Abstract
This research paper examines the instances of representation of the expatriate Finnish citizen in the different stages of the legislative process in Finland: the preparation of law bills, the process in the Parliamentary committees and in the plenary sessions of the Finnish Parliament Eduskunta. The aim is to answer the questions how many and what kind of expatriate Finns issues there has been on the political agenda, when those issues were there, and who acted for the expatriates then. Here, the research approach is descriptive. Newly digitalized collections of legislative documents create novel opportunities to seek efficiently through a large number of records and find topics that have not gained much attention, in addition to the more obvious cases such as the dual citizenship or recently the postal voting. In Finland, the Finnish diaspora has not been a fervently debated issue and it is only rarely mentioned in the plenary debates of the Parliament. The data includes two kinds of sources, actions by the MPs and Government bills. In the Finnish case, the number of relevant documents is small. Therefore, including different types of text into a single study is necessary to find out the political forces that have influence on the issues concerning the Finnish citizen abroad.
Highlights
How does the Finnish Parliament Eduskunta handle issues which concern the Finnish citizen living abroad? The analysis draws along Pitkin’s theory of representation, substantive representation, in the context of parliamentary actions: how the expatriate citizen’s issues are treated in the legislative agenda, who is acting for the expatriates and which kind of issues arise in the parliamentary speeches, motions and questions
In 2019 parliamentary elections, where the postal voting was used the first time, the expatriate turnout reached its maximum at 12.6% (32,053 votes) which was far less than the 72.1% among citizen living in Finland
Issues which are important to the Finnish expatriates or at least a part of them might have been cases of advocacy rather than representation
Summary
How does the Finnish Parliament Eduskunta handle issues which concern the Finnish citizen living abroad? The analysis draws along Pitkin’s theory of representation, substantive representation, in the context of parliamentary actions: how the expatriate citizen’s issues are treated in the legislative agenda, who is acting for the expatriates and which kind of issues arise in the parliamentary speeches, motions and questions. The number of instances where the expatriate citizen appeared in the parliamentary speeches, questions, motions and Government bills was surprisingly small. The Constitutional Law Committee considered issues of the citizenship, the electoral participation and conscription, and it listened to expert opinions by the Finland Society and the Expatriate Parliament. Those were cases where the expatriates were clearly represented by their advocate organization which means that someone in the Committee has invited them into the session as an expert. Most of the budgetary motions (11) concern culture and education, like the Finnish schools abroad, or regarding the size of the budget, small amounts of funding to a museum or an association connecting folk dance groups. With the exception of dual citizenship, the impact of the motions was small
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