Finland and the Politics of Crisis – Local, National, European

Suvi Alt, Charles Brophy & Iiris Jakola

University of Lapland, Finland

The effects of the Euro crisis are not felt as strongly in Finland as they are in many other parts of Europe. Correspondingly, we do not see the kind of social struggles, uprisings, and resistance emerging in Finland as we have seen around Europe in the past few years. Finland stands outside of the immediate crisis zone of Southern European states, or austerity states, and evaluated in terms of GDP, unemployment, deficit, and debt, Finland is among the strongest economies in the Eurozone.1 Before the crisis Finland was in fact one of the ‘poster-boys’2 of European integration with a strict adherence to the rules and goals of the European project. As such one of the most significant elements of the crisis within the Finnish context is its relationship to a crisis outside of itself which it must necessarily involve itself with. This external aspect of the crisis is connected to long-term changes within the Finnish society and economy. While Finland is generally known for its extensive welfare system, the contemporary crisis appears to be changing this landscape as there is a widely held view that due to both external and internal reasons, it will not be possible to maintain the current level of welfare services in the future.

In the light of this, our research examines the contemporary crisis in Finland on both the national and the local level as well as in relation to the other Eurozone countries. Firstly, we discuss the conceptualisation of the crisis on the national level in terms of responsibility, power, and welfare, arguing that the crisis is potentially furthering the neoliberalisation of the Finnish welfare system. Secondly, we examine the local implications of the crisis through fieldwork in Kemijärvi, the northernmost town in Finland, arguing that the manifestations of crisis are not so much due to the contemporary financial crisis but have to do with longer-term developments in both Finnish and the global economy. Furthermore, our fieldwork reveals that there is no single social reality of the crisis but rather multiple interpretations, experiences, and sentiments co-existing simultaneously. Thirdly, we discuss the way in which the crisis is conceptualised as an external issue involving perspectives of debt, power, and morality, finally arguing that the Finnish response to the crisis reproduces relations of power within European space, which underpin the crisis.

In terms of national level responses to the crisis, during the budget negotiations this summer, Minister of Finance Jutta Urpilainen is proposing a programme designed to tackle what are considered to be the causes of the crisis in Finland, namely the overall economic situation in Europe, the structural changes occurring in the Finnish industry, and the sustainability gap in public finances.3 The European financial crisis is argued to have contributed to the necessity of introducing a programme of structural change that is outlined in The Finnish Economic Policy Strategy 2013. According to the Strategy, the key solution is to increase the time Finns spend in active workforce. Hence, the proposed structural changes include introducing shorter study times for higher education by cutting student benefit, encouraging stay-at-home parents to re-enter the workforce by cutting parental leave, and re-examining the duration and/or level of unemployment benefit and other social benefits so that there would be more incentive for the population to search employment and to receive the employment that is available.4

Framed with a discourse of ‘economic necessity,’ a Social Democratic Minister of Finance is pushing forward a programme of structural adjustments that have in fact been long called for by the predominantly neoliberal Finnish economic elite. It is no surprise then that those representing, for example, the Bank of Finland and the Confederation of Finnish Industries, drawing inspiration from the idea of ‘creative destruction,’ talk also of the benefits that are to be gained from the crisis.5 The call for everyone to take responsibility for the situation obscures the fact that the political decisions being made effect the distribution of welfare unevenly. As such, the discourses of crisis, responsibility, and economic necessity function to legitimate policies that the Left has thus far opposed, to the extent that they are themselves now in government driving those policies.

When it comes to the actual social realities of the crisis, we discovered through questionnaires, interviews, and observation in the northern town of Kemijärvi that the town is in fact in crisis. During the last ten years the town has gone through an extreme structural change in terms of its economic life and demography. This summer the town was warned that if key figures of the municipal economy do not get better soon, the town will be given the official status of a ‘crisis municipality.’6 The town’s industrial history is over as factories have closed their doors. Orion (pharmaceutics) in 2002, Salcomp (chargers for Nokia mobiles) in 2004, and Stora Enso pulp factory in 2008 together left hundreds of people unemployed. Due to a structural change in the job market and a gendered labour policy,7 many have not been able to re-employ themselves. This has caused an accelerated emigration to other parts of Lapland and Finland. The loss of inhabitants has weakened the city’s tax base, forced some small firms to close down, and affected the general atmosphere. Social problems have culminated in economically harsh conditions.

During the last decades there has been a tendency of the concentration of people into growing urban areas. In Kemijärvi you would hear people saying, ‘We’re all leaving sooner or later, so the last person, please turn out the lights.’ Kemijärvi has been considered a dying community in the periphery. However, on a spiritual level, another reality revealed itself. The city was extremely active during our research period. For every week there was an event of some sort. From Midnight Sun Rowing Festival to Pike Week and from International Woodsculpting Symposium to Schlager Festival, this small remote place was suddenly buzzing with events where both locals on their holidays, people from neighbouring towns, and tourists took part.8 There seemed to be no hint of a crisis. People were smiling and enjoying the midsummer. When asked if the town and its people have shown resilience, the message from the respondents and interviewees was clear: people have been resilient, fought for things they hold important (night train connection), and shown creativity (a TV series with four seasons was filmed in Kemijärvi). But Kemijärvi will not get far with mere resilience even if it is pressured to do so. Thus it should be admitted that a traditional principle of the Finnish welfare state, namely equal regional development – in other words, keeping the whole country inhabited – has been abandoned, one sign of which is the governmental plan to radically reduce the number of municipalities.

