Governing through absence: the analysis and wider implications of Finnish policy discourses on ageing and care in neo-liberal times

Contemporary ageing policy often constructs demographic change as a challenge requiring urgent intervention. While ageing is not seen as a problem per se, in policy debate it is often presented as a crisis. Consequently, countries and institutions have sought to identify solutions to the represented problem. A common policy response in Western nations has been to focus on individual activity as a solution. The implications of such developments are, however, seldom explicitly discussed. This paper focuses on Finland, a country often positioned as a Nordic welfare state. Using the post-structuralist approach ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be’ (WPR), the paper examines the solutions and problems represented in Finnish policy to changing demographics, highlighting the implications for older adults and their care. We conducted a multi-step analysis of a corpus of 42 governmental policy documents and related documents from 2002-2024 on ageing, care, welfare, digitalisation, housing and the environment, in relation to older people. From these, we excluded research and project reports, working group memoranda, and guidelines for professionals, to focus on a core group of 11 documents from 2008-2024 that were more specifically on the health and social care of older adults. The analysis shows that the predominant responsibility for care of older adults is laid on older adults themselves, their family members, and peers, while the responsibility of the state is largely silenced. The paper highlights the wider analytical, policy and practice implications of neo-liberal ageing policy and discusses how older adults are governed through policy in the midst of the absent interaction between policy, conceptual debates and everyday life material realities through a three-level conceptual model. This absence is not merely a gap but a mode of governance that reflects broader neo-liberal shifts in welfare policy.