Lena Näre
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 84211 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Lena Näre |
| NOMBRES | Lena |
| APELLIDO | Näre |
| FIRMA | NÄRE L |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6096-9276 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 38 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 310 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 37 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2009 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Ambivalent affects in the platform assemblage
Ageing/body/sex/work – Migrant women’s narratives of intimacy and ageing in commercial sex and elder care work
This article analyses how sex and elder-care workers negotiate intimacy and ageing in their work. We find surprising similarities between sex and care work that derive from the ways in which Eastern European migrant women are sexualised in the sites of our studies: Italy and Finland. The bodywork and intimate labour conducted by the women is defined in part by the social status of their work in society, in part by the ageing bodies upon whom the …
Migrant workers within the platform assemblage
The temporal structuring of migrant gig workers’ work and lives has been insufficiently addressed in research. Drawing on multi-sited onlineoffline methodologies, including interviews with migrants working via location-based work platforms (cleaning, food delivery) in Finland, we propose the term platform assemblage to analyse the temporal entanglements of living labour, work platforms and the border regime. We argue that migrant gig workers’ ent…
Welfare state bordering as a form of mobility and migration control
This article introduces this special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. In it, we present and discuss the concept of welfare state bordering. The notion of welfare state bordering that we develop refers to state-authorised practices of managing access to social rights based on residence, migrancy, and/or citizenship in a given socio-political order. These practices are in most cases implemented by national and local governments…
Multiple sources of precarity
Nordic welfare states are imagined as generous and universal due to their residence- and needs-based welfare rights. We analyse how welfare state borders are implemented in practice through what we term bureaucratic bordering and how this bordering creates complex precarity for temporary migrants stemming from multiple sources. Drawing on qualitative research with asylum seekers and non-European Union/European Economic Area (non-EU/EEA) student-w…
I do not trust any of them anymore
Although there is extensive research on how institutional trust and distrust play out in the forms political participation takes, the existing research lacks thorough analysis on what trust and distrust actually consist of, that is, how individuals evaluate institutions as trustworthy or not and what consequences this evaluation has for individuals and their relation to the state more broadly. Drawing on qualitative research on Finnish citizens w…
Transformation of informal elder care practices and mobilities during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that when formal care services closed down, informal care burden was unequally transferred to women. Women across the world became part of "caregiver pools". Using textual archive material collected by the Finnish Literature Society, we analyse the transformation of informal elder care practices in Finland. We adopt a care mobility and care process perspective to analyse how informal elder care was transformed due t…
Financialization of Eldercare in a Nordic Welfare State
The increasing presence of for-profit service providers in publicly-funded eldercare has transformed care in Nordic welfare states which have a strong tradition of public care provision. Macro-level research on care policies has mainly focused on public institutions, national policies, and marketization. The financialization of eldercare has not received much scholarly attention, and existing studies mostly focus on the UK. The financialization o…
Revisiting the Second Shift – Rethinking Value in the Outsourcing of Social Reproduction
This article examines the link between outsourcing social reproduction and the valuation of time by approaching the employers of domestic workers as workers who themselves labour to produce surplus value. It contributes to current research on outsourcing social reproduction, which emphasizes the (re)privatization of public services, by situating outsourcing within the sphere of production. The analysis is based on in-depth qualitative research on…
The affective infrastructure of a protest camp
In this article, we develop the concept of affective infrastructure as the entanglement of affects, meanings and materiality to analyse protest camps as a specific organisational form of social and political movement. Drawing on two ethnographic research projects investigating an asylum seekers' protest camp in Helsinki, Finland, we argue that affects can be understood as having an infrastructural quality. The article contributes to research on a…
Is Open Science Good for Research and Researchers
What Can We Learn from the Reception of Ukrainian Refugees
Creating a future while waiting for a residence permit
