Projects

New dynamics of professionalism within caring professions

Project period: 1.8.2003 - 31.7.2008

Funding: Academy of Finland, 300 000 € for the period 1.8.2003-31.12.2006 (incentive funding)

Principal site of research: Swedish School of Social Science

Secondary site of research: Åbo Akademi university

Objective and brief description of the research activities: The research project examinse the new dynamics of professionalism in Finnish society. Professionalism and professional knowledge-based occupations were traditionally at the core of the Finnish welfare state. State policies supported and even created many professional projects, especially those of women-dominated groups closely associated with the implementation of welfare policies. During the recent two decades or so, however, the role and structure of the public sector have become restructured in public policy. In the early 1990s, several central policy agencies of the traditional welfare state were dismantled. The new policy that has emerged rejects the type of public sector professionalism that Finnish caring occupations traditionally have represented. Furthermore, the scarcity of public resources has disrupted the basis of public sector as a trustworthy labor market for professionals of different kinds. The resulting situation challenges the traditionally state-dependent caring occupations and the style of professionalism and professional identities these groups have valued.

This research project explores the cultural change concerning the caring occupations. The aim is to identify the political and social forces reshaping the occupations and to examine the new dynamics of professionalism that emerge in the processes of change. The second important focus is the formation of professional identities that is studied through interviews. Professionalism is in the research understood as a complex construct consisting of interrelated sets of cultural ideas in society, professional cultures and at the level of the individual. The analysis seeks to take these multiple levels into account and apply historical and comparative frameworks.