Minna Zechner
Biographic Data
| ID | 3815632 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Minna Zechner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Minna |
| FAMILY NAME | Zechner |
| SIGNATURE | ZECHNER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0784-4519 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Old-age Care Responsibilities in China’s National Five-year Plans (2001—2025)
Rapid population ageing is challenging China’s old-age care (OAC) system. The traditional role of the family in caring for older adults has been declining due to decreasing family size and urbanisation. The Five-Year Plans for National Economic and Social Development (FYPs) of the People’s Republic of China provide a general framework for the direction of OAC policy. This article focuses on changes in OAC responsibilities among families, the gove…
Towards evidence-based approaches to monitoring and evaluating age-friendly cities and communities
Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) is a key global WHO initiative aimed at fostering environments that promote healthy aging for everyone. As AFCC initiatives continue to expand, there is an increasing need to enhance monitoring and evaluation systems to effectively assess their progress and impact. However, significant knowledge gaps persist, particularly in the development of evaluation methods and AFCC indicators. Drawing on discussion…
Using the Andersen Behavioural Model to explore formal support use among older informal carers in Finland and Sweden
This comparative study employs the Andersen Behavioural Model to investigate the role of predisposing, enabling and need factors for formal support use among older informal carers in Finland and Sweden. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed using the Gerontological Regional Database (GERDA) survey data from 2021/2022, and 1167 informal carers were included. Living in Finland, lack of financial strain, non‐governmental organisation m…
Conceptions of accessibility among persons with spinal cord injury in Finland
Accessibility is defined according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) as a prerequisite for an independent life for persons with a disability. To explore how accessibility is understood or experienced by persons with a spinal cord injury, 45 persons with spinal cord injury living in Finland were interviewed. The analysis approach was phenomenographic, resulting in three main categories of conceptions of acces…
Revisiting the Concept of Gender Contract
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…
Constructing a regime of truth to support palliative care at risk
For decades, Finland, along with many other European countries, has applied austerity politics in which especially the female-dominated spheres of life, such as long-term care, have been the targets of savings. In this societal context, a hospice focusing on particularly demanding palliative care was at risk of redundancies. The article illustrates how a local regime of truth about the hospice was discursively constructed, supported and contested…
The concept of generational contract
Major societal changes, such as the ongoing climate crisis, and the population ageing, affect the relations between generations within societies. The concept of generational contract is widely used to study these relations. However, the concept is rarely clearly defined, and the contents and terms of the contract, as well as the parties involved remain unclear. This article provides a systematic literature review on the definitions of the concept…
Displaced Selves
Ageing as a refugee in an unsettled life situation increases the need for identity management due to dramatic life changes. This qualitative study, influenced by phenomenology, focuses on the stories of older adults in protracted intra-African refugee situations and the continuity and discontinuity of their identities. In line with identity process theory, we portray identities as situationally accomplished through the interplay of how one define…
Is Nordic elder care facing a (new) collaborative turn
Nordic countries are known for their service‐based welfare states, which include basic health and social care for all older adults who have been formally assessed and found to need additional services. Facing fiscal constraints in the mid‐1990s, these countries endeavoured to create more cost‐effective care services that incorporated the doctrines of new public management (NPM). Overlapping NPM, steps have been taken to better integrate services …
Capabilities in care for older adults in Finnish familialistic policy transformations
As public provision of health and social care to older adults remains fixed or is scaled back, informal care is increasingly emphasised in policy and in practice. This is also the case in the Nordic welfare state of Finland. Little is known about how individual care arrangements are made. In this study, the capability approach is used to investigate the processes from resources to the actual functionings of receiving care of one older informal ca…
Uncovering familialism
This article compares cash-for-care schemes supporting older people with health-related social care needs, as well as their informal carers, in England and Finland. The meso-level policy analysis drills down into the governance arrangements underpinning cash-for-care schemes, including their eligibility criteria, generosity and territorial variations. It explores their implicit and explicit intentions, function and effects in defamilialising, fam…
Relational Narratives and Moorings in International Mobility and Migration at an Advanced Age
This article focuses on personal stories of international mobility and migration as told close to the age of retirement. Talking about past international mobility and migration, people tend to tell stories that are relational; choices and actions are often explained in relation to other people (Mason 2004). I map the relational nature of the mobility life stories in the beginning and at the end of the stories and focus on moorings described close…