In this article, we analyse how temporary and irregular migrants resist bureaucratically induced waiting for decisions on their residence permit applications in the unknown future [l’avénir] by engaging with the present. We argue that through their engagement with the present, they seek to create a future [un avenir] for themselves. Our approach challenges approaches to waiting as a passive experience. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative rese…
Notes on a More Equitable Higher Education
The global bases of inequality regimes
Purpose The purpose of this article is to critically examine Joan Acker's notion of inequality regimes by applying it to the case of global nurse care chains (GNCCs). The article examines the organisational practices of GNCCs and how inequality barriers are practiced and legitimised. Design/methodology/approach The article is based on qualitative interviews with different institutional representatives involved in Filipino nurse recruitment to Fin…
Notes on the Corona Crisis
Finland kills with a pen' - asylum seekers' protest against bureaucratic violence as politics of human rights
This article contributes to the literature on non-citizens’ protests by analysing asylum seekers’ claims to right to life as a case of politics of human rights. By analysing asylum seekers’ protests as making visible the structural and bureaucratic violence of the state that violates their fundamental human rights, this article offers a reading of non-citizen protests as an engagement in the politics of human rights. Based on ethnographic fieldwo…
Human capitalisation in activation
This article analyses how processes of ‘human capitalisation’ work in various labour-market activation services aimed at young people in Finland. Drawing on multi-site ethnographic research on activating workshops, public employment services, and career counselling for youth in the Helsinki metropolitan region of Finland in 2014–2016, we trace sites and instances of human capitalisation. Capturing processes through which previously non-economic a…
Local loops of care in the metropolitan region of Helsinki
Finland subsidizes caring for young children at home by several cash-for-care schemes. In 2001, it adopted a tax credit for domestic services, including care. This article adopts an everyday perspective to social policies to analyse how Finnish cash-for-care policies produce local care loops using a time-economy approach. It examines the increase in private services alongside public ones through an analysis of the organization of childcare in tim…
Local loops and micro-mobilities of care
This introduction to the Special Issue Local loops and micro-mobilities of care: Rethinking care in egalitarian contexts argues for the importance of analysing local organizations of care. This is a necessary addition to current scholarship which has focused on the globalization of care. Yet, in many parts of the world, such as the Northern and Eastern European countries, on which this issue focuses, care provision continues to be mainly local an…
Imagining the 'West' in the Context of Global Coloniality
The article argues that the post-Soviet youth construct their migratory projects as an effort towards social distinction vis-a-vis post-socialist imaginary. We argue that their migration can be understood as a search for distinctiveness and for what is perceived as a 'better', that is, more western, lifestyle. Analysing their narratives through the prism of imagination, we demonstrate how young Russian-speakers vision the position of the post-soc…
Living the Perpetual Border
As the external borders between Finland and its neighbouring countries have become more permeable for some migrants after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the EU enlargement, the internal borders have become more ubiquitous and enforced by various kinds of bordering practices. Drawing on a qualitative research on Russian-speaking women engaged in commercial sex in Finland, we have examined the everyday material consequences of policies and bo…
Identity and ambivalence in everyday transnationalism
This article analyses questions of belonging amongst elderly Gujaratis who live in North London but maintain connections with India and East Africa. Belonging, which encompasses both the sense and practices of belonging, is a useful concept for analysing identity-related matters. This research argues that identity and belonging are important for subjective and emotional well-being in old age. This target group practises belonging locally and thro…
Ageing in transnational contexts
This Special Issue on ‘Ageing in Transnational Contexts: Transforming Everyday Practices and Identities in Later Life’ extends our understanding of how ageing is experienced in transnational contexts. It focuses on how everyday lives and identities in older age are being negotiated by individuals who have migration histories or who are affected by the mobilities of others in their lives. In the introduction, we situate our approach within an emer…
Symbolic and ritual enactments of nationalism – a visual study of Jobbik’s gatherings during Hungarian national day commemorations
This article analyses the symbolic and ritualistic enactments of contemporary Hungarian nationalism during national day commemorations organised by the extreme right-wing party Jobbik. Drawing on three ethnographic field trips to Budapest, Hungary, during national day celebrations in 2013–2014 illustrated by nine photos taken by the first author, the article analyses the manifestations of nationalism through the use of various visual symbols, slo…
