Abstract
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the theorizing of diversity management, studied from a postcolonial perspective. This paper draws on an empirical study of a Swedish municipal school for adults in order to theorize how construction of privileged and disadvantaged ethnic identities is an integral diversity management practice, situated in the Swedish context. Further, the paper looks not only at limiting identity construction effects, but also at the traces of ongoing resistance. The contribution of the postcolonial lens in the study of workplace diversity lies in the conceptual space it provides for rendering visible, and legitimizing, non-traditional forms of resistance to hierarchical differentiation of cultural identities.
The overarching purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge of the ways, in which a naturalized and inherently hierarchical notion of cultural identity informs context-specific workplace diversity management. More specifically, this paper draws a conceptual framework based on postcolonial theory in order to theorize how an essentialist notion of national culture contributes to the construction of ethnical minorities as culturally inferior. Such identity constructs, in turn, are the taken-for-granted justification of organizational exclusion of ethnic minorities in the studied organizational context, a Swedish municipal school for adults. However, the argument of this paper is that non-traditional forms of resistance continuously challenge non-realist representations of cultural identity, leaving the cultural identity of the school in a perpetual crisis.
Recent research on workplace diversity and diversity management points to the essentialist view of social identity as one distinct obstacle in organizations’ attempts to implement and manage diversity. As critical diversity scholars have shown, workplace diversity tends to be structured along the lines of difference and inequality between the historically privileged and disadvantaged groups (De Los Reyes, 2001; Prasad and Mills, 1997; Prasad et al., 2006). More specifically, one argument is that the discursive hierarchies between the historically disadvantaged groups and those in privileged positions of whiteness, masculinity or management (the list is not exhaustive) reaffirm the status quo of the management practices (Zanoni and Janssens, 2004) and distribute organizational resources unequally, along the lines of class, race and gender (Acker, 2006; Ely and Meyerson, 1999). The examination of organizations’ complicity in excluding and devaluing historically disadvantaged groups is therefore an important analytical move in bringing the organizations back into the analysis of diversity. Also, differentiation of historically disadvantaged groups through organizing suggests that organizations have a considerable interest in maintaining certain national, ethnic, racial or gendered self-images.
It has been pointed out by Nkomo and Cox (1996) that identity is one central concept for understanding of diversity in organizations. I want to draw a parallel to recent developments within organization studies, which acknowledge the importance of identity in the study of organizations, as they adhere to a “becoming” or “identity work,” rather than “state of being” view of identity (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2004; Alvesson, 1996; Phillips and Hardy, 2002; Whetten and Godfrey, 1998). Such a view of identity suggests that identity is constructed through differentiation and binary opposites (Hall and Du Gay, 1996). The view of identity as constructed through differentiation suggests that identity construction can be seen as a critical space from which exercise of power, but also of resistance, is possible. Thus, my argument is that it is important to open up the supposedly stable self-identity of organizations and management for examination, in order to bring forth the record of ongoing resistance to production of privileged and disadvantaged identity positions.
I argue that a fruitful path in the theorizing of workplace diversity is to study it as identity work, that is, the way organizations construct hierarchies between social identity groups, in order to maintain gendered, racialized or nationalistic self-images. Furthermore, tensions, inconsistencies and ambivalences need to be brought forth as a record of ongoing resistance and subversion. Postcolonial theory provides the necessary conceptual space for the analysis of the ways historically disadvantaged group identities are constructed through organizing, and resisted through non-traditional means (for a discussion, see e.g. Prasad, 2003). Also, postcolonial theory allows us to acknowledge the local character of diversity management (Boxenbaum, 2006).
The state of workplace diversity research
Two decades of diversity management research have brought considerable advances in what we know about the business case for diversity, implementation of diversity management in organizations and workplace diversity beyond diversity management philosophy. The business case for diversity of the late 80s is an important acknowledgment that it is no longer legitimate or profitable to exclude women, or racial and ethnic minorities from the workplace. However, researchers were quick to observe that the business case for diversity tended to smooth over the less cheerful aspects of workplace diversity, such harassment, discrimination, conflicts and unwillingness to redistribute organizational privileges (e.g. Prasad and Mills, 1997). In other words, the existing diversity research supports the overarching goal of diversity management, namely the inclusion and non-discrimination of various identity groups. However, the existing research also problematizes the business case for diversity on the basis of its unwillingness to grapple with power inequalities, management’s complicity in the history of exclusion and contextual specificity of various diversity management practices. Thus, one way to define the common concerns of diversity research is through its overarching commitment to identifying the conditions for and obstacles to egalitarian management of workplace diversity.
