki, 2008). Consequently, this subject position of “immigrant” then becomes part of one’s subjectivity, of the understandings of the “self” even if for “immigrant” there are multiple and simultaneous subject positions available, which may have contradictory meanings in different contexts (Davies, 2000; Kurki and Brunila, 2014). When analysing integration training, the concepts of subjectification and that of subjectivity have thus offered us interesting insights into the processes through which “immigrantness” becomes produced but also challenged as subjectification is never fixed yet always precarious (cf. Butler, 1992; Davies, 2004).

Research data and analysis

We draw our analysis from our previous and joint analysis on the marketisation of education, but focus particularly on data produced in 2009–2012 by Kurki for her PhD study³ in two study groups of pre-vocational training for immigrants⁴. At the time of the study, the programme of pre-vocational training for immigrants was intended for unemployed adult immigrants (aged 17–64) who had already gained a sufficient Finnish language level (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages A2.2, obtained approximately in two years of intensive language training) and were interested in vocational studies⁵. The participants were those with various backgrounds, including people with only basic education but also those with a higher education degree. Most of them had ended up in the programme through the employment office, some of them as part of their personal integration plan. The programme was provided both in public vocational training institutions as well as in private training companies. The training lasted about nine months during which the participants studied the Finnish language and other subjects needed in vocational studies. The programme combined specific goals, such as getting a study place in a vocational institution after the programme, but also a set of general objectives, such as building and strengthening language and life management skills.

The data analysed consist of observation notes from the programme as well as interviews with 15 participants (aged 16–56) and 10 integration professionals, mainly teachers, but also project workers, employment officers and policy-makers. In addition, 20 EU-level and national-level policy documents and reports⁶ from the period of 2009–2016 related to integration training and marketisation inform our analysis. Altogether these data provide a broad insight on educational and societal politics at hand (e.g. Lahelma, 2013) in order to investigate the marketisation of integration training and its effects on immigrants and teachers involved in the “business”.

Methodologically, we follow the ideas of discursive reading with poststructural feminist approaches where discourses are understood as shifting systems of knowledge ranging from what is taken as self-evident and valorised through to what is unspeakable or ridiculed (e.g. Brunila and Ikävalko, 2012; Butler, 1993; Davies and Harré, 1990; Foucault, 1990). This approach enables us to investigate how discourses produce “truths”; that is, to examine the normative ways of being and doing the “right” kind of “immigrantness”. It also allows us to look at the power relations and formation of subject positions and the understanding about the “self” within those power relations (Brunila and Siivonen, 2014; Foucault, 1969; Pulkkinen, 2003). We understand integration as “discursive practices” (e.g. Bacchi and Bonham, 2014), which construct certain kinds of realities and subjectivities. We analyse the neoliberal governance and marketisation of integration training and how the market-oriented discourses both regulate and enable integration, which then become part of the subjectification process of immigrants participating in integration training and their teachers (cf. Foucault, 1991). Thus, the ways in which our interviewees describe their thoughts about integration can be understood as a result of how the discourses of integration regulate and enable them (cf. Davies, 2004: 4–5). What we are especially focused on is related to the ways people, both teachers and immigrants, engage in the discursive practices, taking them as part of their subjectivities in the ambivalent process of simultaneous submission and mastery of these discourses. The analysis permits an examination of the multi-layered politics and practices regarding the marketisation of integration training as well as some of the consequences of the discourses for people participating in these activities. In addition, we aim to highlight the ambivalent process of “immigrantness” and what effects this has on the construction of subjectivities. It is important to understand how marketisation is related to discursive regularities, but we also explore the possibility of speaking and acting otherwise.

Teachers become consultants under market pressure

Within the neoliberal governance with the market-oriented approach, integration training has become managed with specific goals, such as the economic growth. For example, the key EU-level governmental strategy of Common Basic Principles on Integration encourages all EU member states to develop “the greater involvement of the private sector in the integration service delivery” (Council of the European Union, 2014). The following extracts from the FMEE and the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) indicate this orientation:

Measures that help immigrants to become active as soon as possible are important in minimising taxpayers’ costs and in preventing radicalisation. We welcome active participation and contribution [from the private sector]. (FMEE: Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy, 2015a.)