Transnational habitus at the time of retirement
International mobility requires the shifting of bodies across places, through life courses and stages, creating individual and collective experiences that become taken for granted. They are habitus, which is the durable deployment of an individual’s body in the world, as well as a scheme of perception, thought and action that is present throughout life, including retirement. This study asks what kind of transnational habitus is visible in the nar…
The Political Construction of Elder Care Markets
In Europe over the last two decades, marketization has become an important policy option in elder care. Comparative studies predominantly adopt an institutional perspective and analyze the politics and policies of marketization. This analysis takes a step back and examines the fundamental ideas underpinning the policies of marketization, using the ‘What's the problem?’ approach by Carol Bacchi. The central question is how the market was discursiv…
Theorizing Care and Care Work
The world of caring is universal because, in all societies at any time, some of the members need help and assistance in their daily lives, and mostly it is the women who are responsible for providing the help and care needed. Care has become an important object of study in feminist as well as in social and political research. Academic scholars have shown that, despite its universality, the worlds of caring and the ways of providing it vary depend…
Care of older persons in transnational settings
Family Commitments under Negotiation
This paper makes a comparison between Finnish and Italian working dual carers. Dual carers have responsibilities simultaneously at two different fronts. The selected Finnish and Italian samples of carers are doing similar care work in different settings. They negotiate care with a variety of actors and under differing circumstances. A care life story has been constructed for each participant. Then these care life stories have been compared with e…
Care of older persons in transnational settings
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…
The Political Construction of Elder Care Markets
In Europe over the last two decades, marketization has become an important policy option in elder care. Comparative studies predominantly adopt an institutional perspective and analyze the politics and policies of marketization. This analysis takes a step back and examines the fundamental ideas underpinning the policies of marketization, using the ‘What's the problem?’ approach by Carol Bacchi. The central question is how the market was discursiv…
Constructing a regime of truth to support palliative care at risk
For decades, Finland, along with many other European countries, has applied austerity politics in which especially the female-dominated spheres of life, such as long-term care, have been the targets of savings. In this societal context, a hospice focusing on particularly demanding palliative care was at risk of redundancies. The article illustrates how a local regime of truth about the hospice was discursively constructed, supported and contested…
The concept of generational contract
Major societal changes, such as the ongoing climate crisis, and the population ageing, affect the relations between generations within societies. The concept of generational contract is widely used to study these relations. However, the concept is rarely clearly defined, and the contents and terms of the contract, as well as the parties involved remain unclear. This article provides a systematic literature review on the definitions of the concept…
Family Commitments under Negotiation
This paper makes a comparison between Finnish and Italian working dual carers. Dual carers have responsibilities simultaneously at two different fronts. The selected Finnish and Italian samples of carers are doing similar care work in different settings. They negotiate care with a variety of actors and under differing circumstances. A care life story has been constructed for each participant. Then these care life stories have been compared with e…
Care of older persons in transnational settings
Theorizing Care and Care Work
The world of caring is universal because, in all societies at any time, some of the members need help and assistance in their daily lives, and mostly it is the women who are responsible for providing the help and care needed. Care has become an important object of study in feminist as well as in social and political research. Academic scholars have shown that, despite its universality, the worlds of caring and the ways of providing it vary depend…
Transnational habitus at the time of retirement
International mobility requires the shifting of bodies across places, through life courses and stages, creating individual and collective experiences that become taken for granted. They are habitus, which is the durable deployment of an individual’s body in the world, as well as a scheme of perception, thought and action that is present throughout life, including retirement. This study asks what kind of transnational habitus is visible in the nar…
The Political Construction of Elder Care Markets
In Europe over the last two decades, marketization has become an important policy option in elder care. Comparative studies predominantly adopt an institutional perspective and analyze the politics and policies of marketization. This analysis takes a step back and examines the fundamental ideas underpinning the policies of marketization, using the ‘What's the problem?’ approach by Carol Bacchi. The central question is how the market was discursiv…
Relational Narratives and Moorings in International Mobility and Migration at an Advanced Age
