AFI and Arbeidsliv i Norden: A Nordic view of working life

3,500 articles have been published in the three Scandinavian languages and most of them have been translated to English for the Nordic Labour Journal. Some of them have naturally also covered AFI’s research.

The first time one of AFI’s researchers turned up in AiN was in January 2000, when the very first issue had the lack of nursing staff as a theme. This was Bjørg Aase Sørensen, one of AFI’s most profiled researchers. 

She wrote about nurses and asked whether what was needed was not only more nurses but more nursing roles. Sørensen made comparisons to the USA where nurses often carry out tasks not dissimilar to those doctors perform.

"More nurses would likely remain active in their professions for longer if we saw the development of more differentiated roles,” wrote Bjørg Aase Sørensen (1944 - 2010). 

You can read more articles about Bjørg Aase Sørensen’s research in the fact box. 

But before we talk more about how Arbeidsliv i Norden – and later the Nordic Labour Journa l has covered AFI, a bit more history:

There are two cornerstones in the Nordic cooperation. The Nordic Council is the parliamentarians’ forum. This was established as far back as 1952. Then, a full 19 years later, the Nordic governments’ cooperation was formalised in the Nordic Council of Ministers in 1971. 

In addition to the Council of Nordic prime ministers, there are 11 councils of ministers. Each country appoints a minister for Nordic cooperation with overall responsibility. The labour ministers have been involved since the beginning with their own council of ministers.

To help prepare for the annual meetings of labour ministers and to address various issues, there is also cooperation between civil servants who work with labour market issues.

They work in three different committees, one for the labour market, one for working environments and one for employment law. It was the Nordic Committee of Senior Officials for Labour, EK-A, that started Arbeidsliv i Norden. 

However, as early as in 1980 there was an information magazine callet NAUT-information, an acronym for Nordiska arbetsmarknadsutskottet (the Nordic Labour Market Committee). It was published two to three times a year. 

In 1987, the civil servants proposed setting up a more ambitious publication, and the ministers agreed. 

The Nordic Council of Ministers for Labour in 1987: Henning Dyremose, Denmark; Urpo Leppanen, Finland; Alexander Stefanson, Iceland; Leif Haraldseth, Norway and Anna-Greta Leijon, Sweden.

The publication was called Nordisk Arbetsmarknad – Nordic Labour Market. The first issue was 16 pages long, where two were dedicated to summaries of the articles in Finnish. The other articles were in Swedish, except for two pages dedicated to news briefs provided by the different labour market ministries where all the Scandinavian languages featured. 

“Velkomin, Velkommen, Välkommen, Tervetuloa to Nordisk Arbetsmarknad! greeted the editor Ylva Tivéus.

There was a clear ambition:

“Nordisk Arbetsmarknad is henceforth the name of the publication you need if you want to follow what happens in the Nordic cooperation in the labour market.”

The publication would cover issues like:

• The right to seek employment
• The right to equal treatment
• Border obstacles
• Long-term youth unemployment 

Then as now, skills were a key theme and the first issue therefore had labour market training as a theme. It would be an exaggeration to claim the problem has been solved, 37 years later.

The next step came in the year 2000. That is when Arbeidsliv i Norden was founded, and it also got a sister publication in English – the Nordic Labour Journal – a few months later. 

The publications would be more independent from the civil servants and aim for a larger audience. The Norwegian Work Research Institute AFI was tasked with publishing the magazines, and the Scandinavian version was published four times a year, while the English one came out twice a year.

Berit Kvam was the editor-in-chief and Gunhild Wallin was on a part-time contract.

“The aim is to put a Nordic spotlight on topical issues concerning the labour market and working environments,” wrote Berit Kvam in the first issue.

Arbeidsliv i Norden and the Nordic Labour Journal were published on paper between 2000 and 2009. The publications were digitalised in August 2009 and came out in three language editions: Scandinavian, Finnish and English.

It is precisely the Nordic perspective that is crucial for which articles get published. AiN and NLJ write about Nordic conferences and research and common challenges or labour market issues in a Nordic country that might be of interest to other Nordic countries. 

There is no lack of Nordic meetings, but one example where AFI played a key role was the Nordic Conference on Supported Employment, which was held in Oslo in 2018.

“What would happen if the welfare administration, rather than allowing diagnosis determine who should be given the chance to enter the labour market, really embraced the idea of using the individual’s working ability as a starting point?” asked Øystein Spjelkavik, who is leading in this area in Norway.

One of the unique features of AFI is that the institute has conducted research on many different types of professions. One report that garnered a lot of attention was led by Dag Ellingsen, and looked at power structures in the police and armed forces. 

Here are some examples of other professional groups that AFI has researched and the NLJ has published articles about:

• När känslor blir en produktionsfaktor (2001), where AFI studied service workers at Oslo Airport Gardermoen (in Swedish). 
• Menn i pleie og omsorg (2009) AFI researcher Helge Svare's book about male care workers (in Swedish.
• Working environments influence quality in the media. (2014) Asbjørn Grimsmo and Hanne Heen on journalists.
• Norwegian security guards dread work (2023), a profession which has expanded rapidly. 

And here are a couple of examples of research that looks at more general issues:

• Who killed the Nordic Model? (2019) Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum were the editors of a broad assessment of labour market models in the Nordic region.

• Workplace battlegrounds: Are Norwegian employees being criminalised? (2021) Bitten Nordrik and Tereza Østbø Kuldova's study about so-called facts investigations.

AFI annually publishes its large Working Life Barometer, and regularly also a collective decision-making barometer: 

• Norsk arbetslivsbarometer viktigt verktyg i debatten (2010) (in Swedish)
• New barometer measures the level of collective decision-making in Norway (2016)
• Norwegian barometer highlights the importance of collective decision making (2017)

• Young Norwegians increasingly unhappy with working life (2024)

Arbeidsliv i Norden went fully digital in 2009. For a few years, there were three editions – in addition to the Scandinavian and English ones there was also a Finnish version. 

The Finnish edition of Arbeidsliv i Norden 

The publication has a network of freelance journalists across the Nordics, and in November 2024 there were 12 of them, including Kerstin Ahlberg, the editor of EU & Arbetsrätt, who also writes for Arbeidsliv i Norden. 

The latest update of the website took place in 2016. Björn Lindahl started working for the publication as a freelancer in the first edition in 2000. He had a part-time position from 2009 to 2019 when he took over as editor-in-chief. 

Line Scheistrøen started writing for the publications in November 2022 and has been a part-time employee since January 2024.