Labour Without the Human: How Finland’s migration reforms shift integration onto migrants

Finland’s migration and integration reforms promise efficiency and labour market responsiveness. But beneath the surface lies a troubling logic: commodifying labour while stripping away the rights and humanity of those who provide it. This post unpacks how different policies and tightened residency rules shift systemic responsibilities onto migrants, and why this approach is both politically convenient and morally hollow.

The Flawed Logic Behind Finland’s Migration and Integration Reforms of the 2020s

Migration and integration have become defining issues in Finland’s policy landscape. Recent reforms such as TE24, KOTO24, labour market packages, and changes to residence and citizenship rules are often presented as pragmatic responses to labour shortages and efficiency goals. Yet beneath this veneer lies a troubling logic: a commitment to the ethos of “labour without the human.”

This phrase captures a long-standing tendency in Western migration regimes, dating back over 400 years to slavery, to treat labour as a commodity while stripping away the social, economic, and political dimensions of the human beings who provide it. Despite repeated historical failures of this approach, Finland’s recent policies under Prime Minister Orpo’s government have made this logic more explicit than ever.

The result? Integration is increasingly framed not as a shared societal responsibility but as an individual burden that is pushed squarely onto migrants themselves.

The flaw of 1970s European guest worker programmes

Let us take one example from the recent past. In the mid-twentieth century, there was a substantial demand for labour in Europe, and migration to and within Europe – for instance, from Finland to Sweden – was significant. This movement was enabled by European guest worker programmes (GWPs), which were not intended to lead to permanent settlement but rather to make temporary use of migrants’ labour.

The consequences of this logic became evident in the resettlement outcomes of GWPs following the first oil crisis of 1973. When the demand for labour suddenly declined, it was assumed that migrants would return to their countries of origin. However, this did not happen as expected; many remained in their new countries of residence. There had been no preparation for this.

What had been intended as a temporary labour force became a permanent presence across various European countries. The question of “integration” emerged, yet it was not effectively addressed. New forms of inequality arose, such as the segmentation of labour markets. Although recruitment was halted, workers began to bring their families to Europe, leading to the formation of large ethnic communities. Their integration and language acquisition, however, were largely left to their own resources.

Contradictory reforms, unified logic

At first glance, Finland’s current migration and integration policies appear fragmented, even contradictory. On one hand, there is rhetoric about attracting talent and skills; on the other, reforms tighten conditions for residence, employment, and citizenship. Viewed through the lens of GWPs, these contradictions dissolve.

GWPs have always operated on the principle of extracting labour while minimising the rights and costs associated with the humans who provide it. Finland’s current trajectory mirrors this logic, effectively shifting the integration burden to migrants in a systemic manner. Below, I examine how specific reforms operationalise this shift:

1. Employment Services (TE24) and Integration (KOTO24) Reforms: Fragmentation and shortcuts

These reforms restructure integration services across 45 employment regions, creating uneven capacities and coordination gaps among municipalities, educational institutions, ministries, and employers. Migrants, especially those with complex legal statuses, such as international students or workers subject to labour market availability assessment, risk falling through these cracks, beginning a journey from the core of society to its margins.

The TE24 and KOTO24 reforms introduce systemic changes that, while rational on paper, risk deepening the abdication of responsibility for migrant integration in three ways:

• Fragmentation of services: Integration services are spread across 308 municipalities and 45 employment regions, each with varying capacities to manage the twin transition. This unevenness creates structural gaps that migrants, especially those with complex legal statuses, can easily fall through, beginning a slow drift from the core of society to its margins: economically, socially, and legally.
• Efficiency over quality: Funding mechanisms rooted in austerity incentivise shortcut strategies that prioritise speed and quantity over meaningful outcomes. The obsession with efficiency risks produces superficial integration rather than genuine inclusion.
• Coordination gaps: Weak links between municipalities, educational institutions, ministries, employers, and other actors leave cracks in the system. Migrants who slip through these cracks often face punitive consequences later, through rules like the 3/6-month unemployment condition or tightened residency and citizenship requirements.

To avoid penalties such as blacklisting or loss of assistance, migrants are forced to step in personally, funding their own “stop-gap” measures such as self-funded language courses or cling to exploitative jobs, sometimes even through informal arrangements like subletting platform accounts to avoid any use of welfare and social support – even in the exact moments and situations that such frameworks were developed for.

Finally, a performance of integration becomes inevitable. Migrants who emerge from rushed processes will have to “fake it until they make it”, investing in privately funded interventions to achieve the outcomes that the formal system fails to deliver. Integration, in this model, is no longer a shared societal responsibility but an individual gamble.

2. Linking Rights to Employment: Commodification at its core

Perhaps the starkest manifestation of the “labour without the human” logic is the tightening of rules that link migrants’ right to stay in Finland to uninterrupted employment. Integration is reduced to the ability to sell labour and remain perpetually employable. Under conditions like the 3/6-month unemployment rule, migrants must be machine-like perfect: never falter, never need help, and if they do, fix themselves quickly, or face expulsion.

