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Linguistic Autonomy in a Monolingual Social Imaginary: Social Work Practitioners’ Sense-making of the Role of Language in Migrant ‘Integration’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2025

Hanna Kara Open the ORCID record for Hanna Kara [Opens in a new window] ,
Camilla Nordberg Open the ORCID record for Camilla Nordberg [Opens in a new window] ,
Maija Jäppinen  and
Anna-Leena Riitaoja
Hanna Kara*
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Camilla Nordberg
Affiliation:
Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland
Maija Jäppinen
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Anna-Leena Riitaoja
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
*
Corresponding author: Hanna Kara; Email: hanna.kara@helsinki.fi
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Abstract

The article studies how public policies of migrant ‘integration’ are enacted and made sense of in the street-level welfare state from the perspective of social work practitioners performing integration work and with a focus on language and language skills acquisition. It draws from twenty-seven semi-structured individual interviews and reflective discussions after service user meetings with eleven social workers and social advisors in migrant integration services conducted between 2018 and 2019 in the Helsinki capital region of Finland. Results infer ambiguous, yet persistent, ideals of monolingualism in which Finnish language skills acquisition plays a central role and linguistic diversity turns into individual lack of skills and capacities through service user responsibilisation. Yet practitioners refer to the unfeasible situations this creates for service users as well as to their own struggles as practitioners within the monolingual service system.

Keywords

Finlandintegration worklinguistic diversitymigrationmonolingualism
Type
Article
Information
Social Policy and Society , First View , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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