The Construction of Early Social Citizenship: The Lived Institution of Poor Relief in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Finland

The poor relief reform of 1852 in Finland coincided with the first rise of the Finnish national public sphere. Thus, the analysis of readers’ letters published in the nationwide Finnish-language press provides a rare history-from-below approach to the emerging social citizenship. In this chapter, Kokko argues that the poor relief institution in the 1850s Finland constructed an early social citizenship that was based on the interaction between the legislation, local experiences of civil society, and the transnational circulation of knowledge concerning the rights and responsibilities of the citizen. As a case study, the chapter indicates how early social citizenship was formulated in the modern experiential interplay between the local, societal, and transnational.