"The Swedish road is not ours" : Narrating the Finnish community of value in parliamentary debate on youth crime and street gangs

Abstract: Taking the form of a case study on an interpellation on ‘youth crime and street gangs’ and its consideration in plenary debate in the Finnish Parliament in December 2022, the purpose of this study is to examine how politicians narrate the Finnish community of value and its boundaries. The methodological framework of this study consists of strategic narrative analysis, poststructural and critical research theoretical underpinnings, and the operationalization of the concept of ‘community of value’. The findings of the study show that the strategic narratives on the Finnish community of value are diverse but return to similar points of boundary-making problematizing the ‘Migrant’ as part of a ‘suspect population’. The character of the community of value is simultaneously defined through the ordinary actions of its ‘Good Citizens’ and Finland as ‘not-Sweden’. Ultimately, the role left to play for the ‘Migrant’ is one of a ‘Tolerated Citizen’. These findings add a contribution to the field of critical migration and integration studies, as well as to the field of Finnish and Nordic political discourses.