Sociology days (March 17 - 18, 2016) abstract
Established and Emergent Migration Challenges in Finnish Education:
The Key Dilemmas of Migration and Misrecognized Multidimensional Mobilities
David M. Hoffman1*, Driss Habti2, Sirpa Korhonen3 and Melina Aarnikoivu4
1 Senior Researcher (Ph.D – Social and Public Policy), Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. (* Corresponding Author)
2 Postdoctoral Researcher (Ph.D. – Sociology), Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland.
3 Doctoral Student: Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
4 Doctoral Student: Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
In a cross-cutting nexus analysis, the authors analytically illuminate and empirically ground the complexities related to contemporary migration which come into view within 21st century Finnish education as a social institution, set of organizations and a profession. Specifically, What Hoffman (forthcoming) identifies as misrecognized multidimensional mobilities that currently manifest across Europe, as global power relations are simultaneously transformed and reproduced in ways which daily elude the grasp of higher education actors and – by definition – the communities they serve. Higher education, as a focal nexus, opens up a view to comparative social dynamics that few other institutions can match, as the nexus or – following Mill’s 1959 problematization – the intersection par excellence that allows contemporary social scientists the opportunity to rethink history, biography and what these might mean in 21st century Finnish society.
Drawing on recently completed studies, as well as our research-in-progress, our nexus analysis is grounded by, contrasts and problematizes:
- a mixed-methods comparative analysis of higher education institutions within and across the globe’s most affluent and advanced networked knowledge societies; with
- field work in Iraqi Kurdistan where next generation scholars live with the consequences of decisions made within the context of refugee and asylum programs in Finland; to
- ethnographic research in CERN that looks beneath the oversimplified, uncritical valorization of ‘internationalization’ discourse and the mobility of the scientific elite; to
- the health care sector, as it plays out across the Russian/EU border and finally focusing on
- the way in which transnational scholarly precariousness – as a global phenomenon– plays out within what is often uncritically billed as ‘the world’s most advanced education system’.
Reflecting on the type of critique entailed in Mill’s (1959) Sociological Imagination, the authors advance a critically-framed policy analysis that spotlights the six unresolved leadership dilemmas within and across education, in general and Finnish education in particular which explain contemporary migration’s misrecognized multidimensional mobilities.
