Researcher in charge: Professor Kirsi Juhila
Research group: Arja Jokinen, Anna Kulmala, Suvi Raitakari, Heli Valokivi and Anni Vanhala
Research period and funding: 2001-2003, The Academy of Finland
The research project attempted to shed light on the core of Finnish exclusion using data based qualitative methods. Because the research is to be data-based, it has not started out from a ready-made definition of the concepts of marginality or social exclusion. Instead the study has aimed to produce research results which will function as content for these concepts. The objective of the research was to examine life at the edge of helping systems: how does one end up there, how are the various helping systems attached to the lives of people who end up at the edge, and what future visions and opportunities do these people have. The answers to these questions are inevitably multidimensional, for the questions are examined through interpretations given by the people living at the edge, through the institutional interpretations by the helping systems, and through interpretations jointly produced by the parties.
The helping systems which have acted as fixed points of the research are a shelter for homeless men with substance abuse problems, a shelter for homeless women, probation service and a supported housing project for young people. The four helping systems share the factor that their clients have by definition been excluded from normal or non-stigmatised service systems. According to the original research plan life at the edge were planned to approach from three mutually integrative angles: 1) past – life histories of people living at the edge, 2) present – institutional encounters in helping systems, 3) future – client careers and coping strategies. The research has made use of several kinds of qualitative data sets: interviews, life stories, official documents and texts and naturally occurring institutional conversations. The methodological home of the study has been social constructionism. The analysis of the data has applied methods of discourse analysis, conversation analysis, narrative analysis and ethnography.
The results of the research project can be situated at various levels. They cover theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions related to last-resort helping (social) work and to the social construction of clienthood and identities. All this variety is not possible to describe here, but can be read only from individual research reports and articles (especially from the forthcoming doctoral theses). However, despite of the multiplicity of the findings of the six researchers, there is a clearly shared main thread in the project. This main thread revolves around three concepts which have proved to be useful tools in studying both institutionally produced and personally experienced life at the edge of the helping systems. These concepts are client career, stigmatised identity and ‘talking back’. The concepts have been invented and elaborated during the research process which means that they are created in a dialogue with the research data and their analysis.
In the research plan we wrote that the objective of the research is to approach life at the edge from three mutually integrative angles; past, present and future. What we have found is firstly that the talk about the past, present and the future of the clients is organised according to the principles of client career. The concept of career is useful because it allows one to move back and forth between the personal and the institutional; between the individual life courses of the clients, on the one hand, and the politics of the helping systems, on the other. Our results show that the identities of the clients are heavily constructed on the basis of being a client in a certain institution. From this it follows that their past lives are interpreted as a pre-phase for the present clienthood and, correspondingly, their future (if any future outside the institution can be imagined) is defined as an ex-life.
Selected publications:
Jokinen, Arja & Huttunen, Laura & Kulmala, Anna (toim.) (2004) Puhua vastaan ja vaieta. Helsinki: Gaudeamus
Juhila, Kirsi (2004) Talking Back to Stigmatised Identities. Negotiation of Culturally Dominant Categorizations in Interviews with Shelted Residents. Qualitative Social Work (3)3, 259-275.
Juhila, Kirsi (2004) Constituting Client Careers at the Edge of the Helping Systems. Teoksessa Vesa Puuronen et al. (toim.) New Challenges for the Welfare State. University of Joensuu, Publications of Carelian Institute n:o 142, 295-310.
Vanhala, Anni (2005) Paikka ja asiakkuus. Etnografia naisten asuntolasta. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1075. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
Juhila Kirsi (2006) Sosiaalityöntekijöinä ja asiakkaina. Sosiaalityön yhteiskunnalliset tehtävät ja paikat. Tampere: Vastapaino.
Kulmala Anna (2006) Kerrottuja kokemuksia leimatusta identiteetistä ja toiseudesta. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1148. Tampere: Tampere University Press.