The current state of diversity research could be characterized as consisting of two major lines of research. The first line of research studies the implementation and internationalization of the business case for diversity. Here we have research, which has investigated the diversity management rhetoric, drawing on neo-institutional theory and critical discourse analysis. Critical examination of the business case for diversity, with neo-institutional theory and discourse analysis as foundation suggests that diversity management rhetoric deemphasizes management’s complicity in the history of exclusion and focuses on economic and functionalist side of workplace diversity. For example, Litvin’s (2002, 2006) analysis of North American diversity management shows that diversity management may be becoming common knowledge in the US. Homogeneity is created, but not change, argues Litvin, because diversity management rhetoric reinforces omissions of issues such as discrimination or harassment in the pro-diversity work. Kirby and Harter (2003) demonstrate how diversity management arguments systematically circumvent ethical and human side of workplace diversity. Zanoni and Janssens (2004) findings on how human resource managers understand workplace diversity are remarkably similar to Kirby and Harter’s. Also, Prasad and Prasad (2002) point out that diversity management may be imitated as a managerial trend, yet more serious aspects of workplace diversity such as conflicts, discrimination and resistance to change are left out of the diversity management rhetoric.
Research concerned with appropriation of diversity management in different national contexts has demonstrated that diversity management rhetoric, once imported into a specific national context, is altered to suit local conditions (Boxenbaum, 2006; Jones et al., 2000). For example, Swedish appropriation of diversity management is characterized by the government, as opposed to the private sector, as a leading stakeholder in diversity implementation. Also, in the Swedish context, the term “diversity” tends to be used synonymously with cultural/ethnic diversity (Leijon and Omanovic, 2001; Mlekov and Widell, 2003; Westin, 2001) or immigrant integration (De Los Reyes, 2001). Trux (2002), in her study of Finnish pro-diversity efforts, argues that egalitarian workplace diversity practices might exist without diversity management rhetoric. Similarly, Leijon and Widell (2002) suggest that egalitarian organizations need to be constructed from within their social context. Thus, these research findings suggest that no universal definition of diversity management can be found. Contextual readings of workplace diversity practices are called for instead, examining exclusion and inclusion practices.
The second line of diversity research investigates workplace diversity beyond the business case for diversity. Research contributions here range from the mapping of inequality patterns between various social identity groups to the more recent identity politics approach to workplace diversity. One distinct set of contributions can be attributed to social identity theory-based research. This research suggests that out-groups, that is, social identity groups associated with lesser status and access to resources such as women, or racial and ethnic minorities, continue to face inequalities in organizations (Clair et al., 2005; Hewstone et al., 2002; Joshi et al., 2006; Ogbonna and Harris, 2006; Van Der Vegt and Bunderson, 2005). For example, study of ingroup (white, males) and outgroup (women, ethnic and racial minorities) dynamics show inequality in performance and salary levels between the groups (Joshi et al., 2006). There is evidence of indirect discrimination of ethnically diverse employees through reference to “language skills” (Ogbonna and Harris, 2006), the fear of negative treatment among invisible social identity groups (Clair et al., 2005) or the disadvantages of minority position in organizations for low status groups only (Hewstone et al., 2002).
However, social identity theory does not provide the conceptual space to account for the salience of specific identity categories within specific national and organizational contexts. Also, social identity theory tells us how social identity categories are related to unequal distribution of social and economic resources, yet it does not theorize the ways through which organizations contribute to the creation and maintenance of disadvantaged identity categories through organizing. Therefore, the more recent development within workplace diversity research focuses on context-specific identity politics in organizations. More specifically, numerous diversity scholars have pointed that organizations actively construct disadvantaged and privileged identities and distribute resources in unequal fashion (e.g. Acker, 2006; Hearn and Collinson, 2006; Mirchandani and Butler, 2006). The active role organizations play in the creation and maintenance of gendered hierarchies is well documented in management research (e.g. Alvesson and Billing, 1997; Benschop, 2006; Calas and Smircich, 1996). However, as Ely and Meyerson (1999), together with Konrad (2003) and Prasad et al. (2006) suggest, organizations are best understood as not only gendered, but also “raced,” “classed” or heteronormative. Thus, recent contributions to workplace diversity research focus on organizational production of hierarchies, based on categories such as ethnicity and race (Proudford and Nkomo, 2006) or sexual orientation (Creed, 2006; Humphrey, 1999; Skidmore, 2004).
The current state of diversity research suggests one path toward further theorizing of diversity management is by (a) opening the analysis for context-sensitive reading of workplace diversity practices and (b) focusing on the organizational complicity in the production of disadvantaged and privileged identities. The aim of this paper is to build on these insights and investigate how reified constructs of cultural identity perpetuate unequal power relations in the Swedish workplace diversity context. More specifically, this paper draws on postcolonial theory to analyze construction of cultural identity, its implications for organizing and the non-traditional forms of resistance.
Postcolonial theory critiques the continuation of cultural-racial categorization, established during and through the colonial era, and embedded in representational practices and institutionalized relations of power. Furthermore, postcolonial theory is engaged in decoding non-traditional forms of agency and resistance to such discourses and practices (for summary see e.g. Gandhi, 1998; Prasad, 2003). Thus, postcolonial theory provides a range of excellent theoretical tools to examine the relation between constructs of cultural identity, institutionalized relations of power and resistance.
