The focus of the present study is on the concept of syrjäytyminen (social exclusion in English) and the use of the concept as a social phenomenon. The point of view of the study is constructivism, which means that social exclusion is examined as a concept that is discursively made up of its usage in conversations in certain places and times. The main data of the study are the interpellation discussions of the Finnish Parliament, in which social exclusion has had a quite significant role. The time frame used in the present study is set from the 1990s to the 2000s, during which there are three discussions that I have examined. As the context and the baseline, the Swedish parliamentary have been used from same time period. There the concept under the examination is primarily utanförskap which is equivalent for syrjäytyminen.

The main task of the study is to find out how the parliament representatives in Finland and Sweden spoke about social exclusion and how they defined the concept. In addition, the present study shows how these speeches differed from each other because of the party of the speaker, the parliamentary status of the party, and the year of the speech. The situations and discussions between Finland and Sweden are also compared. The theoretical of the study is the conceptual history and studying the intentional political usage of concept. Methods from both political science and history are combined in the theoretical framework.

The findings of the present study include that in every party people have used the concept of social exclusion for their own benefit. In the 1990s, social exclusion was considered as a problem of employment policy. Left-wing parties criticized the commercialism of the working life with the help of social exclusion. In the beginning of the 2000s, social exclusion was introduced as a problem of social and education policy, and the representatives mentioned more often the impacts on the economy of the state. They talked about social exclusion beside education and integration of the immigrants, starting in Sweden during the 1990s. The centre-right political alliance in Sweden connected the concept utanförskap with the regional inequality and dependency on social aid. On the one hand, the welfare states of Finland and Sweden had quite different developmental patterns involving the concepts of social exclusion because of differing political problems and realities. On the other hand, there have also been some transnational similarities because social exclusion has been connected with social policy, education and unemployment problems in both countries.