P Virtanen
Biographic Data
| ID | 8660 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P Virtanen |
| GIVEN NAMES | P |
| FAMILY NAME | Virtanen |
| SIGNATURE | VIRTANEN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4322-1033 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 124 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Ptarmigan Trapping in Finnish Lapland 1950 to 2020
Trapping of ptarmigan by snare in winter is an ancient tradition in Fennoscandia, and in the 19th century, ptarmigan had become an important source of income. Changes in external factors after the 1950s have, however, altered the socioeconomic context, leading to a radical decrease in the number of professional trappers. Based on field data from two periods 60 years apart, this article provides a diachronic analysis of the change in ptarmigan tra…
Active labour market policies in emerging adulthood may act as a protective factor against future depressiveness
Introduction: Drawing upon the framework of life course epidemiology, this study aligns with research on the mental health consequences of significant social transitions during early adulthood. The focus is on the variation in initial labour market attachment and the development of depressiveness, assuming that a firm attachment is associated with decreasing depressiveness. Methods: = 1,001) took place during their final year of compulsory school…
Psychosocial conditions during school-age as determinants of long-term labour market attachment
This study contributes to existing knowledge through its novel exploration of labour market attachment and the revelation of the significance of proximal interpersonal relationships in attachment outcomes. Additionally, the study reaffirms the importance of externalizing behaviour, while suggesting that internalized symptoms in adolescence might have a less influential, though not negligible, role. These results underscore the importance of addre…
Educational level and the use of mental health services, psychotropic medication and psychotherapy among adults with a history of physician diagnosed mental disorders
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of mental disorders is increased among people of low socioeconomic status or educational level, but it remains unclear whether their access to treatment matches their increased need. AIMS: Our objective was to examine whether educational level as an indicator of socioeconomic status is associated with use of mental health services, psychotropic medication and psychotherapy in Finland. METHOD: Cross-sectional data from a…
The relevance of macroeconomic conditions on concurrent and subsequent alcohol use – results from two Northern Swedish cohorts
Background: The aim of this study is to examine the relevance of macroeconomic conditions (boom vs. recession) and own labor market status on alcohol use in youth and midlife.Method: Two Northern Swedish cohorts, born in either 1965 (boom at age 21 years) or 1973 (recession at age 21 years), included all pupils attending the last grade of compulsory school in Luleå, in 1981 (n = 990) or 1989 (n = 686), respectively. Questionnaires were completed …
Assessing tolerance for wildlife
Human–elephant conflict (HEC) is a common problem for rural populations in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent studies have shown that willingness to tolerate wildlife is largely a function of perceived risks and benefits, but most technical assessments are limited to the immediate cause of the conflict and neglect the broader socioeconomic and political contexts. Based on two sets of interviews, this article provides a socioeconomic analysis of HEC in th…
The diversity of transitions during early adulthood in the Finnish labour market
This study explores young Finns’ transition pathways into education and work over a 9-year period (from the age of 18 to 26), with a special focus on difficulties with labour market attachment. The data were derived from national registers comprising all men (29,383) and women (27,784) born in 1987. Their labour market attachment was investigated using trajectory analysis with four variables (employment, education, unemployment, social security a…
Practices of development assistance and climate change mitigation in reshaping the Mozambican Redd+ strategy
This paper studies how the practices of climate change governance and development assistance have reshaped the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) process in Mozambique. We look at how the original goals of the Mozambican REDD+ strategy changed in the interplay of different governance-related practices, both those originating locally and nationally, and those coming from international organisations. The paper is ba…
Making conservation sustainable under unfavourable conditions
Based on a case study from the Chimanimani National Reserve in Mozambique, this article analyses to what extent different types of operational practices can contribute to the sustainability of protected areas in relatively unfavourable external conditions. While current conservation policies highlight community participation and market-based approaches, the same “best practices” are not equally valid under different conditions. Where unfavourable…
Identification of Depression and Screening for Work Disabilities among Long-Term Unemployed People
The study explores whether clinical screening targeted at work disabilities among long-term unemployed people reveals eligible individuals for a disability pension and the importance of depression in granting the disability pensions. A total of 364 participants of the screening project were considered as eligible to apply for disability pension. Among them, 188 were diagnosed as clinically depressed. They were classified into those with earlier d…
Labour Market Attachment Following Major Workforce Downsizings
In plant downsizings, attention tends to be paid to displaced workers, while the retained are considered 'fortunate survivors'. Exploiting a comprehensive Finnish employee-employer dataset, this study examines both displaced and retained workers and compares their seven-year labour market attachment after downsizing. Advanced statistics, including trajectory analysis, are used to identify groups characterized by 'immediately weakening', 'graduall…