To restrain the financial costs of immigration, new types of operational and financial models should be experimented. The SIB-model [social impact bond model] of effective investment is a tool that allows exploiting private capital for measures that the public sector no longer has resources for. (SITRA: Finnish Innovation Fund, 2015.)

As a result of this business-oriented direction in the integration training, new businesses have been created where private coaching and consultancy companies provide integration services with public funding, for which new professionals, such as coaches, mentors, and consultants are needed (Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Tuori, 2009).

As a number of researchers have stated, within the market-oriented agendas of the EU, projects have become a tool for implementing welfare services, including integration (see, for example, Brunila, 2009, 2011; Sjöblom, 2009). The following extract from an interview with a teacher of the pre-vocational training programme for immigrants indicates how the EU’s integration policy combined with the market-oriented approach to education has shifted the form of integration training into short-term projects and programmes, and where funding is competitive and tender- and contract-based.

By the virtue of immigration, you can get quite a lot of financial support to different kinds of projects that support integration. In a way, it seems funny that is must be something new and experimental, that you cannot get money for something old. Certainly, you won’t be able to innovate if you don’t try, but I’ve been thinking many times that do they give money for projects only because they are projects instead of good old practices? I know it is part of a bigger picture; that it is the European Social Fund that finances these projects but things don’t work with project funding; it should be something continuous. (Teacher of pre-vocational training for immigrants)

As we analyse the teacher’s talk above as part of a wider discursive practice, projects start to both regulate and enable teachers’ work, which then becomes a part of subjectification, a process of ambivalent submission and mastery. In one project, where the teacher interviewed had been involved, the tendency of marketisation of integration training was not just a technical change; instead, it fostered a climate where teachers started to run projects as their side task. In addition to the extra work, projects brought a pressure on teachers to juggle between promoting efficiency and effectiveness as well as pleasing the donor at the expense of what they saw as being the best for their students. This dual task increased insecurity and uncertainty, which are integral parts of neoliberal governance, followed by questions, such as “am I working enough”, “am I integrating my students the ‘right’ way”, yet, simultaneously being uncertain what was really expected of them (cf. Ball, 2003). As the extract below describes, it seems that as a result of the increasing number of projects, teachers’ work, teaching methods and planning become commercialised and restricted by the policies and market demands, which does not necessarily aim towards achieving integration (cf. Brunila et al., 2016; Eikenberry and Drapal Kluver, 2004).

The project was not well prepared but we had the funding so we started doing things that already existed but now as a project. Nobody knew what we were actually doing, what was the thread of the project, who were the main actors, and what was the goal. We cancelled seminars and publications because we achieved nothing; there was nothing to tell about. Still, at the same time, the donors – in this case the ESF, National Board of Education and the provincial government – waited information on how many students the project had helped. (Teacher of pre-vocational training for immigrants)

As this extract shows, it seems that the teachers themselves see their work and working conditions as dramatically changed by the neoliberal reforms: marketisation does not change only what teachers do, it changes who they are expected to be. Through these constant ambivalences, teachers then become speaking subjects while being subjected to the constitutive force of the discourses. Because of the pre-determined schedules and goals as well as the various and diverse interest of the project partners and donors, project work inherently includes tensions, conflicts, confusion and even misunderstandings (see also Brunila, 2009; Vehviläinen and Brunila, 2007). At the same time, teachers become responsible for how and into what people are integrated, and if they do not succeed in guiding their students to further studies and employment, they feel they are perceived as failing to do their job, or in other words, failing to improve the national productivity. The fear of not integrating enough, not teaching and learning language and other skills fast enough, and not achieving the predetermined goals of integration training were constantly present, as explained here by two teachers interviewed:

