Being “The Damned Foreigner”: Affective National Sentiments and Racialization of Lithuanians in Iceland

Abstract

The discussion draws from recent writing on the meaning of ‘whiteness’ in the Nordic countries, emphasizing the importance to understand racialization in different localities. Racism is entangled with affective meanings related to discourse of the nation, furthermore, as shaped by global discourses and class. The discussion exemplifies this in the context of migrants from Lithuania in Iceland, demonstrating how they become racialized in Iceland during the boom period in the early 2000s.