Domestic responsibilities as predictors of labour market attachment trajectories in men and women
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether high responsibility for housework or childcare is related to weak labour market attachment. Design/methodology/approach Survey data on domestic responsibilities in 1998 and 2003 were linked to register data on respondents’ employment spells for 2004-2011. Effects of the responsibilities on labour market trajectories – identified with latent class growth analyses – were analysed with multinom…
Chronic diseases as predictors of labour market attachment after participation in subsidised re-employment programme
BACKGROUND: Little is known about the work patterns of re-employed people. We investigated the labour market attachment trajectories of re-employed people and assessed the influence of chronic diseases on these trajectories. METHODS: The study was based on register data of 18 944 people (aged 18-60 years) who participated in a subsidised re-employment programme in Finland. Latent class growth analysis with zero-inflated Poisson was used to model …
Children of boom and recession and the scars to the mental health – a comparative study on the long term effects of youth unemployment
The scars of unemployment exposure onto future health seem to be rather insensitive to economic trades. Thus, at the population level this would mean that the long-term health costs that can be attributed to youth unemployment are more widespread in the generation that suffers of recession around the entry to the work life
The role of social position and depressive symptoms in adolescence for life-course trajectories of education and work
This study found support for the intergenerational reproduction of social position, particularly when measured in terms of parental occupational class. Youth depressive symptoms did not show clear differences across types of trajectories, subsequently impeding such symptoms to trigger any selection processes. While this could be a consequence of the specific framework of the current study, it may also suggest that depressive symptoms in youth are…
Musculoskeletal pain and re-employment among unemployed job seekers
Our findings lend some support to the hypothesis that poor health can potentially cause health selection into employment. There is the need to disentangle health problems in order to clearly appreciate their putative impact on employment. This will allow for more targeted interventions for the unemployed
Democracy, poverty and civil society in Mozambique
National elections were held in Mozambique for the fifth time in October 2014. As a state, Mozambique – like many ‘fourth-wave’ transition countries – fulfils the formal criteria of democracy. But to what extent are the mechanisms of accountability implemented? In Africa, two issues have been identified as key impediments for successful democratic transition: failure to improve the welfare of the poor and the ‘pre-modern’ character of civil socie…
Parental academic involvement in adolescence as predictor of mental health trajectories over the life course
Parental involvement in their offspring's studies may buffer against poor mental health in adolescence which may track into adulthood
Global, National, or Market? Emerging Redd+ Governance Practices in Mozambique and Tanzania
This article examines emerging governance practices in the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative. We examine three different general governance practices (neoliberal, post-national, and government-led practices) that have been applied in the interaction between international organizations and two REDD target countries: Mozambique and Tanzania. In these countries, we find that emerging REDD+ governance prac…
Emerging and Traditional Donors in the ‘Post-Busan’ Context
At the same time as the 'emerging donors' have gained relevance in the development cooperation system, they have also challenged established principles of aid. This article compares Brazil's and Finland's development cooperation practices in the light of recent global tendencies in the aid architecture. Based on empirical research carried out in Mozambique, Brazil, and Finland, the article gives a detailed review of the institutional and historic…
Rewriting Oromo History in the North
This article analyzes the way the Oromo intellectuals living in diaspora have reflected on and positioned themselves in the ethno-political conflict and related debate between the dominant Amharic- and Tigrinya-speaking "Abyssinian" groups and the descendants of the various Oromo groups, which were conquered by the former during the nineteenth century. Even though they are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, a large part of the Oromo perceive t…
Does provision of targeted health care for the unemployed enhance re-employment
The experimental health service did not show any beneficial effects on re-employment. Nevertheless, rather than considering any particular health care as unnecessary and ineffective, we would like to stress the complexity of providing health services to match the diversity of the unemployed
Training for the unemployed
In this study we investigate the effects of active labour market policy measures on health and well-being and how these effects are connected with socioeconomic status. The data were collected among the participants (n = 212) in 24 conventional vocational training courses in Finland. According to the results, training was accompanied by improvements in health and well-being among participants with a higher socioeconomic status, whereas for blue-c…
My health and theirs
Health care research has been more interested in identifying reasons why people do not participate in health interventions than in trying to understand the reasons why they do. This study examined how unemployed people position themselves with regard to a new health service which was set up as part of an institutional strategy for delivering and enabling their access to health care. Positioning theory was used as a methodological framework to ana…