My critique of the notion of superior cultural identity and the diversity management practices it informs would be misunderstood if viewed as a celebration of another Master Narrative’s fall. Such a task alone would be, as Bhabha (1994: 6) expresses it, a “profoundly parochial enterprise.” The interrogation of managerial and organizational claims of cultural superiority and inclusion of non-traditional forms of resistance in the analysis must be seen as an opening up of a critical space for rethinking of ethnicized/racialized relations of power.
Theoretical perspective
The basic tenets of postcolonial analysis
Hochschild (2006), in his study of the history of slavery, makes a note of a slave ship named “Liberté, egalité, fraternité.” The coupling of slave transportation and the ideal of equality was not a cruel irony, intended by the ship owners, but a symptom of that era’s view of human nature. During colonial era, the general ideal of human equality and the notion of certain people’s subordination were not seen as opposites, nor did they pose an intellectual challenge for the supporters of freedom and equality. In fact, many liberal intellectuals of the time had great difficulties imaging the abolition of slavery, because slavery was perceived as an effect of natural differences between races. The ship name is one example of many paradoxical couplings of ideas of equality with ideas of domination that characterized the Western colonial era. The significance of Western colonialism as an epistemological point of reference lies in it not being only a project of geopolitical conquest, but also an attempt to achieve moral, intellectual and psychological domination over the colonized people. Western colonialism displaced earlier political, economic and epistemological systems, replacing them with new web of relations and systems of thought (see Chakrabarty, 2000, or Prasad, 2006, for discussion). Political decolonization proved to be insufficient to break out of this web of unequal relations. Examples of colonial eras consequences beyond decolonization would be the post-World War II development discourse or certain aspects of globalization, such as operations of multinational corporations, perpetuating neo-colonial domination and control (Escobar, 1995; Gopal et al., 2003; Mohanty, 2003).
Postcolonial theory, in turn, is an epistemological perspective engaged in the critique of, and theorizing beyond, epistemological consequences of the colonial era (for a discussion see Bhabha, 1994; Gandhi, 1998; Prasad, 2006). Postcolonial theory encompasses great variation and breadth, and is not a unitary theory, but a set of syncretic analytic positions (Prasad, 2006: 7). One common assumption, shared by postcolonial analysis, is that colonialism and neo-colonial domination are linked to Western modernity, its binary mode of thought and a cultural representation system, which once made it possible to believe in compatibility of liberty, equality and slavery. The overarching structure of the colonial and neo-colonial mindset is the idea of Europe, or the West, which can be used interchangeably (for a discussion see Prasad, 2003, 2006). The idea of Europe can be seen as a discourse, not dissimilar to the discourse of Occident used by Said (1978), which organizes and perpetuates a non-realist representation of Europe as a superior cultural essence.
The idea of Europe is characterized by a binary and hierarchical structuring of the representation of culture and ethnicity. Europe/the West is represented as moral and intellectually superior, while the other parts of the world, and their people, are viewed to be in a diametrically opposite and inferior position. Europe is therefore conceptualized as civilized, developed, liberal, modern, scientific and secular, while the rest of the world is seen as stuck in less developed, thus traditional, superstitious, primitive states (e.g. Said, 1978). Similarly, within the idea of Europe, the non-West is imagined in terms of lack, not content. The naturalized binary representation system perpetuates the notion of natural and impassable cultural boundaries between the West and non-West. The idea of lack is particularly suggestive. After all, as long as certain people are conceptualized as lacking the intellectual capacity, or the moral disposition, for tasks such as democracy or decision-making, the exclusion of these people from the positions of influence and the moral obligation to lead them will seem as a natural and even as a morally justifiable choice.
The analysis of colonial discourses is one of the two central tasks of the postcolonial theory. The second, equally important, is theorizing non-binary and non-Western modes of thought, agency and resistance. At the most basic level, colonial and neo-colonial practices generated and continue to generate resistance in the form of various movements, such as anti-globalization activism around the globe (Mohanty, 2003; Prasad, 2006). However, the study of resistance within greatly unequal relations of power requires theorizing beyond conventional accounts of resistance. Concepts, such as mimicry and hybridity (Bhabha, 1990, 1994), translation (Prakash, 1999) and strategic essentalism (Spivak, 1985), all point to methods of bringing forth agency and resistance, severely constrained by economic, cultural and epistemological inequalities. If the most disadvantaged groups are to be represented, their subjectivity needs to be decoded rather than accessed by direct means such as interviews. For example, Ong’s (1987) study of women workers at a Malaysian factory reveals the disruptive effects of the bouts of spirit possession these women would occasionally have. Similarly, Spivak (2000) points out how the most disadvantaged people’s refusal to speak, and, therefore, to legitimize derogatory cultural representations, is also a type of non-conventional resistance.
