Can you imagine? : An imaginary of Finland's higher education as anti-oppressive, intersectional practice

Abstract

This chapter presents an imagined future scenario following a tweet by Minister of Interior Maria Ohisalo in June 2020 on Finland’s Government Action Plan for Gender Equality. In our counterfactual imaginary, the government resigns and new elections result in a victory of the Left and Green parties, which were leading the polls at the time. We examine how Finnish higher education (HE) could develop in response to calls for intersectional and anti-oppressive practice on the basis of existing research, the Government Action Plan for Gender Equality, and the Higher Education Accessibility plan. Our counterfactual framework critically examines historical processes and possible futures emerging from them. This approach calls for an unlearning of oppressive histories and thus challenges historical determinism, offers plausible alternate readings of historical and political events, and evaluates taken-for-granted assumptions by making historical and political contingencies visible. We identify fruitful directions for Intercultural Education (IE) in Finland that emerge as a result of our counterfactual imaginary and close with recommendations for those overseeing, working, and studying at Finnish universities, for a concerted effort to move IE and Finnish HE in general towards intersectional anti-oppressive practice.