Is the core-periphery labour market structure related to perceived health? findings of the Northern Swedish Cohort
Our findings suggest that exposure to peripheral employment positions has an impact particularly on mental health, partly due to the over-representation of other unfavourable social and employment conditions among those with substantial exposure to peripheral employment
Employment security and health
Objective: To study the relation of contractual and perceived employment security to employee health. Design: Cross sectional survey. Setting: Municipal sector employees in eight Finnish towns. Participants: 5981 employees with a permanent contract and 2786 employees with a non-permanent contract (2194 fixed term contract, 682 government subsidised contract). Outcome measures: Poor self rated health, chronic disease, and psychological distress. R…
Older people in the field of medication
This paper focuses on how older people construct themselves as users of medical drugs, and on what factors are important in medication from the user's point of view. The data of the study consist of focus group discussions about medication with people aged over 65 years. The analysis was based upon Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of social field and habitus. The main actors appearing in the discussions were users and doctors. Pharmacists had only a ma…
Locality and habitus
Social capital in working life and the health of employees
Workplace as an origin of health inequalities
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of the workplace on the socioeconomic gradient of sickness absence. DESIGN: Comparison of the relation between socioeconomic status and employee sickness absence in three different towns. SETTINGS: The towns of Raisio, Valkeakoski, and Nokia in Finland. They are equal in size and regional social deprivation indices, located in the neighbourhood of a larger city, and produce the same services to the inhabitants…
Local Management of Global Values
Community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) is being increasingly promoted as the solution to problems of nature conservation, and some national programs like the Zimbabwean CAMPFIRE and Zambian ADMADE 1 have been championed as models for others to imitate. The approach seeks to fuse two very different kinds of agendas--preservation of nature based on biocentric premises, and decentralized rural development based on anthropocentric premi…
The Work Environment in Fixed-Term Jobs
An epidemic of good health' at the workplace
Towards the end of 1986 a total of 32 workers who were frequently absent from work due to illness were made redundant at an engineering works. In 1987 sickness absences in the remaining work force were reduced by one third in comparison with the figures for the previous three years. In 1988 sickness absence figures started to climb again.The events are described from the point of view of the local health centre physician. The clinical and epidemi…
Land of the ancestors
Drawing on semiotic theory, the article looks at how space and identity are constituted by different political actors, notably the ruling party and customary authorities, in the context of a transfrontier conservation area in Chimanimani in central Mozambique. Based on radically different geographical and historical ramifications, these actors have arrived at different ideal models for managing access to land and natural resources. However, while…
Local economy and sickness absence
Study objective: To investigate the effect of the local economy, as measured by municipal revenue and local unemployment rate, on sickness absence among the employed. Design: A prospective cohort study of 60 160 public sector employees (46 081 women, 14 079 men) with ecological measures of municipal revenue and local unemployment rate 1999–2000 and individual measures of sickness absence at baseline 1999 and at follow up 2000–2001. Results: Among…
Economy and job contract as contexts of sickness absence practices
Wellbeing of professionals at entry into the labour market
STUDY OBJECTIVE: Knowledge about changes in wellbeing during the passage from professional studies to working life is scarce and controversial. This study examined these changes among university graduates with good and poor employment prospects. DESIGN: A longitudinal study with four postal questionnaire surveys of a closed cohort. SETTING: Cohorts of graduating Finnish physicians and architects were followed up from 1994 to 1998. In 1994 Finland…
The diversity of transitions during early adulthood in the Finnish labour market
This study explores young Finns’ transition pathways into education and work over a 9-year period (from the age of 18 to 26), with a special focus on difficulties with labour market attachment. The data were derived from national registers comprising all men (29,383) and women (27,784) born in 1987. Their labour market attachment was investigated using trajectory analysis with four variables (employment, education, unemployment, social security a…
Labour Market Attachment Following Major Workforce Downsizings
In plant downsizings, attention tends to be paid to displaced workers, while the retained are considered 'fortunate survivors'. Exploiting a comprehensive Finnish employee-employer dataset, this study examines both displaced and retained workers and compares their seven-year labour market attachment after downsizing. Advanced statistics, including trajectory analysis, are used to identify groups characterized by 'immediately weakening', 'graduall…
Global, National, or Market? Emerging Redd+ Governance Practices in Mozambique and Tanzania
This article examines emerging governance practices in the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative. We examine three different general governance practices (neoliberal, post-national, and government-led practices) that have been applied in the interaction between international organizations and two REDD target countries: Mozambique and Tanzania. In these countries, we find that emerging REDD+ governance prac…
Training for the unemployed
