Immigrant social workers in the Finnish welfare state: Mutual challenges

• Autor(a) principal: Carreira, Edgar da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/11978
• topic: Immigrant social workers; Finnish state; Finnish welfare state; Highly-skilled migration in Finland; Immigration to Finland; Life stories; Trabalhador migrante -- Migrant worker; Trabalhador social -- Social worker; Serviço social; História de vida

This master thesis is dedicated to the understanding of the challenges that both the immigrant Social Workers and the Finnish welfare state face when they meet each other. To assess the challenges of the Finnish welfare state, native Social Workers were interviewed, because they are seen as the most visible face of a welfare state. But in order to accomplish this, a vast theoretical background is provided about the Finnish state, the Finnish welfare state, and the migrations in Finland before the presentation of the empirical results. The results were obtained after the realization of deep ethno biographical interviews to get to know the life trajectories of four individuals (two immigrants and two Finnish nationals) that have at least completed the bachelor’s degree in Social Work in Finland or abroad. Its objective is to try to understand how the Finnish welfare state can better integrate the immigrant Social Workers that are needed into the Finnish Welfare State of nowadays that is struggling with the worsening of the dependency ratio mainly due to the ageing population and the low fertility rate. The focus of this work is predominantly transdisciplinar. The immigrant Social Workers went to Finland due to motives related to studies, and they have stayed, although without chances to by now work permanently as Social Workers, mainly because of the language barriers. Regarding the Finnish Social Workers, the cultural shocks with the service users call for the promotion of more and better intercultural dialogue.