Border control and ambivalence
In this paper, I deploy the concepts of border control and ambivalence in order to analyze the ways in which neo-colonial discourses inform organizational diversity practices and to trace the resistance to these practices. Bhabha (1994) writes that the forcefulness of the idea of Europe lies not so much in its internal consistency (because there is none), but in the institutionalized relations of power which make it possible to stabilize, to manipulate and to strategically use hierarchical cultural representations. The study of organizations in the context of postcoloniality suggests that certain relations within organizations are informed by the idea of Europe and, therefore, are marked by boundaries between the supposedly superior and inferior cultures. Analytically, it means looking for references to the notions of European/Western cultural essence, references to non-Western people’s moral and intellectual inferiority and lack of cultural capital.
Boundaries, writes Anzaldua (1999: 25) are set up to “define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition.” Thus, boundaries are marked by the identification of insiders, who may gain access and pass the border, and outsiders, who must be kept out. I would say that the border is one juncture where identity control of the historically disadvantaged social groups is overt and legitimate, and where the safe passage is preceded by meticulous social screening, that is, the rules and procedures which are used to determine the group’s origin, destination and the purpose of passing the border.
However, borders are also locations where various non-traditional forms of resistance take place and the rigid notions of culture are subverted. Bhabha (1990: 300) eloquently describes such subversion as a process where “the paranoid projections made ‘outward’ return to haunt and split the place from which they were made.” The concept of ambivalence, as developed by postcolonial theory, points to the ongoing non-traditional resistance, which ruptures the illegitimate boundary maintenance and non-realist representations of cultural superiority and inferiority. More specifically, as Bhabha (1990) points out, the neo-colonial discourses are already inscribed with the resistance to these discourses. The method of decoding the resistance is through tracing tensions and inconsistencies within the discourses of cultural difference.
Bhabha (1990) provides us with two interconnected analytical concepts, pedagogical and performative, which can be used to decode and represent non-traditional resistance. The pedagogical signifies the linear national narrative, within which people are treated as static representations of national essence. The pedagogical is informed by the idea of Europe and is characterized by a narrative of a continuous European/Western identity, history and progress as well as its morally and intellectually superior essence.
Yet people are never simply “historical events” (Bhabha, 1990: 297), and the daily life of individuals and organizations is full of inconsistencies, ambivalences and deviations from the idea of cultural purity. The performative, in turn, is a term Bhabha uses to decode the subversive effects people from “outside” have on the narrative of rigid cultures. Bhabha (1990) writes of imitation, as a performative use of national symbols and European cultural capital by the non-Europeans. Imitation of cultural capital, unrealistically represented as limited to European/Western cultural essence, exposes discourse’s reliance on differentiation of others as a naturalized strategy of maintaining the narrative of cultural purity.
The effects of the performative are two-fold; on one hand, the notion of cultural purity and superiority is coded in racial terms and the appropriation of European cultural capital by non-Western people leads to the search of new boundaries and invention of new national symbols to maintain the hierarchical relation between cultures. On the other hand, the performative subverts the notion of cultural purity, exposing that even those who are granted superior cultural identity as birthright, may not be in the possession of the cultural capital the narrative of cultural essence suggests they should be. The concept of ambivalence puts the spotlight on the discursive crisis in the assumedly stable collective cultural identity, informed by the idea of Europe. In other words, ambivalence needs to be treated as a record of the ongoing resistance to the dominant cultural imperatives and as a pointer in how oppressive discourses can be dismantled.
Methodology
The choice of the empirical study site
The empirical case of this paper draws on material from a broader study of a Swedish municipal school for adults, Multilex (a pseudonym), located in Southern Sweden. Multilex was chosen as interesting case of diversity management for two reasons. The Swedish context is characterized by an early governmental involvement in the advocacy of diversity management, which has made the public sector pro-diversity initiatives exceed the public sector’s attempts to manage diversity in magnitude and visibility. Also, within the public sector context in general and the studied municipality in particular, Multilex represented itself as one particularly active organization in diversity management.
Study method
The empirical study of Multilex was conducted by the author of this paper and was carried out in two distinct phases. The first phase took place between December, 2002, and June, 2003. The second phase took place between December, 2005, and February, 2006. During the first phase, the fieldwork was conducted at Multilex using multiple data collection methods, namely interviews, observations and a document study. During the first study phase, the school’s principal, 4 vice-principals and 20 employees with different professions were interviewed. The school employs several professions, mainly teachers, but also counselors, study advisors and administrators. In the Swedish school system, counselors provide information on student loans and psychological support to the students, while study advisors manage course placement and placement tests. The professions included in the study were mainly teachers, but also two counselors and a personnel administrator. The school was midst in recruiting two study advisors, thus the remaining two could not participate in the study due to high workload. Each interview took place at the school, took between 1 and 2 hours, was recorded and then transcribed carefully. All of the interviews were conducted in Swedish and translated into English by the author of this paper.