In this study we investigate the effects of active labour market policy measures on health and well-being and how these effects are connected with socioeconomic status. The data were collected among the participants (n = 212) in 24 conventional vocational training courses in Finland. According to the results, training was accompanied by improvements in health and well-being among participants with a higher socioeconomic status, whereas for blue-c…
Domestic responsibilities as predictors of labour market attachment trajectories in men and women
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether high responsibility for housework or childcare is related to weak labour market attachment. Design/methodology/approach Survey data on domestic responsibilities in 1998 and 2003 were linked to register data on respondents’ employment spells for 2004-2011. Effects of the responsibilities on labour market trajectories – identified with latent class growth analyses – were analysed with multinom…
Emerging and Traditional Donors in the ‘Post-Busan’ Context
At the same time as the 'emerging donors' have gained relevance in the development cooperation system, they have also challenged established principles of aid. This article compares Brazil's and Finland's development cooperation practices in the light of recent global tendencies in the aid architecture. Based on empirical research carried out in Mozambique, Brazil, and Finland, the article gives a detailed review of the institutional and historic…
Encounters with unemployment in occupational health care
Rewriting Oromo History in the North
This article analyzes the way the Oromo intellectuals living in diaspora have reflected on and positioned themselves in the ethno-political conflict and related debate between the dominant Amharic- and Tigrinya-speaking "Abyssinian" groups and the descendants of the various Oromo groups, which were conquered by the former during the nineteenth century. Even though they are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, a large part of the Oromo perceive t…
Defining the 'Other
Despite apparent success Mozambique is facing serious problems in institutionalising democracy in the context of economic liberalisation. The problems are linked to a basic contradiction between a need to construct a unified nation, and capacity to tolerate difference inside it which is an essential function of a democratic system. In Mozambique both neo-traditionalism and socialism, which can be interpreted as currents inside African nationalism…
An epidemic of good health' at the workplace
Towards the end of 1986 a total of 32 workers who were frequently absent from work due to illness were made redundant at an engineering works. In 1987 sickness absences in the remaining work force were reduced by one third in comparison with the figures for the previous three years. In 1988 sickness absence figures started to climb again.The events are described from the point of view of the local health centre physician. The clinical and epidemi…
Sustainable Development in the Periphery
Sustainable development is hard to achieve, especially if the target is food security in drought-prone, economically and ecologically marginal pastoral areas such as the Turkana District in Kenya. A brief historical account is given of the famine relief and development efforts in the area and their impact is analysed from a local point of view. The main conclusion is that previous activities have largely ignored the existing social basis for deve…
Workplace as an origin of health inequalities
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of the workplace on the socioeconomic gradient of sickness absence. DESIGN: Comparison of the relation between socioeconomic status and employee sickness absence in three different towns. SETTINGS: The towns of Raisio, Valkeakoski, and Nokia in Finland. They are equal in size and regional social deprivation indices, located in the neighbourhood of a larger city, and produce the same services to the inhabitants…
Locality and habitus
Wellbeing of professionals at entry into the labour market
STUDY OBJECTIVE: Knowledge about changes in wellbeing during the passage from professional studies to working life is scarce and controversial. This study examined these changes among university graduates with good and poor employment prospects. DESIGN: A longitudinal study with four postal questionnaire surveys of a closed cohort. SETTING: Cohorts of graduating Finnish physicians and architects were followed up from 1994 to 1998. In 1994 Finland…
Employment security and health
Objective: To study the relation of contractual and perceived employment security to employee health. Design: Cross sectional survey. Setting: Municipal sector employees in eight Finnish towns. Participants: 5981 employees with a permanent contract and 2786 employees with a non-permanent contract (2194 fixed term contract, 682 government subsidised contract). Outcome measures: Poor self rated health, chronic disease, and psychological distress. R…
Older people in the field of medication
This paper focuses on how older people construct themselves as users of medical drugs, and on what factors are important in medication from the user's point of view. The data of the study consist of focus group discussions about medication with people aged over 65 years. The analysis was based upon Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of social field and habitus. The main actors appearing in the discussions were users and doctors. Pharmacists had only a ma…
Defining the 'Other
Despite apparent success Mozambique is facing serious problems in institutionalising democracy in the context of economic liberalisation. The problems are linked to a basic contradiction between a need to construct a unified nation, and capacity to tolerate difference inside it which is an essential function of a democratic system. In Mozambique both neo-traditionalism and socialism, which can be interpreted as currents inside African nationalism…
Local Management of Global Values