Yet, it is not possible to discuss Finland and the contemporary crisis without addressing also the Finnish conceptualisation of the crisis as a specifically ‘external’ problem. As such, the Finnish response to the crisis contains an interpretation of the crisis, its causes and potential causes, and what this means for the European project and its conceptualisations of European citizenship and solidarity. The response of the Finnish state and popular media to the crisis of the European union has been largely couched in moral terms, thus as Paul Jonker-Hoffrén has argued, it has been common in the popular press to conceptualise the crisis in terms of ‘‘countries that lived carelessly on borrowed money’, ‘moral decay’, ‘countries that handled their accounts badly.’’9 The focus has therefore been upon the spending of countries such as Greece and Portugal and not upon the structure of the Eurozone itself, the sources of loans that made such lending possible, or upon the nature of capital itself. One prime example of this logic is the unilateral collateral agreement agreed between Finland and Greece in the most recent round of bailouts. Described almost universally as meaningless and unworkable it could be argued that what such a deal belies is a moral demand on the one hand to not be implicated in another’s wrong doing and on the other for wrongdoers to be held accountable and further punished for their financial profligacy. Equally Finland has been seen to be at the front line of the European response to the crisis with its focus on austerity and fiscal consolidation and the need to link both debt and guilt.

To understand the importance of this stance we turn to the work of Maurizzio Lazzarato on the response to the crisis in Europe.10 To sum up briefly, the crisis for Lazzarato is a crisis of debt, the inability of debtors to pay their creditors which is already present in the power-relation of debt. The response to the crisis has not been therefore to abolish the debt relationship, but rather reinforce its functioning, the State has injected money into the financial system to re-establish the debt power-relation, yet the perversity of this lies in the fact that ‘the costs of re-establishing this relation of exploitation and domination will have to be paid for by its victims.’11 Thus infinitising the debt in a Christian logic in which those who are made sick are commanded to be well. Here the function of debt in the European crisis appears to be its ability to compel the debtor into action, to command resilience in the face of crisis and to demand the repayment of a debt however infinite, and thus to affect the power to act and the subjectivities of European states and citizens. As such one of the conclusions of our project will be to show how through the Finnish example the conceptualisation of a European people-subject based upon communicative public sphere and solidarity is undermined through a politics of debt which tears apart such a people.

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  1. BBC, ‘In Graphics: Eurozone Crisis,’ April 25, 2013. Http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13361934 (Accessed August 13, 2013). ↩

  2. Outi Keränen, ‘From Poster Boy to Trouble-Maker? The Euro Crisis and Finland’s Reputation in the EU,’ March 20, 2013. Http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/eurocrisispress/2013/03/20/from-poster-boy-to-trouble-maker-the-euro-crisis-and-finlands-reputation-in-the-eu/ (Accessed August 12, 2013). ↩

  3. Finnish Broadcasting Company, ‘Interview with Jutta Urpilainen,’ August 7, 2013. Http://areena.yle.fi/tv/1969466 (Accessed August 13, 2013). ↩

  4. The Finnish Ministry of Finance, ‘Julkisen talouden kestävyys ja rakenneuudistukset: Talouspolitiikan strategia 2013’ [‘The Sustainability of Public Finance and Structural Change: The Economic Policy Strategy 2013’]. Http://www.vm.fi/vm/fi/04_julkaisut_ja_asiakirjat/01_julkaisut/02_taloudelliset_katsaukset/20130531Julkis/TS_raportti_Vartia.pdf (Accessed August 13, 2013). ↩

  5. Finnish Broadcasting Company, ‘Interview with Björn Wahlroos,’ August 30, 2012. Http://yle.fi/puhe/ohjelmat/politiikkaradio/wahlroos_ratkaisisin_eurokriisin_kahdessa_3683.html?ref=leiki-pu (Accessed August 12, 2013), Finnish Broadcasting Company, ‘Interview with Leena Mörttinen,’ June 7, 2012. Http://yle.fi/puhe/ohjelmat/politiikkaradio/eurokriisi_ja_suomen_kilpailukyky_2927.html (Accessed August 12, 2013), Alexander Stubb, ‘Kriisinhallinnasta talousunioniin’ [‘From Crisis Management to Economic Union’, May 25, 2012. Http://www.alexstubb.com/fi/blog/1934/#.Ugof6qxj6Sp (Accessed August 13, 2013). ↩

  6. Lapin Kansa [Lapland’s regional newspaper], ‘Kriisikuntavaroitus Kemijärvelle’ [‘Crisis municipality warning for Kemijärvi’], July 14, 2013. ↩

  7. Suvi Lyytinen, ‘Valtio tuli väliin – Rakenteellisten toimenpiteiden vaikutukset työelämän sukupuoli- segregaatioon Itä-Lapissa’ [‘The State Intervened – The Effects of Structural Measures on the Gender Segregation of Working Life in Eastern Lapland], 2013. Http://www.lapinletka.fi/media/Selvitys%20Itae-Lappi%20Suvi%20Lyytinen%202013%20taitettu.pdf. (Accessed August 14, 2013). ↩

  8. Koti-Lappi [Local newspaper], ‘Kesätapahtumien kulta-aikaa’ [‘The High Season of Summer Festivals’], July 4, 2013; Koti-Lappi, ‘Tapahtumien Itä-Lappi’ [‘The Eastern Lapland of Events’], July 18, 2013. ↩

  9. Paul Jonker-Hoffrén, ‘Finland: A Touch Nordic Accountant that Is Caught up by Reality,’ June 22, 2013. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/eurocrisispress/2013/06/22/finland-a-tough-nordic-accountant-that-is-caught-up-by-reality/ (Accessed August 12, 2013). ↩

  10. Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012). ↩

  11. Jonker-Hoffrén, ‘Finland: A Touch Nordic Accountant that Is Caught up by Reality.’ ↩