This study seeks to examine the reconfiguration of professional groups in welfare service work through the lens of gendered inequalities in order to develop an inclusive research horizon that extends to the middle grade of care workers.
The research design positions workforce change within a wider social and cultural context by highlighting occupational, educational and unionist orders from the viewpoint of Finnish practical nurses.
A weakening anchorage in the welfare state and a differentiation of the patterns of recruitment, employment and industrial relations create segmentation, particular forms of exclusion, and identity instabilities. The article identifies the special vulnerability of the practical nurses institutionally embedded “in‐between” the upper and lower grades, the social and health sector, and the union traditions.
The national policy agenda on workforce change mainly follows the sectoral split and focuses on the established health professions. The unionist agenda of practical nurses in turn reflects interprofessional relationships and tribalism.
This analysis of welfare service work provides insight into social and cultural transformations related to workforce change in a segmented and culturally diverse labour force and offers reflections on the changing nature of craft unionism.
This article argues for the added value of historicised, gender and culture sensitive analysis of the tensions between policy aims, educational, occupational and unionist orders for understanding reconfiguration through inequality‐producing processes.
