Downplaying difference: how ethnoracial minorities strive for labour market access in an egalitarian context

Abstract

This article explores the type of destigmatisation strategies minorities use to access employment in Norway, a country characterised by ambiguous egalitarianism, a rapidly changing demographic, and a public “silence about race”. Analysing 52 interviews with minority Norwegians about their job search behaviour, we found that they hide or downplay minority-specific cues in their resumes to avoid immigrant stereotypes and to signal Norwegianness. Non-white informants also engage in detailed management of their phenotypical appearance through photographs but seldom frame their strategies as responses to racial stereotypes. These findings suggest that Norwegian minorities respond to a clearly defined hierarchy of national belonging related to immigrant status, which includes an unarticulated racial component. Drawing on comparative scholarship on destigmatisation, we argue that minorities’ job search strategies are shaped by broader sociocultural factors and highlight the importance of conducting studies of this kind in national contexts that lack a language for addressing racial differences.