Worrying about Migrant Mothers: Families, Migration and Societal Worries in Finnish Journalism

Abstract

This article investigates the framing of migrant mothers and migrant families in family policy journalism over a 20-year period between 1998 and 2018 in Finland. Using computational word-based searches and qualitative methods, we explore the ways in which journalistic media in Finland took part in the production of societal worries and worrisome subjectivities about families, family policy and migration. Tracing the category of ‘migrant mothers’ in news journalism, we show how this category is used to mobilise gendered and racialised worries and worrisome subjectivities, and to validate and justify policy measures related to austerity and the welfare state. Further, we identify a shift in the Finnish news journalism concerning families and migration: from the discussion of integration and language learning as a personal goal for migrant mothers in the early 2000s to perceptions of employment in the 2010s. The societal worries attached to migration and families have thus shifted from the potential exclusion of migrant mothers from society in general to concern instead their absence from working life and by that their assumed unproductivity as current and future citizens.