A semi-structured interview method was used to conduct interviews with the principal and the vice-principals. More specifically, the principal and each of the vice-principals were sent a three-topic interview guide prior to the interview. The topics were (1) workplace diversity, (2) organization structure, and (3) recruitment practices and policies. The interview guide was used in order to learn more about Multilex and its formal policies and structure, as well as the school’s pro-diversity efforts. The interviews with the teachers, counselors and the administrator were conducted without using a standardized interview guide. Each of these professionals was asked to speak about pro-diversity work of the school and their own professional role in it. The majority of the interviewees were eager to define diversity and elaborate on the ways it was relevant in their work.
During the first phase of the study, observations were conducted in connection to each interview and during a semi-annual personnel meeting. The purpose of the observations was to gain a better understanding of the school’s organizational setting. All of the observations were written down. The range of observations included notes on written materials, such as course descriptions, posted around the school, interactions, which took place during the personnel meeting and conversations, which took place before and after the recorder was on. The first phase of the study also included an extensive document study. The studied documents included national course curricula for all courses, provided at Multilex, municipal policy documents and the school’s locally developed policy documents. More specifically, municipal documents of particular relevance were personnel policy and diversity policy, as Multilex was formally required to base its work on these documents. Documents internal to Multilex included plans and policies, concerning the student demands, gender equality and management models to be used to develop the personnel. By the end of the first phase of the study, no new themes were brought up in the interviews, thus indicating an empirical saturation point (e.g. Wolcott, 1995).
The second phase of the study stemmed from a need to follow-up the document study of the first phase in order to better understand the relationship between Multilex and the municipality. The second phase included unstructured interviews with four municipal coordinators and a further document study. Each interview lasted between 1 and 2 hours, was recorded and transcribed. One of the coordinators was in charge of the municipal pedagogical resource center, two were in charge of municipal diversity work and, finally, the fourth coordinator worked with supervision of municipal adult education within the municipality. Documents studied during the second phase of the study were policy documents concerning educational result requirements for adult schools, financed by the municipality. The second phase of the study deepened the insights gained in the first phase without providing new topics to investigate.
The analysis of the empirical material
The analysis of the empirical material was conducted in several steps. Initially, interview data was coded to identify statements regarding diversity as a signifier and to trace the social identity categories it signified in the statements of the interviewees. The process was repeated to code social identity categories, associated with diversity, and qualities attributed to them. In cases where contradictory traits were attributed to the same identity category, these contradictions were included in the data coding. The next step in the analysis was the mapping of the relationship between social identity categories by examining if two or several identity categories were attributed oppositional or complementary traits. The coded data was used to identify the patterns in the frame of reference of the interviewees and to map the discourses informing these patterns.
The constructs, presented in this article, are representative of the most common patterns in the interview material. The patterns in the empirical material indicate that the notion of diversity, used at Multilex, was characterized by the signifier “immigrant” as a generalized category for diversity and as an oppositional category for the signifier “Swedish.” The recurring pattern in the frame of reference of the interviewees was taking for granted that “Swedish” and “immigrant” were categories, describing incommensurable cultural identities. However, the analysis reveals that the signifier “Swedish” was attributed a number of contradictory traits. These contradictions are classified in the analysis using the concepts of pedagogical and performative (Bhabha, 1990). More specifically, in line with the Saussurian linguistics (e.g. Hall and Du Gay, 1996), the signifier “Swedish” is many times defined through what it is not, for example “not Muslim” or “not repressive of women.” The performative is in turn a term to identify a cultural signifying process, which deviates from the normative discourse the national essence. In the analysis below, an example of the performative would be Swedish teachers comprehending non-Swedish dialects.
The case of vanishing borders
Diversity management as migrant socialization through assimilation
Multilex constitutes an interesting and illustrative case of the state of diversity management in Sweden, due to the particularities of the Swedish context. The public sector in Sweden has been leading the implementation of diversity management policies since the import of diversity management in Sweden in the 90s. The Swedish appropriation of diversity management led to merging of elements of diversity management with immigrant integration policies, producing a management philosophy with focus on social justice and creativity of diverse groups. In line with this development, the vast majority of public organization, including the municipality Multilex is a part of, had developed own pro-diversity policies in the beginning of year 2002. The municipal diversity policy Multilex is subjected to defines workplace diversity as ethnic diversity, not unlike the Swedish definition of the concept in general (e.g. De Los Reyes, 2001). Further, the policy requires all municipal organizations to work actively in representing the ethnic diversity among the population among its employees and by providing diversity-adapted services to the surrounding community. However, the policy is a statement of ideals, not tangible ways to achieve them and each municipal organization needs to develop its own diversity practices.