The Moral Economy of Domestic and Care Labour
This article proposes the notion of moral economy as a useful lens for the analysis of migrant domestic and care work. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Naples, Southern Italy, it argues that paid domestic and care work relationships are based on a moral economy, i.e. on notions of good/bad, just/unjust rather than merely economic profit maximization. There is a tendency to transform labour relationships into family-like relationships due…
Welfare state bordering as a form of mobility and migration control
This article introduces this special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. In it, we present and discuss the concept of welfare state bordering. The notion of welfare state bordering that we develop refers to state-authorised practices of managing access to social rights based on residence, migrancy, and/or citizenship in a given socio-political order. These practices are in most cases implemented by national and local governments…
Finland kills with a pen' - asylum seekers' protest against bureaucratic violence as politics of human rights
This article contributes to the literature on non-citizens’ protests by analysing asylum seekers’ claims to right to life as a case of politics of human rights. By analysing asylum seekers’ protests as making visible the structural and bureaucratic violence of the state that violates their fundamental human rights, this article offers a reading of non-citizen protests as an engagement in the politics of human rights. Based on ethnographic fieldwo…
Migrancy, Gender and Social Class in Domestic Labour and Social Care in Italy
Since the 1980s, welfare provision in Italy has been dramatically transformed, due to demographic changes, changes in gender orders and, most importantly, the increased employment of migrants for domestic and care work. Drawing first on statistical data, I explore how the intersections of ‘migrancy’ and gender configure in the domestic-work and social-care sector in Italy. I conclude that, even though gender remains the most important stratifying…
Moral encounters
I examine how migrant-national encounters are morally framed through boundary making based on intersections of class, sexuality, ethnicity and migrancy. Encounters are a fruitful lens for the study of the everyday politics of diversity and belonging. By focusing on encounters it is possible to analyse whether close contact does in fact reduce prejudice, as has been argued in research on cosmopolitan urbanism. I present the notion of contact space…
Sri Lankan Men Working as Cleaners and Carers
Drawing on an intersectional approach, the article examines how Sri Lankan domestic workers' masculinities are constructed and negotiated in conjunction with race and ethnicity by Neapolitan employers and the male domestic workers themselves. The article discusses how Neapolitan employers construct Sri Lankan masculinity as effeminate, asexual, and unthreatening and how these Sri Lankan men themselves strategically exploit these stereotypes in ga…
Ideal Workers and Suspects
The article explores the emerging migrant division of care labour in Finland. Drawing on statistical data, it first discusses how the social and health care sector is increasingly relying on foreign-born workers. Then, drawing on qualitative data and Nancy Fraser's politics of recognition, the article analyses how Finnish employers recognise migrants as potential workers. Although employers seek to resist essentialising differences, migrant care …
Migrant workers within the platform assemblage
The temporal structuring of migrant gig workers’ work and lives has been insufficiently addressed in research. Drawing on multi-sited onlineoffline methodologies, including interviews with migrants working via location-based work platforms (cleaning, food delivery) in Finland, we propose the term platform assemblage to analyse the temporal entanglements of living labour, work platforms and the border regime. We argue that migrant gig workers’ ent…
Imagining the 'West' in the Context of Global Coloniality
The article argues that the post-Soviet youth construct their migratory projects as an effort towards social distinction vis-a-vis post-socialist imaginary. We argue that their migration can be understood as a search for distinctiveness and for what is perceived as a 'better', that is, more western, lifestyle. Analysing their narratives through the prism of imagination, we demonstrate how young Russian-speakers vision the position of the post-soc…
Financialization of Eldercare in a Nordic Welfare State
The increasing presence of for-profit service providers in publicly-funded eldercare has transformed care in Nordic welfare states which have a strong tradition of public care provision. Macro-level research on care policies has mainly focused on public institutions, national policies, and marketization. The financialization of eldercare has not received much scholarly attention, and existing studies mostly focus on the UK. The financialization o…
Creating a future while waiting for a residence permit