Moreover, these policies may effectively function as a trap. Rules such as the 3/6‑month unemployment limit are likely to generate problematic employment situations, pushing some migrants into precarious or even unlawful labour arrangements. For instance, highly educated migrants may end up in deskilled platform work, such as food delivery, despite holding advanced qualifications, while others may become vulnerable to exploitative or even abusive employment conditions.

The resulting commodification is extreme: migrants’ right to stay is conditional on their continuous labour market participation, effectively reducing them to units of labour rather than full rights-bearing individuals. Migrants contribute to Finland’s social safety nets but are effectively barred from drawing on them without jeopardising future residency or citizenship prospects. The message is clear: you are unequal, and your belonging is conditional.

3. Weakening Industrial Relations: A Blow to migrant leverage

Labour unions remain a critical defender of fair working conditions. Yet recently proposed and pushed changes such as those concerning more use of local bargaining, restrictions on solidarity strikes, and relaxed firing conditions chip away at union power while strengthening employer leverage. Migrants, already positioned at the margins of the labour market in sectors like care, construction, and platform work, will be the first to suffer.

If migrants’ vulnerability – owing to poor integration – becomes the lever that drags entire sectors into precarity, relations between migrants and the Finnish working class will deteriorate further, deepening social and economic segregation. Labour or skill is the strongest leverage a migrant has in Finland, and the defender of that is the union – so anything that weakens the union is also a direct hit to migrants leverage as legitimate members of society who can negotiate for better conditions.

Be a stellar non-citizen—or leave

Recent migration reforms are likely to push migrants to do whatever it takes to avoid unemployment. They will seek to avoid any reliance on welfare and social security—for too long, whatever that means. They will strive to be stellar non-citizens, often at their own expense, both literally and figuratively.

This includes what sociologist Michael Burawoy (1979) terms compliance or consent. In this context, consent refers to a situation in which individuals actively agree to something they do not genuinely accept, because their hands are effectively tied and they lack viable alternatives.

In practice, this form of consent or compliance may involve finding one’s own way of dealing with a problematic employer, self-funding re-skilling, or moving between sectors. And if one grows tired of this ongoing struggle for survival within the first six years in Finland, then leaving remains the alternative.

Indeed, leaving may be an implicit objective of current policies. Migrants are expected to leave before they cross the threshold at which they become eligible for more secure and less controllable rights, and thus become more akin to citizens. Migrants in transition to citizenship are often perceived as more costly, while those in their initial, highly precarious years can be more easily kept cheap. Therefore, Finland has effectively expanded the period during which migrants can be cornered into giving the most of their labour while taking the least from the welfare state.

The Consequences: Conditional belonging

The cumulative effect of these reforms is stark: integration becomes an individual burden, and belonging, if achieved at all, remains conditional. This shift follows the state’s divestment from systemic integration responsibilities and the transfer of even greater obligations onto migrants themselves. Faced with this reality, migrants have few options and face a stark choice: comply with conditions they cannot truly agree with –Burawoy’s “consent under constraint” – or leave Finland. Policymakers know most will comply, which makes this a politically elegant solution, but one that is morally hollow.

Unintended inequality drivers embedded in TE24 and KOTO24 will create service gaps and regional variations that migrants can only address at a personal level. At the same time, if unions lose significant power under labour market reforms, migrants will be stripped of a crucial ally, widening the rift between them and the Finnish working class. The result is deeper segregation and marginalisation, not only in the labour market but across economic, social, and political spheres. Individual efforts, no matter how determined, cannot compensate for the structurally produced reality of systemic exclusion.

Towards a mutual, shared, and comprehensive integration framework

It would be impolite to end on critique alone. So, what might a better alternative look like? I propose a mutual, shared, and comprehensive integration framework – one that restores integration as a collective responsibility rather than an individual gamble. This framework should include:

• National equity floors to guarantee minimum service standards across regions, especially under the new administrative structure.
• Meaningful indicators that go beyond superficial metrics like numbers served or employed, focusing instead on quality, fairness, and opportunities for progression.
• Reciprocity – a genuine give-and-take relationship between Finland and migrants, echoing past practices that valued mutual contribution.

In practice, this could mean inclusive organising, system-level interventions to dismantle the guest worker ethos, and co-governance mechanisms that prioritise integration as a shared societal project. Only then can Finland move beyond conditional belonging toward genuine inclusion.

And only in this way can Finland truly attract talent and skills—by recognising people as human beings. Only then can the national economy develop on a balanced and sustainable footing in the future. Under the current hostile migration policy, these very conditions are being undermined, including the fundamental requirement of a balanced population age structure. By pushing working-age and willing individuals out of the country, Finland risks deepening its own economic challenges, while simultaneously exploiting people and damaging its international reputation.

Final thoughts

Finland’s migration and integration reforms may appear pragmatic, but their underlying logic is deeply flawed. By commodifying labour and shifting systemic responsibilities onto individuals, these policies risk producing not integration but segregation – economic, social, and political. If belonging remains conditional, the promise of a truly inclusive Finland will remain elusive.

This blog is adapted from an invited talk delivered within the project Employment and Social Security Trajectories of the Unemployed Population, funded by the Kone Foundation, at the seminar On the Margins of the Labour Market – Researcher and Expert Seminar on Labour Market Policy, held on 12 December 2025 at Tampere University.