Community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) is being increasingly promoted as the solution to problems of nature conservation, and some national programs like the Zimbabwean CAMPFIRE and Zambian ADMADE 1 have been championed as models for others to imitate. The approach seeks to fuse two very different kinds of agendas--preservation of nature based on biocentric premises, and decentralized rural development based on anthropocentric premi…
Economy and job contract as contexts of sickness absence practices
Work and Family As Constituents of Sense of Coherence
In this article, the authors focus on the intersection of the sense of coherence (SOC) and professional career in the light of qualitative data. They analyze the career descriptions written by young physicians in response to an open question in a survey questionnaire. In these narrative accounts, respondents who scored high on the SOC scale did not always orientate to work in a predictable way. Visiting narrative theoretization and feminist criti…
Social capital in working life and the health of employees
The Work Environment in Fixed-Term Jobs
Temporary employment and health
OBJECTIVES: We aimed to review evidence on the relationship between temporary employment and health, and to see whether the association is dependent on outcome measure, instability of employment, and contextual factors. METHOD: We systematically searched for studies of temporary employment and various health outcomes and critically appraised 27 studies. RESULTS: The review suggests higher psychological morbidity among temporary workers compared w…
Tradition, Custom, and Otherness
In this article, I discuss the debate on customary authority and “invention of tradition” on the basis of field data from Mozambique, which I place in a larger context provided by scholarly responses prompted by Ranger's thesis, as well as debates on customary authority in Southern Africa. Here two themes are crucial: claims for historical authenticity and the role of boundaries in the definition of group identity. I argue that a strict juxtaposi…
Community-based natural resource management in Mozambique
Since the early 1990s community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has become a mantra of sustainable development, which has been broadly embraced by national leaders and policy-makers in Africa, as well as aid bureaucrats and technical specialists in donor countries. Its dissemination to local communities, however, has turned out to be a rather controversial process. On the basis of two case studies this article assesses the extent to whi…
Local economy and sickness absence
Study objective: To investigate the effect of the local economy, as measured by municipal revenue and local unemployment rate, on sickness absence among the employed. Design: A prospective cohort study of 60 160 public sector employees (46 081 women, 14 079 men) with ecological measures of municipal revenue and local unemployment rate 1999–2000 and individual measures of sickness absence at baseline 1999 and at follow up 2000–2001. Results: Among…
Land of the ancestors
Drawing on semiotic theory, the article looks at how space and identity are constituted by different political actors, notably the ruling party and customary authorities, in the context of a transfrontier conservation area in Chimanimani in central Mozambique. Based on radically different geographical and historical ramifications, these actors have arrived at different ideal models for managing access to land and natural resources. However, while…
Sense of coherence and attrition during four-year follow-up in cohorts of permanent and non-permanent Finnish employees
SOC is a potential source of non-random sample attrition and should be taken into account for when estimating bias due to non-participation in occupational cohorts that include fixed-term employees
Encounters with unemployment in occupational health care
Is the core-periphery labour market structure related to perceived health? findings of the Northern Swedish Cohort
Our findings suggest that exposure to peripheral employment positions has an impact particularly on mental health, partly due to the over-representation of other unfavourable social and employment conditions among those with substantial exposure to peripheral employment
My health and theirs
Health care research has been more interested in identifying reasons why people do not participate in health interventions than in trying to understand the reasons why they do. This study examined how unemployed people position themselves with regard to a new health service which was set up as part of an institutional strategy for delivering and enabling their access to health care. Positioning theory was used as a methodological framework to ana…
Does provision of targeted health care for the unemployed enhance re-employment
The experimental health service did not show any beneficial effects on re-employment. Nevertheless, rather than considering any particular health care as unnecessary and ineffective, we would like to stress the complexity of providing health services to match the diversity of the unemployed
Training for the unemployed
In this study we investigate the effects of active labour market policy measures on health and well-being and how these effects are connected with socioeconomic status. The data were collected among the participants (n = 212) in 24 conventional vocational training courses in Finland. According to the results, training was accompanied by improvements in health and well-being among participants with a higher socioeconomic status, whereas for blue-c…
Democracy, poverty and civil society in Mozambique
National elections were held in Mozambique for the fifth time in October 2014. As a state, Mozambique – like many ‘fourth-wave’ transition countries – fulfils the formal criteria of democracy. But to what extent are the mechanisms of accountability implemented? In Africa, two issues have been identified as key impediments for successful democratic transition: failure to improve the welfare of the poor and the ‘pre-modern’ character of civil socie…
Employment and Welfare Studies (23 works) · Medicine (23 works) · Economics (22 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Workplace Health and Well-being (17 works) · Demography (16 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Psychiatry (13 works)