Stereotyping informs Finnish career counselors’ discretion as street-level integrators

This research studies the work of Finnish career counselors who support migrant students and clients. Drawing on the street-level bureaucracy approach, it investigates how stereotyping is applied as a discretionary pattern of practice in career counseling and how this informs the role of career counselors as street-level integrators. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with career counselors from basic and secondary education and from an integration training program for adults. The main findings indicate that career counselors use stereotyping both to clarify structural complexity and to simplify personal encounters with migrants.