The professional terms for occupations that provide welfare services are changing, and here the introduction of new public management in the Nordic countries since the 1990s is indicative of wider developments. The article explores professional projects in welfare service work from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. The aim is to produce a gendersensitive analysis of the professional projects at the lower levels of the occupational hierarchies in health care. The first part reviews the literature conceptualizing the societal and institutional embeddedness of professional projects. The institutional matrix of welfare states emerges as a key context in shaping the welfare service work performed by womendominated professional groups. The second part examines the case of Finland and suggests that recent reforms have created new inequalities in the system of professions, in which occupational groups in welfare service work are becoming marginalized. This signals a move away from 'democratic professionalism' towards a revival of 'old professionalism'.
Human service work is being reconfigured by welfare state reforms driven by neo-liberal globalisation. Sectors are being merged; 'hybrid' occupations formed; and occupational boundaries renegotiated. Yet time is rarely considered in the study of such boundary work. This paper conceptualises time as generated by human action, in different orders that may operate in tension with one another. Three case studies of reform in educational work, from Finland, England, and Germany, each illustrate a particular configuration of these competing time orders. The paper concludes by arguing for a politics of time to create a more democratic climate for education and other human service work.
PurposeThis study seeks to examine the reconfiguration of professional groups in welfare service work through the lens of gendered inequalities in order to develop an inclusive research horizon that extends to the middle grade of care workers.Design/methodology/approachThe research design positions workforce change within a wider social and cultural context by highlighting occupational, educational and unionist orders from the viewpoint of Finnish practical nurses.FindingsA weakening anchorage in the welfare state and a differentiation of the patterns of recruitment, employment and industrial relations create segmentation, particular forms of exclusion, and identity instabilities. The article identifies the special vulnerability of the practical nurses institutionally embedded “in‐between” the upper and lower grades, the social and health sector, and the union traditions.Research limitations/implicationsThe national policy agenda on workforce change mainly follows the sectoral split and focuses on the established health professions. The unionist agenda of practical nurses in turn reflects interprofessional relationships and tribalism.Practical implicationsThis analysis of welfare service work provides insight into social and cultural transformations related to workforce change in a segmented and culturally diverse labour force and offers reflections on the changing nature of craft unionism.Originality/valueThis article argues for the added value of historicised, gender and culture sensitive analysis of the tensions between policy aims, educational, occupational and unionist orders for understanding reconfiguration through inequality‐producing processes.
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