Claims to a nation, dressing the part and other boundary making strategies by skilled migrants in response to ethnic categorization

Abstract

This article is about self-defined social identities, other people’s perceptions of us and the potentially conflictual relationship between these two. Building on a Barthian focus on group boundaries, the article takes the interplay between external categorizations and internal group definitions as its point of departure to examine how individuals negotiate the boundaries of their social identities. Based on a case study of skilled migrants with racialized ethnicities in Finland, I look at how they express their self-defined identity as well-to-do, skilled professionals in the face of contradicting categorizations of them as un-skilled, lower-class migrant subjects. I identify two types of complementary approaches employed by the skilled migrants in boundary making strategies to their identity negotiations: those de-emphasizing ethnicity (or its importance), and those emphasizing class status. These approaches are two sides of the same coin; coming from different perspectives, they both aim at a more positively viewed identity, and for individuals to be seen as well-to-do, educated, working professionals, rather than as ethnic migrant subjects. As such, the article also highlights the interconnection of class and ethnicity for the social identities of skilled migrants in Finland.