Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the interplay of multiple temporalities, this presentation examines how a high-profile, intensely politicized 'crisis' is first turned into a project and later realized in the everyday work of the project's employees.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation draws from ethnographic material collected in an on-going project aiming to prevent sexual offenses against minors in a Northern Finnish city. The pilot project was initiated as a response to a series of sex crimes involving adult males of immigration background and local under-age girls. These crimes, which attracted widespread media attention in December 2018 and in early 2019, became to be regarded as a crisis that required government intervention and concrete actions from politicians and the city officials. Consequently, after being promised a generous government grant, the city began to address the 'crisis' through the project form. In this presentation, I reflect on my participant observation with the psychosocial support team working in the project through examining the temporalities of a crisis, on one hand, and the temporalities of a project, on the other. What happens when the project form is mobilized to address a local 'crisis' that ties into national politics and globally powerful discourses on immigration control, crime and children's rights? How do the employees navigate the expectations deriving from the crisis framework through which the politicians and media outlets narrate the events, on one hand, and the expectations linked to the project form and its realities, on the other? Focusing on the interplay of multiple temporalities, then, this presentation examines how a high-profile, intensely politicized 'crisis' is first turned into a project and later realized in the everyday work of the project's employees.