ABSTRACT
In recent years Finland has witnessed a substantial amount of public debate and concern about vulnerability, well-being, mental-health problems, and anxiety among young people from various backgrounds. In accordance with the ethos of vulnerability and neoliberalism, people are supposed to become employable, resilient, and entrepreneurial, choosing education based on their expected individual needs and what they wish eventually to achieve in life. The focus in this article is on the ethos of vulnerability, and particularly on the cultivation of a vulnerable subjectivity through therapeutically and psychologically oriented knowledge in the neoliberal politics. It is based on individually and jointly produced data from various youth support systems in Finland, and on discussions with young people considered to be vulnerable or ‘at risk’ who are involved in these systems. We argue that both the therapeutic culture and neoliberal politics legitimise and accelerate cultivation of vulnerability while dismissing social expectations and pressure targeted on young people. Vulnerable subjectivity is strengthened by various types of specialists who claim that the self can achieve a better and more satisfying life through the application of psychologically and therapeutically engineered knowledge and professional skills.