In this article, we analyse how temporary and irregular migrants resist bureaucratically induced waiting for decisions on their residence permit applications in the unknown future [l’avénir] by engaging with the present. We argue that through their engagement with the present, they seek to create a future [un avenir] for themselves. Our approach challenges approaches to waiting as a passive experience. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative rese…
Agency as capabilities
Multiple sources of precarity
Nordic welfare states are imagined as generous and universal due to their residence- and needs-based welfare rights. We analyse how welfare state borders are implemented in practice through what we term bureaucratic bordering and how this bordering creates complex precarity for temporary migrants stemming from multiple sources. Drawing on qualitative research with asylum seekers and non-European Union/European Economic Area (non-EU/EEA) student-w…
Neoliberal postcolonialism in the media
In 2007, a private recruitment agency started recruiting nurses from the Philippines to private elderly care homes and to operation wards in Finland. Although less than a hundred nurses have been recruited to Finland, the recruitment has received extensive media attention. Applying discourse analysis to the media data, the article analyzes the ways in which Filipino subjects were constructed by the Finnish media. We distinguish three types of cat…
The Ethics of Transnational Market Familism
This article examines the recent transformations of the Italian welfare state from a familist welfare model to what I term transnational market familism. In this model, families buy in care labour, commonly provided by migrant workers. There is now a growing literature exploring both the transformations of the Italian welfare model and the experiences of migrant workers providing care in Italy. However, what has been overlooked in the current lit…
Glocalising Care in the Nordic Countries
The affective infrastructure of a protest camp
In this article, we develop the concept of affective infrastructure as the entanglement of affects, meanings and materiality to analyse protest camps as a specific organisational form of social and political movement. Drawing on two ethnographic research projects investigating an asylum seekers' protest camp in Helsinki, Finland, we argue that affects can be understood as having an infrastructural quality. The article contributes to research on a…
Human capitalisation in activation
This article analyses how processes of ‘human capitalisation’ work in various labour-market activation services aimed at young people in Finland. Drawing on multi-site ethnographic research on activating workshops, public employment services, and career counselling for youth in the Helsinki metropolitan region of Finland in 2014–2016, we trace sites and instances of human capitalisation. Capturing processes through which previously non-economic a…
Local loops and micro-mobilities of care
This introduction to the Special Issue Local loops and micro-mobilities of care: Rethinking care in egalitarian contexts argues for the importance of analysing local organizations of care. This is a necessary addition to current scholarship which has focused on the globalization of care. Yet, in many parts of the world, such as the Northern and Eastern European countries, on which this issue focuses, care provision continues to be mainly local an…
Gendered mobilities and social change—An introduction to the Special Issue on Gender, Mobility and Social Change
I do not trust any of them anymore
Although there is extensive research on how institutional trust and distrust play out in the forms political participation takes, the existing research lacks thorough analysis on what trust and distrust actually consist of, that is, how individuals evaluate institutions as trustworthy or not and what consequences this evaluation has for individuals and their relation to the state more broadly. Drawing on qualitative research on Finnish citizens w…
Living the Perpetual Border
As the external borders between Finland and its neighbouring countries have become more permeable for some migrants after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the EU enlargement, the internal borders have become more ubiquitous and enforced by various kinds of bordering practices. Drawing on a qualitative research on Russian-speaking women engaged in commercial sex in Finland, we have examined the everyday material consequences of policies and bo…
Revisiting the Second Shift – Rethinking Value in the Outsourcing of Social Reproduction
This article examines the link between outsourcing social reproduction and the valuation of time by approaching the employers of domestic workers as workers who themselves labour to produce surplus value. It contributes to current research on outsourcing social reproduction, which emphasizes the (re)privatization of public services, by situating outsourcing within the sphere of production. The analysis is based on in-depth qualitative research on…
The global bases of inequality regimes
Purpose The purpose of this article is to critically examine Joan Acker's notion of inequality regimes by applying it to the case of global nurse care chains (GNCCs). The article examines the organisational practices of GNCCs and how inequality barriers are practiced and legitimised. Design/methodology/approach The article is based on qualitative interviews with different institutional representatives involved in Filipino nurse recruitment to Fin…
