Mette Andersson

Immigrant youth and the dynamics of marginalization

This article explores the usefulness of traditional sociological perspectives on inequality in light of marginalization processes affecting immigrant youth in Norway and in other Western societies of today. Departing from general theories on inequality and marginalization, and the more specific perspectives on ethnic minority youth in Europe, a trenchant argument in the article is that increasing attention to the construction of normality and otherness in respect to majority-minority relations is needed. The 1990s public debate about immigrant youth in Norway, as earlier in many other Western societies, has been characterized by sensational media stories about ‘problems’ with youth gangs and forced marriages. Another characteristic of the Norwegian public debate is making links between ad hoc political ‘needs’ to solve these problems and researchers’ definitions of the energizing factors of marginalization. In relating the Norwegian situation to the broader European one, where an increasing support for populist right-wing parties and differentialist racist arguments has been a major trend throughout the 1990s, various visions of the future for immigrant youth in Norway are examined.

The relevance of the Black Atlantic in contemporary sport: racial imaginaries in Norway.

Processes of homogenization and differentiation have characterized international sports organizations and competitions for more than a century. So have imaginaries of race as these are linked to sportive stereotypes in various sports. In this article, I discuss how racial imaginaries in two Norwegian sports, basketball and track and field, are informed by the real and imaginary links to the same sports in the USA. Theoretically, the article is informed by Paul Gilroys theory of the Black Atlantic. I ask whether Gilroys theory illuminates present-day processes in Norwegian basketball and track and field, and how the Norwegian case may relate to broader, global processes in sport. The empirical analysis is based on a wide material from Norway, including observational data and interviews with non-white top athletes, coaches, managers, sport journalists and representatives of ethnic minority organizations.

Whiteness, non-whiteness and ‘faith information control’: religion among young people in Grønland, Oslo

Abstract This article is based on a qualitative study of religion among young people in the inner-city multicultural Grønland area in Oslo. We use Goffmans stigma analysis to explore the interplay of ethnicity, race and religion in this particular urban space and beyond. An important observation is that whiteness hides information about faith, or even signals ‘secular’, whereas non-whiteness signifies ‘religious’ across the racial boundary. We examine how visible stigma or prestige symbols connect with invisible ones to different degrees and with various consequences across space. ‘Faith information control’ is closely attached to the status of faith as a stigma symbol, and further to the ethnic and racial marking of the interaction context. By exploring the intersections of ethnicity, race and religion in everyday life, we contribute to the ‘third wave’ of whiteness studies.

The social imaginary of first generation Europeans

Scientific and political commentators on social ‘uprisings’ and political engagement among second generation immigrants in Europe often refer to quantitative indicators of structural integration in national labour and school systems. Equally, if not more, important with regard to the social engagement and political mobilisation in the second generation, is the transnational transmittance of literature, music, film and critical events in which the fate of second generation immigrants is a central thematic. Such transmission, through internet portals designed for ethnic/racial/religious minority youth, through various micro-media, and through diaspora networks, energise a common social imaginary for European second generation immigrants, or first generation Europeans. This social imaginary illustrates the contested nature of the national people in Europe today, and it is recognised by its forms of representation, the modes of transmission between strangers, and by a specific secular temporal mode. I suggest a continuum model of a social imaginary, where particularistic and universalistic solidarities represent outer points, and where various social identity foci (e.g. religion, ethnicity, anti-racism) are illustrated with references to research on European second generation immigrants. The article ends with suggesting some promising developments for further inquires of this social imaginary in social movement studies.

The debate about multicultural Norway before and after 22 July 2011

In the aftermath of Anders Behring Breivik’s terrorist acts, which left 77 victims dead in Oslo and Utøya on the afternoon of 22 July 2011, many envisaged a new and more positive debate on multicultural society in Norway. The Norwegian prime minister’s plea to meet the terrorist’s acts with more democracy and openness was televised worldwide, and he was praised for urging people not to respond to violence with violence. Torch and rose marches were arranged in several Norwegian cities, and, during the televised official memorial ceremony on 21 August, religious leaders from many faith communities stood together in grief. Funeral speeches by the prime minister and other central officials in the Labour Party and its youth wing were broadcast on national TV channels and reproduced in newspapers, and obituaries were printed in several newspapers. Before the prime minister and the minister for justice officially revealed that the terrorist was a white Christian Norwegian (at a press conference at 22:00 on 22 July), a terrorism researcher had suggested that Islamic terrorists were behind the attack, and reports of Muslims being harassed in the streets of Oslo were spreading through the Internet. Norwegian Muslims interviewed in the following days revealed that they had been terrified by the thought of what would happen in Norway if Islamists had been behind the terrorist acts. The period from 22 July to 13 August was declared a period of ‘civil peace’ (borgfred), and the election campaign for the municipal and county elections of 10 September was postponed. During this period (extended to 23 August with respect to TV debates), public political debate concerning immigration and integration was almost non-existent. Web surveys conducted in March/April 2011 and August 2011 showed that after 22 July, personal and institutional trust had increased among the Norwegian population and a modest increase in civic engagement among youth was also found (Wollebæk et al. 2012). Now, less than a year later, it is difficult to say whether the terrible events of 22 July have contributed to an enduring change in trust levels in Norway or to gauge the extent to which they have influenced the Norwegian debate about immigration, religion and integration. To examine these questions, we need to understand what

‘Gaza in Oslo’: Social imaginaries in the political engagement of Norwegian minority youth

In the winter of 2008/09 thousands of people took to the streets of Oslo to demonstrate against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Young people of visible minority and Muslim background were central actors in these demonstrations. The public expression of Muslim identities and symbols during the demonstrations along with clashes between some of the young demonstrators and the police fuelled the already polarized debate concerning the integration of immigrant youth and Islamic radicalism existing in the Norwegian public realm. Using data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork and web-ethnography we follow the engagement of youth from a multi-ethnic Oslo mosque both online and offline. In critical dialogue with perspectives on political contention and transnational political activism, we analyse this transnational mobilization in terms of the ‘social imaginaries’ that mediated engagement with the Gaza question: ‘the global Muslim imaginary’, ‘secular leftist internationalism’ and ‘integration nations’.

Corporate multiculturalism bounces across the Atlantic. The introduction of semi-professional basketball in Norway

The paper analyses the introduction of a semi-professional basketball league in Norway in 2000. The league, Basketball League of Norway (BLNO), and the profile values and marketing ideas associated with it, was informed by North American NBA and its associated multicultural and anti-racist profile. I argue that the BLNO utilised an American-type corporate multiculturalism in designing its new profile in Norway. Yet, this corporate multiculturalism simultaneously opens up for interethnic solidarity and negotiation of exclusion among players on the ground. And, it may be an indicator of a broader transnational tendency, where sports marginal in national sports hierarchies utilise corporate multiculturalism to gain attraction, and to recruit athletes from ethnic and racial minority groups.