The chapters in this volume, Decolonising Social Work in Finland: Racialisation and Practices of Care, identify how colonial structures, systems, knowledge and ways of being still influence society and social work practices in Finland. The contributions point to the need for critical reflection by practitioners and policy makers in the Finnish welfare state on the ways that coloniality is embedded in the narratives, logics and policies in the universal welfare state, standardising Whiteness, heteronormativity, saviourism and dominance. Through richly nuanced explorations of case studies, the first chapters in this collection respond to the systemic and subtle ways that policies and practices in the Finnish welfare state perpetuate structural violence on those seen as being ‘other’. In pointing out the myriad ways that asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants inhabit precarious circumstances amid welfare state nationalism and homonationalism, the authors call for a more emancipatory Finnish social work praxis where social workers confront the silences surrounding the limitations surrounding social workers’ responsibilities.

Indeed, years of financial crises and policies of austerity have created a harsh climate for social work in Finland, and throughout the world, to fulfil its mission to promote social justice. Some have described a tectonic shift in many countries in the Global North from the welfare to the workfare state, in which a person's worth no longer rests on their social citizenship in the community, but is reduced to their ability to work and survive conditions of economic insecurity (McDonald, 2006). Kantola et al (2022) describe a Finland where people are increasingly categorised as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, existing in sociopolitical bubbles separate from other groups of people in society. In these circumstances, where the common humanity of all residents is challenged through the enactment of policies intended to punish those deemed as unworthy, the silence of social workers can be a defensive – or even trauma – response to working in neoliberal circumstances where heavy workloads, burnout and micromanaging prevail. Current trends in Finland follow what Loh and Hu (2014) have described as the erosion of professional autonomy through coerced complicity with neoliberal management. The increasing use of punitive eligibility policies that often withdraw support from the most vulnerable in social work restricts social workers’ ability to enact socially just decisions rather than simply procedurally correct ones.