Local loops of care in the metropolitan region of Helsinki
Finland subsidizes caring for young children at home by several cash-for-care schemes. In 2001, it adopted a tax credit for domestic services, including care. This article adopts an everyday perspective to social policies to analyse how Finnish cash-for-care policies produce local care loops using a time-economy approach. It examines the increase in private services alongside public ones through an analysis of the organization of childcare in tim…
The making of ‘proper’ homes
Changing from a country of emigration into one of immigration has been one of the major phenomena of Italian society in recent years. One of the realms where this has been most evident is in Italian households employing migrants for domestic service and care work. This article looks at domestic and care practices in the everyday life of a Neapolitan household. Based on participant observation conducted in Giuseppe's apartment, it shows how the tr…
Sri Lankan Men Working as Cleaners and Carers
Drawing on an intersectional approach, the article examines how Sri Lankan domestic workers' masculinities are constructed and negotiated in conjunction with race and ethnicity by Neapolitan employers and the male domestic workers themselves. The article discusses how Neapolitan employers construct Sri Lankan masculinity as effeminate, asexual, and unthreatening and how these Sri Lankan men themselves strategically exploit these stereotypes in ga…
The Moral Economy of Domestic and Care Labour
This article proposes the notion of moral economy as a useful lens for the analysis of migrant domestic and care work. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Naples, Southern Italy, it argues that paid domestic and care work relationships are based on a moral economy, i.e. on notions of good/bad, just/unjust rather than merely economic profit maximization. There is a tendency to transform labour relationships into family-like relationships due…
The Ethics of Transnational Market Familism
This article examines the recent transformations of the Italian welfare state from a familist welfare model to what I term transnational market familism. In this model, families buy in care labour, commonly provided by migrant workers. There is now a growing literature exploring both the transformations of the Italian welfare model and the experiences of migrant workers providing care in Italy. However, what has been overlooked in the current lit…
Migrancy, Gender and Social Class in Domestic Labour and Social Care in Italy
Since the 1980s, welfare provision in Italy has been dramatically transformed, due to demographic changes, changes in gender orders and, most importantly, the increased employment of migrants for domestic and care work. Drawing first on statistical data, I explore how the intersections of ‘migrancy’ and gender configure in the domestic-work and social-care sector in Italy. I conclude that, even though gender remains the most important stratifying…
Ideal Workers and Suspects
The article explores the emerging migrant division of care labour in Finland. Drawing on statistical data, it first discusses how the social and health care sector is increasingly relying on foreign-born workers. Then, drawing on qualitative data and Nancy Fraser's politics of recognition, the article analyses how Finnish employers recognise migrants as potential workers. Although employers seek to resist essentialising differences, migrant care …
Glocalising Care in the Nordic Countries
Gendered mobilities and social change—An introduction to the Special Issue on Gender, Mobility and Social Change
Agency as capabilities
Moral encounters
I examine how migrant-national encounters are morally framed through boundary making based on intersections of class, sexuality, ethnicity and migrancy. Encounters are a fruitful lens for the study of the everyday politics of diversity and belonging. By focusing on encounters it is possible to analyse whether close contact does in fact reduce prejudice, as has been argued in research on cosmopolitan urbanism. I present the notion of contact space…
Neoliberal postcolonialism in the media
In 2007, a private recruitment agency started recruiting nurses from the Philippines to private elderly care homes and to operation wards in Finland. Although less than a hundred nurses have been recruited to Finland, the recruitment has received extensive media attention. Applying discourse analysis to the media data, the article analyzes the ways in which Filipino subjects were constructed by the Finnish media. We distinguish three types of cat…
Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age
This book examines the transformations in home lives arising in later life and resulting from global migrations. It provides insight into the ways in which contemporary demographic processes of aging and migration shape the meaning, experience and making of home for those in older age. Chapters explore how home is negotiated in relation to possibilities for return to the homeland, family networks, aging and health, care cultures and belonging. Th…
Roots and Routes of Finnish Sociology
Identity and ambivalence in everyday transnationalism
