M Nikunen
Biographic Data
| ID | 49667 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Nikunen |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Nikunen |
| SIGNATURE | NIKUNEN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tampere |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5618-138X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Affective capitalism and the (new) entrepreneurial mood
This article examines start-up entrepreneurialism and provides insights into the configurations of affective capitalism. The empirical case explored in this article is the Slush Conference, which promotes start-up entrepreneurialism. The data were gathered by ethnographic methods, including on-site observations, and complemented by diverse materials such as social media content and newspaper coverage of the event. Drawing upon our detailed analys…
Labour Market Demands, Employability and Authenticity
Finding employment has been a challenge for young adults in recent years. This is not only due to high unemployment rates, but also because entering working life is more complicated than before. It is no longer just a question of credentials and skills. ‘Employability’ depends on investments in personal capacities: labour market demands in recruitment exceed the capacity of employees’ bodies and minds. This article asks what demands for increasin…
Moral Orders of Mobility
By studying the moral orders that young Finnish adults (aged 18-30) attach to geographical mobility, this article reveals previously neglected relationships between aspiration and mobility. The 40 young adult interviewees are living in the midst of Finnish political debates about youth aspiration, which emphasise geographical rather than social mobility as a way to enhance employability and demonstrate aspiration. We argue that young people thems…
Being positive, being hopeful, being happy
The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which young adults reflect on their futures. We are particularly interested in how they expect to organize their lives in conditions that seem to offer pessimistic rather than hopeful prospects. How does this happen under social conditions where the major public and individual concerns are with how young adults organize their material lives and how they earn sufficient livelihoods to become good c…
Separated by common methods? Researchers and journalists doing expertise
In this article, we address emerging tensions between researchers and journalists in our research project on formations of new divisions among young adults in Finland. We focus on interviewing as a method of data gathering, and on framing as a method of presenting research results. Writing from the point of view of academic researchers, our analysis shows that journalists' and researchers' ways of doing expertise, such as techniques for asking qu…
Young adults and the tuning of the entrepreneurial mindset in neoliberal capitalism
Enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit of young people is a means by which their employability and future potential as well as economic growth, the core goal of national policies, are incubated. Consequently, individuals performing entrepreneurial mindset are seen to possess the most future potential. We sketch the contours of this mindset and develop the idea of ‘tuning’ the entrepreneurial mindset with other discursive elements, or ‘ingredients’,…
Gendered strategies of mobility and academic career
In universities, being mobile and international has become ever more important for academics’ career prospects. This article explores junior and other insecurely employed researchers’ experiences of geographical mobility in relation to their personal life, career, employability and value as scholars. The aim is to discover the gendered strategies researchers use to combine mobility with intimate relations and personal life. Furthermore, what gend…
Young people, future hopes and concerns in Finland and the European Union
In this article, I examine the ways in which governing bodies at the Finnish national and also European Union levels talk about young people and our shared future in Finland. I use their youth policy documents as material for critical discourse analysis. My argument is that, besides presenting visions of a desired future, these papers also produce and reproduce divisions between young people that reflect gender and class positions. Young people a…
The ‘entrepreneurial university’, family and gender
Managerialism and neoliberal changes and demands influence the work and family lives of academics differently in different positions and contexts. In this article, I explore how Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts have been treated, and how they interpret recent changes and their effects on their work and private lives. I ask how the demands and changes are gendered and what consequences they have for work–family balance and gender eq…
Changing university work, freedom, flexibility and family
This article investigates what Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts consider to be the effects of having children on work and careers. The study is framed by the context of the current state of the university sector, its neoliberal and entrepreneurial tendencies and its claims to meritocracy. Informants express relative happiness with what they see as freedom and flexibility in their work/life balance, but this can turn to anxiety abou…
Murder-suicide in the news
In this article I use Finnish newspaper reports on murder-suicide to explore how the moral orders of gender, heterosexual relationships and family are used in constructing newsworthiness or routine. The two main contexts of murder-suicide, a homicide followed by the perpetrator’s suicide, were the family and the heterosexual relationship. I concentrate on femicide-suicides because it is the largest group of murder-suicides, and it is the group th…
Changing university work, freedom, flexibility and family
This article investigates what Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts consider to be the effects of having children on work and careers. The study is framed by the context of the current state of the university sector, its neoliberal and entrepreneurial tendencies and its claims to meritocracy. Informants express relative happiness with what they see as freedom and flexibility in their work/life balance, but this can turn to anxiety abou…
The ‘entrepreneurial university’, family and gender
Managerialism and neoliberal changes and demands influence the work and family lives of academics differently in different positions and contexts. In this article, I explore how Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts have been treated, and how they interpret recent changes and their effects on their work and private lives. I ask how the demands and changes are gendered and what consequences they have for work–family balance and gender eq…
Gendered strategies of mobility and academic career
In universities, being mobile and international has become ever more important for academics’ career prospects. This article explores junior and other insecurely employed researchers’ experiences of geographical mobility in relation to their personal life, career, employability and value as scholars. The aim is to discover the gendered strategies researchers use to combine mobility with intimate relations and personal life. Furthermore, what gend…
Young adults and the tuning of the entrepreneurial mindset in neoliberal capitalism
Enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit of young people is a means by which their employability and future potential as well as economic growth, the core goal of national policies, are incubated. Consequently, individuals performing entrepreneurial mindset are seen to possess the most future potential. We sketch the contours of this mindset and develop the idea of ‘tuning’ the entrepreneurial mindset with other discursive elements, or ‘ingredients’,…
Young people, future hopes and concerns in Finland and the European Union