Gosh, it is like tilt at windmills, fighting all the time. It’s business where I am a kind of expert on issues like who keeps their [immigrants] side; if it’s not their teacher then who? (…) It’s like, oh well, one immigrant here or there, who cares, there is a long queue of them outside (…) The debate on immigration is just about how many immigrants there is in Finland, how much it costs to Finland, but then [the discussion on] what follows is completely left out (…) It’s abandonment if immigrants do not really have possibilities to integrate. (Teacher of pre-vocational training for immigrants)

In principle, integration training benefits many but does it increase participants’ possibilities in future if getting a study place in further education becomes more and more difficult every year? Does the integration training really increase their chances of access to education? Well, I just have to wait and see how my students will succeed. (Teacher of pre-vocational training for immigrants)

As these extracts from the teacher interviews indicate, even if the official goal of integration training is to move towards further education that leads to qualification and/or to employment, a great majority of participants do not necessarily succeed in doing so (FMEC: Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016; Smahl, 2012; see also Brunila et al., 2017; Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Niemi and Kurki, 2013, 2014). Our analysis of the policy documents (e.g. Aunola and Korpela, 2006; Public Employment and Business Services, 2014) shows that instead of moving “forward” from the integration phase, immigrants keep repeating short-term trainings, such as labour market training, language courses, unpaid practical training, vocational training, apprenticeship training, on-the-job training, entrepreneurship training, self-motivated studies on unemployment benefit, or participate in different forms of career coaching (Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Niemi and Kurki, 2014). In this circle of never ending integration, life becomes easily precarious and finding a “way out” haphazard (Niemi and Kurki, 2013). We argue that this is a crucial element of mis-integration; that is, the uncertainty of all circumstances in the material and immaterial conditions of immigrants’ lives under contemporary capitalism (cf. Frassanito Network, 2006).

Based on our analysis it seems that the market-oriented approach demands teachers to contribute to the market logic by providing a set of subjectivities and positions within which what it means to be a teacher becomes changed. Thus, new subjectivities become constituted as teachers become re-worked as consultants and coaches, and are subject to regular appraisal and review and performance comparisons.

Immigrants become consumers without clear direction of integration

As it is expected from everyone through the neoliberal governance, also immigrants are expected to be active, hardworking yet grateful, and put all their efforts towards achieving integration (Kurki, 2008; Kurki and Brunila, 2014; Niemi and Kurki, 2013). Furthermore, it is again the paradoxical simultaneity of submission and mastery, and the related ambivalence, that we are especially interested in. At the course of integration training, participants were repeatedly reminded by the professionals at school, by the employment office and the media that they should be more active in finding something to do since “you are not allowed to sit at home” (Employment officer). Yet, they had been simultaneously told that their future plans should be more realistic and practical, as “also the Finns want the jobs you are trying to get” (Teacher of pre-vocational training for immigrants). When reporting these events in the interviews, people often talked about their desperation when in spite of all their efforts everybody just kept saying no when they were trying to get a study place or finding a job. Thus, they were repeatedly reminded of the imperative of commitment to integration: even when unemployed or without a study place, one should do their bit for the maintenance of the national competitiveness of Finland and demonstrate commitment to their new home country (see also Himanen and Könönen, 2010; Kurki and Brunila, 2014). As a discursive practice, integration then becomes presented as an individual venture and a goal to be aimed towards. Integration in this sense promotes and creates a particular subject position within the market-oriented discourse. For example, in the recent report of the Finnish Government (2016) integration is described as an individualistic project that emphasises self-discipline and continuous self-development:

Integration makes it easier to become a member of the society, and helps to prevent social exclusion. To succeed in becoming well-integrated, one must be motivated, proactive and act responsible (Finnish Government, 2016).

Here, the rather carefully and specifically “integrated self” is framed as a future-oriented goal to be achieved, as a potentiality, that sets forth an aim for self-transformation and self-development. Just like any self-development advertisement campaign, the Finnish Government promises in its “campaign” a better future through hard work, dedication, and self-discipline. Yet, this actualisation of potential may never be finally realised, as the discourse of potentiality is future-oriented: it forever looks forward to what it may be. In this sense, the integrated self as a project is a journey, which does not depart from located self-present subjectivity; it projects an ideal towards which it aims (cf. Cronin, 2000: 276).