This article analyses questions of belonging amongst elderly Gujaratis who live in North London but maintain connections with India and East Africa. Belonging, which encompasses both the sense and practices of belonging, is a useful concept for analysing identity-related matters. This research argues that identity and belonging are important for subjective and emotional well-being in old age. This target group practises belonging locally and thro…
Ageing in transnational contexts
This Special Issue on ‘Ageing in Transnational Contexts: Transforming Everyday Practices and Identities in Later Life’ extends our understanding of how ageing is experienced in transnational contexts. It focuses on how everyday lives and identities in older age are being negotiated by individuals who have migration histories or who are affected by the mobilities of others in their lives. In the introduction, we situate our approach within an emer…
Symbolic and ritual enactments of nationalism – a visual study of Jobbik’s gatherings during Hungarian national day commemorations
This article analyses the symbolic and ritualistic enactments of contemporary Hungarian nationalism during national day commemorations organised by the extreme right-wing party Jobbik. Drawing on three ethnographic field trips to Budapest, Hungary, during national day celebrations in 2013–2014 illustrated by nine photos taken by the first author, the article analyses the manifestations of nationalism through the use of various visual symbols, slo…
Living the Perpetual Border
As the external borders between Finland and its neighbouring countries have become more permeable for some migrants after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the EU enlargement, the internal borders have become more ubiquitous and enforced by various kinds of bordering practices. Drawing on a qualitative research on Russian-speaking women engaged in commercial sex in Finland, we have examined the everyday material consequences of policies and bo…
Human capitalisation in activation
This article analyses how processes of ‘human capitalisation’ work in various labour-market activation services aimed at young people in Finland. Drawing on multi-site ethnographic research on activating workshops, public employment services, and career counselling for youth in the Helsinki metropolitan region of Finland in 2014–2016, we trace sites and instances of human capitalisation. Capturing processes through which previously non-economic a…
Local loops of care in the metropolitan region of Helsinki
Finland subsidizes caring for young children at home by several cash-for-care schemes. In 2001, it adopted a tax credit for domestic services, including care. This article adopts an everyday perspective to social policies to analyse how Finnish cash-for-care policies produce local care loops using a time-economy approach. It examines the increase in private services alongside public ones through an analysis of the organization of childcare in tim…
Local loops and micro-mobilities of care
This introduction to the Special Issue Local loops and micro-mobilities of care: Rethinking care in egalitarian contexts argues for the importance of analysing local organizations of care. This is a necessary addition to current scholarship which has focused on the globalization of care. Yet, in many parts of the world, such as the Northern and Eastern European countries, on which this issue focuses, care provision continues to be mainly local an…
Imagining the 'West' in the Context of Global Coloniality
The article argues that the post-Soviet youth construct their migratory projects as an effort towards social distinction vis-a-vis post-socialist imaginary. We argue that their migration can be understood as a search for distinctiveness and for what is perceived as a 'better', that is, more western, lifestyle. Analysing their narratives through the prism of imagination, we demonstrate how young Russian-speakers vision the position of the post-soc…
Notes on the Corona Crisis
Finland kills with a pen' - asylum seekers' protest against bureaucratic violence as politics of human rights
This article contributes to the literature on non-citizens’ protests by analysing asylum seekers’ claims to right to life as a case of politics of human rights. By analysing asylum seekers’ protests as making visible the structural and bureaucratic violence of the state that violates their fundamental human rights, this article offers a reading of non-citizen protests as an engagement in the politics of human rights. Based on ethnographic fieldwo…
Notes on a More Equitable Higher Education
The global bases of inequality regimes
Purpose The purpose of this article is to critically examine Joan Acker's notion of inequality regimes by applying it to the case of global nurse care chains (GNCCs). The article examines the organisational practices of GNCCs and how inequality barriers are practiced and legitimised. Design/methodology/approach The article is based on qualitative interviews with different institutional representatives involved in Filipino nurse recruitment to Fin…
Sociology (31 obras) · Political science (27 obras) · Gender Studies (18 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (15 obras) · Social science (13 obras) · Economics (12 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Employment and Welfare Studies (9 obras) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (9 obras)