Multilex, in the light of these directives, is an interesting case, because it has a two-fold task; to provide student diversity-adapted education and to actively manage diversity among its employees. Interestingly, the vast majority of Multilex students have immigrant background. This is due to the fact that the Swedish educational system does not automatically accept foreign diploma. In effect, individuals with foreign primary or secondary education often need to take one or several subjects at municipal schools for adults in order to become eligible for further education. Similarly, an individual with immigrant background can often be sent to study Swedish in order to become eligible for unemployment benefits. In consequence, municipal adult education today could be seen as a part of a greater network of state organizations, working with migrant socialization for the future employment in the Swedish labor market.
Principals and teachers at Multilex expressed great confidence in their diversity work defined as immigrant integration. However, the operative definition of immigrant integration was assimilation of immigrants into the Swedish society. An illustration of this taken-for-granted definition of integration is the mission statement provided by the vice-principal of the school, Nils: Actually, we are a school that aims at integrating, and with integrating we mean to give people that are educated here a chance to get a footing in the society. We are a part of that process, one way or another. We present Swedish values, democracy, we work in various ways, for better or worse. That is our goal, our mission.
The assimilation of immigrant students into the Swedish society can be seen as a problematic goal. The municipal pro-diversity policy does not advocate assimilation and does not suggest that immigrants lack values such as democracy, something Multilex does. Yet, more importantly, the assumption that the students lack certain values or skills has implications for the school’s view of ethnic diversity among the staff. Immigrant background is associated with lack of proper values, and therefore influences the recruitment practices of the school. One example of the high suspicion of immigrants would be vice-principal Karina’s description of the selection criteria in the recruitment of home language teachers: We placed an advertisement that we were looking for teachers and the important quality was that they were familiar with the Swedish society, knew very good Swedish. . . This is so dangerous, so dangerous, because it can be easily misunderstood. What we wanted was to give our students information about the Swedish society, to give our students a chance to participate and that was that information that was interesting, not to get stuck in one’s home country’s culture, traditions, do you understand what I mean? [We were looking for] people who were in agreement with the Swedish society, Swedish values. And with that I mean equality, democracy, responsibility.
Karina’s statement is illustrative of the recurring pattern in the frame of reference of the teachers of Multilex; namely that there is a naturalized opposition between immigrant values and Swedish values. Concepts such as democracy are depicted as inherently Swedish values and practices. However, the assimilatory and cultural supremacist view of Swedish culture as the exclusive source of certain cultural values is inherently ambivalent. The assimilatory practices Multilex undertakes exceed the principles upon they are based. An illustrative example is the case of teaching democracy through coercive methods as described by vice-principal Nils: The most important thing is the democracy in the classroom. A teacher must be a good leader, a democratic such, summarize the wishes of the group, discuss them, come with suggestions, with own experience, let the students experience themselves. No, we don’t want to go on a fieldtrip, that is not school – of course it is school, a different kind of school than the one you are used to in your home country. . . In such situations the teacher has to be a leader and win that discussion.
The example of democracy in the classroom illustrates how the notion of Swedish cultural supremacy renders invisible student classroom participation. The contradiction of teaching democracy through silencing alternative viewpoints in the class suggests that Swedish cultural identity is attributed cultural values, which may be exceeded or abandoned without losing cultural legitimacy. In contrast, immigrant efforts to participate in the Swedish social collective on equal footing are continuously discredited, as I discuss in the next section.
The signs of Swedishness
A recurring signifier of equality within the Swedish cultural collective in the context of Multilex is Swedish language. Swedish language, however, is equated to an internalized social and moral code. In the context of Multilex, to know the Swedish language is to know the grammar of the social life, as vice-principal Nils suggests: I believe that is an important aspect. . . if you have interviewed people before me, you have surely heard about cultural language - social understanding, decoding of signals in a conversation, giving the right responses to these signals. For me, who is not a native English speaker, although I do know English, I can’t get very far in a conversation. I am less capable of having a conversation. You become a child anew, if you as a Swede move to Germany. You may have German from school, but you can’t follow a conversation, you become passive, it takes a long time until you have a good enough understanding of language so that you are again the grown-up you were, or you are, back at home in Sweden.
The metaphor of travel, which Nils invokes, suggests that travel across national borders places individuals in a childlike state. The argument is used strategically, to justify the power inequality, implicated in the immigrant status. In consequence, the pronunciation becomes the sign of alleged ethnic/cultural essence. The conversation excerpt on pronunciation below illustrates an open admission that municipal organization has boundaries for its immigrant employees. Vice-principal Nils speaks of teachers with immigrant background and tries to explain why this particular employee group can sometimes experience problems at Multilex: Sometimes it is difficult. They have passed. . . They are certified, qualified, have taken the national test. . . But [they] can have some problems with the language. Perhaps not in the classroom, but within the organization, to develop within the organization, to speak theoretically, if we talk of cooperation.