The extract below represents a typical process of subjectification about the beginning of the integration process where life becomes characterised by uncertainty, ambiguity and incompleteness. This process impacts on the subjectification, which is manifested through developing certain forms of “immigrantness” through prevailing discourses (cf. Butler, 1993):

For two years I sat at home and waited, because I didn’t know what to do. I went to the employment office but the only thing they told me was to be active and positive [laugh]. That was every time the same and I was depressed and cried. For two years, and then I finally got a letter to participate in the language training. (…) Now the fog has cleared a bit. This year I have understood how everything works, where I have to go, if I want to apply for something. (Participant of integration training)

Even before the current “refugee crisis”, which has brought a great number of new immigrants also to Finland, people often had to wait for months, maybe years, to get into integration training. During the integration process, immigrants need to learn not only patience but how to behave, act and speak; they need to learn how to be immigrant the “right” way and what it means to be a “good integrated immigrant”. The market-oriented discourse works by requiring responsibility for finding integration training, which means that immigrants have to make sure that they know, even without guidance, where they are supposed to be and go, and how the integration process works. Failure to do so is regarded as a personal problem, as if the person does not have enough skills, and is not active and independent enough (cf. Brunila and Ryynänen, 2017; Worth, 2003).

However, even when guidance and counselling, or in accordance with the neoliberal governance surveillance and control, is offered on behalf of the employment office and social services, from the perspective of immigrants themselves, it may remain unclear where one should be and where to go, where and when integration starts and ends. The following extract from an interview with one of the participants shows how confusion and uncertainty were constantly present when trying to get integrated:

Participant: I’d like to get a job, not to study for years; it’s too much for me. I asked the employment office [what I could do] and they said that there is some programme on trade and commerce that lasts six months. It was something where I could work or do an on-the-job training and study at the same time.

Researcher: Is it like an apprenticeship programme?

Participant: I don’t know. It’s just something that the employment office suggested me. (…) It’s something about trade and commerce.

Researcher: Ok, do you know if it leads to qualifications?

Participant: No, I don’t remember. They just told me that the programme lasts for six months and then I go to work and then I continue there as part of the on-the-job training, and maybe they even pay me.

In the course of integration training, immigrants become positioned as subjects that have to orient their subjectivity according to the situation (cf. Brunila and Ryynänen, 2017). As the above extract shows, the participant was not given the relevant information about the training, such as will it lead to qualifications, what it is about, and will they get paid. Still, by participating in something, even if they did not know on what exactly, they could demonstrate activeness that appears to be an essential condition of integration. Here, the market-oriented discourses promote a truth of self-responsibility where failure becomes a personal, not societal, blame. At its best, integration training can encourage participants for further education and employment as a number of Kurki’s interviewees stated. However, it also seems that immigrants need to be prepared to face the fact that the possibilities for the future are limited as the responsibility to succeed depends on self-activeness, and passiveness is an indication of social unsuitability and inability to succeed. Subjectification becomes tied to the capability of mastering self-responsibility and individual efforts where the immigrant is mostly going to be valued and praised as one who was able to master and submit to the right integration and market competences.

In addition to the requirements of activeness and self-responsibility, neoliberal governance heightens individuality and competitiveness seeking to shape each subject as an economic unit for the use of the market economy (Bastalich, 2010; Rose, 1996).

If you get fed up with waiting, you can pay the training yourself. (Employment officer)

I understand that there are lots of people in need of integration training, and they [training providers] want people to participate now, now, now and take in new participants. (…) When I finished my language training, my Finnish language skills were zero, but in the certificate they wrote that my level was ok and that I could get into any training programme I want. Well, then I continued to study the Finnish language at home and after that participated in a language course that cost 400€ per month. It was a very good course. It was organised by a consulting firm that helps foreigners to find a job. (Participant of integration training)

The excerpts above illustrate how with money one can buy integration from the private service providers when public services are not available or are difficult to access. However, clearly, these self-paid services are not available for everyone. During the integration period, the basic financial support is on average 703€ per month subject to 20% tax withholding rate (KELA: Social Insurance Institution of Finland, 2016b). Therefore, most likely, only those who have access to supplementary finances can buy the training themselves. This may increase inequality among immigrants as not everyone has money or ability to choose and pay for integration services.

