When Policymakers and Parents Meet Political Discourses: Fields and Subject Positions in the Finnish Debates on Children’s Day Care

This paper examines how policymakers and citizens participate in the debates on child day care in Finland. Bourdieusian and Foucauldian theories are brought together to investigate two aspects of political action: the social positions from which actors participate in the debates and the positions that the participants construct for citizens. I analyze how actors justify their policy proposals with popular assumptions on the position of families, children and mothers. I conclude that the similarities and differences in the strategies of policymakers and citizens can be explained in terms of the interplay of their positions of agency and discursive subject positions.