So what are the theoretical issues these teachers have within the organizations? This is the explanation Nils provides: Interviewer: Are you saying that there are terms they do not know? Terms. . . No, not terms. Pronunciation, I am thinking of pronunciation. Sometimes it can be very difficult. Not everyone is linguistically gifted.
Furthermore, Nils argues that pronunciation is the key to accessing the municipal organization: And pronunciation is the first contact, the first impression, one’s face, the polished teeth, which give you access. If you have a good pronunciation, and there are those that claim that the pronunciation is vital because it gives you direct access to the municipal organization. . . when it comes to people you don’t know, a good pronunciation makes it possible to break down the barriers of the first meeting, or makes it easier to overcome those barriers.
The example above illustrates how deeply naturalized the notion of cultural essence is at Multilex. The inclusion into the workplace collective at Multilex on equal grounds requires possession of qualities, related but irreducible to language. One must speak Swedish, but also sound Swedish, and perhaps be Swedish through some inherent quality, which cannot be captured through language.
The resistance to the rigid notion of Swedish cultural supremacy
It can be argued that Multilex, in contrast to the pro-diversity efforts of its municipality, actively maintains a taken-for-granted boundary between Swedes and immigrants. More so, the boundary is characterized by assumed superiority of Swedish cultural values. However, Multilex is also a site where the notion of cultural supremacy and unsurpassable boundaries are continuously resisted and subverted. A postcolonial reading of the case of Multilex suggests that resistance, albeit rendered invisible by the taken-for-granted view of culture at Multilex, has subversive effects on the school’s administrative and teaching practices. Two distinct areas of ongoing resistance can be identified and I will illustrate each of them in the discussion below.
The first area where the notion of Swedish cultural supremacy and rigidity of cultural essence is undermined is the ethnic Swedish teachers’ cultural authenticity. The school actively seeks out individuals with ethnic Swedish background to speak to its students as an integrative part of Swedish courses, and continuously sends its students to various other schools and workplaces to observe authentic Swedish locations. The underlying concerns revolve around the loss of Swedishness among its ethnically Swedish employees, as vice-principal Lena alludes in her explanation for the continuous search for civilian Swedish speakers: Sure, we have teachers, who get used to incorrect language, which one perhaps speaks in the beginning, they get used to interpreting what they are saying. Sometimes when they write, I can look at it, and no, I don’t understand anything, but the teacher tells me, look, it is this or that, and that is because they are used to it, they know what the common mistakes are. People from the outside do not have the same routine, they ask ‘what’ more often and they don’t speak clearly and slowly either. Rather, it is regular Swedish.
The search of authentic Swedish speakers can be interpreted in two complementary ways. It appears that teachers “go native,” to use a postcolonial metaphor, a process that challenges the notion of rigid cultural essence. However, it is also likely that the students appropriate the language in a far more efficient manner than what the school principals acknowledge. After all, the teachers with immigrant background, despite their Swedish university degrees, are viewed as speaking improper Swedish by the school’s principals. Thus, if the notion of immigrant difference renders invisible immigrant teachers’ qualifications, it is likely to render invisible the progress of the students too. Paraphrased, the student progress lack legitimacy, because it undermines the notion of unchangeable cultural essence and cultural supremacy. Instead, student appropriation of the signs of Swedishness fuels a crisis in the school’s self-concept as authentically Swedish.
The second area, wherein student resistance leave imprints of the school’s teaching and administrative routines revolves around the questions of religious holidays. This area of restrictions and resistance is highly interesting, as religious affiliation can be seen as an overt marker of non-European/non-Western cultural diversity. The official school policy is to allow no religious practice on the school premises apart from Christian holidays, as vice-principal Nils explains: We are rabid. . . I, in any case, am rabid when it comes to religion. I haven’t offered them – I take care of the rooms too, I haven’t offered them a prayer room. And we are quite rabid when it comes to religious display and celebrations. There we aren’t particularly serviceable. And, there, we believe that religion is a private matter, we want to keep that discussion. . . so that it can reflect the school. Sure, of course, we have holidays, still, Christian ones, which we barely know ourselves. But I don’t believe that society is such and that our organization is such. . . in that case I’ll wait for an order from the top, that now you shall let those and those have a day off. I don’t believe that it is time for that yet. And what I mean is that I don’t see it as helpful for integration, but as a private matter. It is our task to present the Swedish society, a Swedish school, a Swedish organization. And so far, I still see them as quite Swedish, and Swedish for me is still that we do not offer different times or holidays, or free Fridays.