Bronwyn Davies et al. (2001) have argued that the dual nature of subjection is easily misunderstood in the binary structure of Western language necessarily as either submission or mastery, but not both. Following Davies et al. (2001) we argue that they cannot be separated because the condition of possibility for the subject requires both. As the above extract shows, through subjectification, these discursive practices of integration offer immigrants an ideal neoliberal subject position – the subject of “consumer immigrant”. In the discursive practices of integration, immigrants learn to consume, buy, and purchase integration services in order to push themselves through the continuous and constant requirements of self-improvement. Life becomes regulated and economised, where the result is an immigrant who has to struggle to submit and master the “economisation of lifestyle” in order to have a chance towards a possible integration.

Conclusion

Policy-makers often frame neoliberal governance in terms of the need to transform, and thereby, improve education, in order to respond to the fast-paced global changes and to secure a position in a competitive global marketplace (Brown and Lauder, 2006). Based on our analysis, in Finland, as is the case in many other EU countries, the following changes have taken place furtively in the integration sector without much of a public debate. Therefore, our main argument in this article has been that the market-oriented policy in the context of integration training produces the conditions of generalised precariousness and that there is lack of public discussions around the effects of marketisation.

The market-oriented discursive practices emphasise the costs of integration but the issue of where the money ends up is not publicly discussed, or if it is, there is much obfuscation without ever getting to the point. Outsourcing integration services to the private sector has led to a situation where private consulting companies make financial profit with integration, and with immigrants. New business interests have been opened up through commercialisation, sponsorships, integration–industry partnerships, contracts and competitions between private and public actors and resources. This trend is being justified with shared benefits: the government and municipalities save costs and immigrants get into the integration services faster as private consulting companies are claimed to be capable of such flexibility and efficiency for which the public sector is not.

The market-oriented discursive practices hide the realities of integration behind the figures, economic efficiency, and the market-oriented terminology where teachers become transformed into teaching consultants as pedagogy becomes re-made as the delivery of correct knowledge, and immigrants become transformed into consumers and clients responsible for their own success or failure. The variety of integration service providers is presented as increased freedom of choice for immigrant-customers and understood as a positive intrinsic value.

Within all these above-mentioned marketisation changes, the position of immigrants becomes paradoxical: being involved in the integration process and participating in integration training may provide opportunities to learn the language, to get education, and to get employed. However, at the same time, their position is defined by being “just immigrants”, and thus, the opportunities to become part of the Finnish society are always conditional. The paradox of efficiency requirements, the market orientation and labour market needs is that when integration is adjusted with the predetermined objectives, integration may no longer benefit immigrants. Instead of integrating, integration training may end up marginalising and dis-integrating, as well as producing fear of failing the system that is indeed fuelled by failure.

As a result, integration training becomes a production site for the subjectification of teachers and immigrants according to the marketisation discourse.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Tuuli Kurki is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her current research interests include immigration policies and educational integration practices, as well as anti-racist resistance and social movements.

Ameera Masoud is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include integration policies and practices of refugees and immigrants, education and analysis of policy discourses.

Anna-Maija Niemi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests are located into the fields of sociology of education, youth studies and disability studies. She currently works in the research project “Employability, education and diversity” considering transitions, support practices and societal inclusion of young people in upper secondary education.

Kristiina Brunila works as a professor of social justice and equality in education (tenure track) at the University of Helsinki, Finland. With her research group she has analysed educational policies and practices in relation to marketisation, individualisation, therapisation, and entrepreneurialism, as well as questions of power, agency and societal differences.

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Integration becoming business: Marketisation of integration training for immigrants

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Marketisation of education policies and integration practices in Finland

Research data and analysis

Teachers become consultants under market pressure

Immigrants become consumers without clear direction of integration

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interest

Funding

Notes

Author biographies

References