This article focuses on personal stories of international mobility and migration as told close to the age of retirement. Talking about past international mobility and migration, people tend to tell stories that are relational; choices and actions are often explained in relation to other people (Mason 2004). I map the relational nature of the mobility life stories in the beginning and at the end of the stories and focus on moorings described close…
Capabilities in care for older adults in Finnish familialistic policy transformations
As public provision of health and social care to older adults remains fixed or is scaled back, informal care is increasingly emphasised in policy and in practice. This is also the case in the Nordic welfare state of Finland. Little is known about how individual care arrangements are made. In this study, the capability approach is used to investigate the processes from resources to the actual functionings of receiving care of one older informal ca…
Uncovering familialism
This article compares cash-for-care schemes supporting older people with health-related social care needs, as well as their informal carers, in England and Finland. The meso-level policy analysis drills down into the governance arrangements underpinning cash-for-care schemes, including their eligibility criteria, generosity and territorial variations. It explores their implicit and explicit intentions, function and effects in defamilialising, fam…
Displaced Selves
Ageing as a refugee in an unsettled life situation increases the need for identity management due to dramatic life changes. This qualitative study, influenced by phenomenology, focuses on the stories of older adults in protracted intra-African refugee situations and the continuity and discontinuity of their identities. In line with identity process theory, we portray identities as situationally accomplished through the interplay of how one define…
Is Nordic elder care facing a (new) collaborative turn
Nordic countries are known for their service‐based welfare states, which include basic health and social care for all older adults who have been formally assessed and found to need additional services. Facing fiscal constraints in the mid‐1990s, these countries endeavoured to create more cost‐effective care services that incorporated the doctrines of new public management (NPM). Overlapping NPM, steps have been taken to better integrate services …
Constructing a regime of truth to support palliative care at risk
For decades, Finland, along with many other European countries, has applied austerity politics in which especially the female-dominated spheres of life, such as long-term care, have been the targets of savings. In this societal context, a hospice focusing on particularly demanding palliative care was at risk of redundancies. The article illustrates how a local regime of truth about the hospice was discursively constructed, supported and contested…
The concept of generational contract
Major societal changes, such as the ongoing climate crisis, and the population ageing, affect the relations between generations within societies. The concept of generational contract is widely used to study these relations. However, the concept is rarely clearly defined, and the contents and terms of the contract, as well as the parties involved remain unclear. This article provides a systematic literature review on the definitions of the concept…
Conceptions of accessibility among persons with spinal cord injury in Finland
Accessibility is defined according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) as a prerequisite for an independent life for persons with a disability. To explore how accessibility is understood or experienced by persons with a spinal cord injury, 45 persons with spinal cord injury living in Finland were interviewed. The analysis approach was phenomenographic, resulting in three main categories of conceptions of acces…
Revisiting the Concept of Gender Contract
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…
Towards evidence-based approaches to monitoring and evaluating age-friendly cities and communities
Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) is a key global WHO initiative aimed at fostering environments that promote healthy aging for everyone. As AFCC initiatives continue to expand, there is an increasing need to enhance monitoring and evaluation systems to effectively assess their progress and impact. However, significant knowledge gaps persist, particularly in the development of evaluation methods and AFCC indicators. Drawing on discussion…
Using the Andersen Behavioural Model to explore formal support use among older informal carers in Finland and Sweden
This comparative study employs the Andersen Behavioural Model to investigate the role of predisposing, enabling and need factors for formal support use among older informal carers in Finland and Sweden. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed using the Gerontological Regional Database (GERDA) survey data from 2021/2022, and 1167 informal carers were included. Living in Finland, lack of financial strain, non‐governmental organisation m…
Old-age Care Responsibilities in China’s National Five-year Plans (2001—2025)
Rapid population ageing is challenging China’s old-age care (OAC) system. The traditional role of the family in caring for older adults has been declining due to decreasing family size and urbanisation. The Five-Year Plans for National Economic and Social Development (FYPs) of the People’s Republic of China provide a general framework for the direction of OAC policy. This article focuses on changes in OAC responsibilities among families, the gove…
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Healthcare innovation and challenges (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (5 works) · Law (5 works)