The doctoral dissertation in the field of Welfare Law will be examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies at Kuopio Campus. The public examination will be streamed online.
What is the topic of your doctoral research? Why is it important to study the topic?
My research mainly examines the risk factors that may impact older immigrants' access to services, employment, and citizenship, as well as establishing social relations. The study is interdisciplinary, encompassing welfare law, elder law, and social gerontology. It deals with the phenomenon from a socio-legal perspective, investigating Finnish laws and the realization of older immigrants' rights in practice. The study fills a research gap, as research on older immigrants is still relatively scarce, especially in Finland. It also sheds light on the lived experiences of underrepresented older immigrant communities, where most come from the Middle East. The study also addresses a contemporary issue in Finland, where there is a growing number of older people and older immigrants, as well as increasing levels of inequality in Finnish society. In addition, it provides a valuable theoretical contribution and understanding of the interplay between social exclusion and access to justice.
What are the key findings or observations of your doctoral research?
The findings of this doctoral research highlight the vulnerable situation of older immigrants, where they can be excluded from multiple aspects of life simultaneously. Some factors, such as insufficient language skills and structural discrimination, can negatively impact older immigrants' access to services and employment. Cultural differences and perceptions, as well as negative attitudes and stereotypes, can restrict older immigrants' social relations with others. Certain risk factors for social exclusion can impact older people in general but can be more critical for older immigrants. For instance, lack of digital skills has been recognized to hinder older people's access to digital services, such as health care services. However, for older immigrants, the issue is that many lack sufficient Finnish language skills to use conventional methods, such as using phone calls to book appointments. The lack of language skills may also affect the use of digital services, even if they possess sufficient digital skills in general. Some older immigrants may also have sufficient language and digital skills, but they may be unfamiliar with services systems that rely heavily on digitalization. Loneliness is another issue that affects older immigrants differently compared to others in society. This is because moving to another country may mean leaving friends and relatives behind, combined with difficulties establishing new social relations, therefore increasing the risk of loneliness.
How can the results of your doctoral research be utilised in practice?
This study recommends employing more bilingual staff so that older immigrants can communicate directly with social and health care service staff without relying on others or interpreters. Welfare service counties may also provide regular home visits to help older immigrants manage their affairs. This is important as some older immigrants do not have any relatives or friends to help with service access, and many do not know about their rights or where and how to seek services. Finland is also in need of structural changes that welcome the employment of ethnic minority groups. An anonymous recruitment process may also address the issue of bias against older people in general and ethnic minorities in particular. Governmental bodies and media outlets may need to include positive stories about ethnic minority groups to promote positive change in attitudes and reinforce social relations between increasingly diverse members of society.
What are the key research methods and materials used in your doctoral research?
This study employs semi-structured interviews with 26 older immigrants and 19 social and health care service providers. Most of the older immigrants are Arabic speakers who come from the Middle East. Most of them moved to Finland based on humanitarian grounds. The service providers offered services to older immigrants from different countries, and their input was important in providing diverse perspectives on the topic. The service providers worked as social workers, medical doctors, directors of non-governmental organizations, service consultants, and care assistants, among others. In addition to the empirical data, the study also examines different Finnish acts on access to services, employment, and citizenship. The study follows inductive and deductive qualitative content analysis approaches and combines social exclusion with access to justice theory. Along with social exclusion, the research articles involved vulnerability theory and Doron's multidimensional model of elder law.
The doctoral dissertation of Alex Berg, M.Soc.Sc., entitled Access to Justice: A Socio-Legal Study on Older Immigrants’ Social Exclusion in Finland, will be examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies. The opponent will be Professor Elina Pirjatanniemi, Åbo Akademi, and the custos will be Professor Anna Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen, University of Eastern Finland. The language of the public defence is English.
For further information, please contact:
Alex Berg, alex.berg(at)uef.fi, +358 50 562 9464
