What is ”development”?
“Development” does not only happen in the global south. I am critical of the mainstream development narrative, as it often neglects sovereignty of the people, and rather talks about “empathy” reserved for the ”resilient” people living in the global south. This is why I just prefer to talk about politics that is based on global and local solidarity and self-determination. Development is always political, however, they work on different logics.
From a postcolonial perspective, local is always global. In the West, there is an artificial separation of the two.
Development cooperation, based on international development policies, is doing literally local work from start to finish in collaboration with local actors on a community level. Stakeholder mapping, needs assessments, research, implementation and evaluation. This work happens in Helsinki communities as well, usually conducted by community based organizations and NGOs. There are over 100 000 NGOs working in Finland.
The Finns Party famously would like to end all development cooperation, and the National Coalition Party would just trade between countries. This would not be sustainable. The right wing idea is the same internationally as it is locally, to centralize power and wealth that is based on exclusion. The macroeconomic “trickle down” effect has long been debunked.
When I talk about international or global in Helsinki, I don’t mean only discussing international politics in Germany or the US or “international relations” through journalism. I mean local communities across the world that deal with exactly the same issues we do in Helsinki on a daily grassroot level in their own contexts.
These communities live right here with us _as locals_ in their diversity. We can of course talk about specific target groups, multicultural families, diaspora, remigrants, or people who work with international issues, such as development cooperation professionals. But we shouldn’t get stuck in these definitions, if not meaning to serve a specific purpose, as they can become articial binaries that divide people even more.