In this article, I examine the ways in which governing bodies at the Finnish national and also European Union levels talk about young people and our shared future in Finland. I use their youth policy documents as material for critical discourse analysis. My argument is that, besides presenting visions of a desired future, these papers also produce and reproduce divisions between young people that reflect gender and class positions. Young people a…
Being positive, being hopeful, being happy
The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which young adults reflect on their futures. We are particularly interested in how they expect to organize their lives in conditions that seem to offer pessimistic rather than hopeful prospects. How does this happen under social conditions where the major public and individual concerns are with how young adults organize their material lives and how they earn sufficient livelihoods to become good c…
Murder-suicide in the news
In this article I use Finnish newspaper reports on murder-suicide to explore how the moral orders of gender, heterosexual relationships and family are used in constructing newsworthiness or routine. The two main contexts of murder-suicide, a homicide followed by the perpetrator’s suicide, were the family and the heterosexual relationship. I concentrate on femicide-suicides because it is the largest group of murder-suicides, and it is the group th…
Affective capitalism and the (new) entrepreneurial mood
This article examines start-up entrepreneurialism and provides insights into the configurations of affective capitalism. The empirical case explored in this article is the Slush Conference, which promotes start-up entrepreneurialism. The data were gathered by ethnographic methods, including on-site observations, and complemented by diverse materials such as social media content and newspaper coverage of the event. Drawing upon our detailed analys…
Separated by common methods? Researchers and journalists doing expertise
In this article, we address emerging tensions between researchers and journalists in our research project on formations of new divisions among young adults in Finland. We focus on interviewing as a method of data gathering, and on framing as a method of presenting research results. Writing from the point of view of academic researchers, our analysis shows that journalists' and researchers' ways of doing expertise, such as techniques for asking qu…
Murder-suicide in the news
In this article I use Finnish newspaper reports on murder-suicide to explore how the moral orders of gender, heterosexual relationships and family are used in constructing newsworthiness or routine. The two main contexts of murder-suicide, a homicide followed by the perpetrator’s suicide, were the family and the heterosexual relationship. I concentrate on femicide-suicides because it is the largest group of murder-suicides, and it is the group th…
Changing university work, freedom, flexibility and family
This article investigates what Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts consider to be the effects of having children on work and careers. The study is framed by the context of the current state of the university sector, its neoliberal and entrepreneurial tendencies and its claims to meritocracy. Informants express relative happiness with what they see as freedom and flexibility in their work/life balance, but this can turn to anxiety abou…
The ‘entrepreneurial university’, family and gender
Managerialism and neoliberal changes and demands influence the work and family lives of academics differently in different positions and contexts. In this article, I explore how Finnish academics on short fixed-term contracts have been treated, and how they interpret recent changes and their effects on their work and private lives. I ask how the demands and changes are gendered and what consequences they have for work–family balance and gender eq…
Young people, future hopes and concerns in Finland and the European Union
In this article, I examine the ways in which governing bodies at the Finnish national and also European Union levels talk about young people and our shared future in Finland. I use their youth policy documents as material for critical discourse analysis. My argument is that, besides presenting visions of a desired future, these papers also produce and reproduce divisions between young people that reflect gender and class positions. Young people a…
Young adults and the tuning of the entrepreneurial mindset in neoliberal capitalism
Enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit of young people is a means by which their employability and future potential as well as economic growth, the core goal of national policies, are incubated. Consequently, individuals performing entrepreneurial mindset are seen to possess the most future potential. We sketch the contours of this mindset and develop the idea of ‘tuning’ the entrepreneurial mindset with other discursive elements, or ‘ingredients’,…
Gendered strategies of mobility and academic career
In universities, being mobile and international has become ever more important for academics’ career prospects. This article explores junior and other insecurely employed researchers’ experiences of geographical mobility in relation to their personal life, career, employability and value as scholars. The aim is to discover the gendered strategies researchers use to combine mobility with intimate relations and personal life. Furthermore, what gend…
Separated by common methods? Researchers and journalists doing expertise
In this article, we address emerging tensions between researchers and journalists in our research project on formations of new divisions among young adults in Finland. We focus on interviewing as a method of data gathering, and on framing as a method of presenting research results. Writing from the point of view of academic researchers, our analysis shows that journalists' and researchers' ways of doing expertise, such as techniques for asking qu…
Being positive, being hopeful, being happy
The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which young adults reflect on their futures. We are particularly interested in how they expect to organize their lives in conditions that seem to offer pessimistic rather than hopeful prospects. How does this happen under social conditions where the major public and individual concerns are with how young adults organize their material lives and how they earn sufficient livelihoods to become good c…
Labour Market Demands, Employability and Authenticity
Finding employment has been a challenge for young adults in recent years. This is not only due to high unemployment rates, but also because entering working life is more complicated than before. It is no longer just a question of credentials and skills. ‘Employability’ depends on investments in personal capacities: labour market demands in recruitment exceed the capacity of employees’ bodies and minds. This article asks what demands for increasin…
Moral Orders of Mobility
By studying the moral orders that young Finnish adults (aged 18-30) attach to geographical mobility, this article reveals previously neglected relationships between aspiration and mobility. The 40 young adult interviewees are living in the midst of Finnish political debates about youth aspiration, which emphasise geographical rather than social mobility as a way to enhance employability and demonstrate aspiration. We argue that young people thems…
Affective capitalism and the (new) entrepreneurial mood
This article examines start-up entrepreneurialism and provides insights into the configurations of affective capitalism. The empirical case explored in this article is the Slush Conference, which promotes start-up entrepreneurialism. The data were gathered by ethnographic methods, including on-site observations, and complemented by diverse materials such as social media content and newspaper coverage of the event. Drawing upon our detailed analys…
Sociology (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works)