The contrasting image of religious holidays, provided by Nils, resembles the binary conceptualization of classroom democracy. The Swedish celebration of Christian holidays is treated as non-religious practice, just as coercive teaching practices are treated as democratic. The binary conceptualization of Swedish cultural essence as modern and democratic is defined so in opposition to immigrants, who are non-realistically posited as traditional and superstitious. However, the student resistance, albeit not acknowledged in the official school policy, is far too great to be disregarded altogether. Apparently, the school makes unofficial compromises when it comes to religious holidays. Vice-principal, Lena, speaks of the informal management of religious holidays: No, I’m thinking of Baraat, which is this week. We don’t give a day off for that reason, we don’t. But we did book a development day for the teachers who work with the introduction [course] on Friday, because we suspect that many [course participants] will be gone on Friday. And so we booked a development day for the staff then, instead of next week, because we know that we will have fewer students on Friday.
Clearly, if the students’ demands to express religious diversity are not given legitimacy on the conceptual level, the student refusal to partake in school activities is more difficult to disregard. The contrast between the official and unofficial practices concerning religious holiday is yet another paradox of non-realist representation of Swedish and immigrant cultures. The resistance of the students bears material effects on the school’s policies, both through the renegotiation of administrative routines, but also through fervent search of authentic Swedishness outside of the school. It is highly suggestive that Multilex prefers to advertise for authentic civilian Swedes and reschedule development days instead of officially admitting student demands and progress. The rendering visible of cultural fluidity and the legitimizing of religious diversity is clearly power-laden act, which undermines the notion of Swedish cultural supremacy.
Discussion
The field of workplace diversity research, as Nkomo and Cox (1996: 88) have pointed out, can be likened to “a situation of discovering the many tributary streams to a larger body of water but being uncertain about the very nature of the larger body of water.” A decade later, the research on inequalities among social identity groups, which can be seen as the tributary streams of Nkomo & Cox’s metaphor, is considerable. Yet it is only of late that the organizational complicity in the production and maintenance of inequalities has gained diversity researchers’ attention. As the aim of this paper is to contribute to this identity politics approach to diversity research, my argument is that a postcolonial framework is particularly useful in theorizing organizations’ complicity in production of privileged and disadvantaged social identities.
As the current state of diversity research suggests, diversity management needs to be studied as a situated and nationally appropriated practice (Jones et al., 2000). My empirical case, Multilex, constitutes a situated reading of the Swedish appropriation of diversity management. Multilex is a public organization, subordinated to a municipal immigrant integration policy. The policy is not merely an ideal for Multilex; the school considers itself to be quite successful in immigrant integration. It is actively engaged in providing educational services to immigrant students and employing immigrant staff. However, egalitarian acceptance of diversity is not the principle for integration of immigrants at Multilex. Quite the contrary, in the case of Multilex, the non-realist immigrant social identity is constructed vis-à-vis the notion of Swedish cultural essence. Here, I believe, Multilex provides an excellent illustration of the ways organizations actively contribute to the maintenance of disadvantaged and privileged identities.
As the case of Multilex suggests, the notion of Swedishness is contrasted with a range of strategic images of the presumed lack of Swedish cultural capital among immigrants. The students are depicted as lacking Swedish cultural values and therefore outside of the Swedish society. The teachers with immigrant background are depicted as lacking appropriate pronunciation, required to develop theoretically within the organization. The metaphor of internal border control is particularly useful here, because while the immigrants are inside the Swedish nation, they are continuously posited as outside of the Swedish cultural collective.
In line with Bhabha’s (1990) concepts of pedagogical and performative, the notion of Swedish cultural essence is narrative without a stable content. Swedishness appears to be a rubric for a range of contradictory identity positions, which encompass secularity (despite Christian holidays) and democracy (despite coercive teaching methods). These identity positions are held in place through the taken-for-granted view that ethnic differences and hierarchies stem from a fixed cultural essence individuals are endowed with. However, if the ambivalence of the notion of Swedishness makes the exercise of power through ongoing differentiation possible, it also opens up a critical space for resistance and subversion.
In the case of Multilex, the non-traditional forms of resistance take on two distinct forms. The student appropriation of the signs of Swedishness, in line with Bhabha’s (1990) term performative, subverts the school’s sense of stable cultural identity. The teachers appear to “go native” and the school’s principals are continuously seeking authentic Swedes outside of the school. The students are also suggestively absent during non-Christian religious holidays, thus making Multilex reschedule various administrative routines informally.
The rendering visible of non-traditional forms of resistance is significant for several reasons. On the most immediate level, while it is broadly acknowledged that globalization and international migration create workplace diversity, it is more seldom recognized that globalization also produces a transformation of the labor force (Mir et al., 2006). Only a fraction of immigrant workforce has the skilled, white-collar work positions, traditionally included in diversity analysis. Large groups of immigrants end up at the margins of contemporary organizations, as for example students of Multilex, unable to engage in direct forms of resistance to discriminatory organizational practices. The marginal position of migrants in Western work organizations is an important area to investigate in the future diversity research, as is the theorizing of oppression and subversion.
On another level, the theorizing of resistance and subversion opens up the path toward dismantling of oppressive hierarchies and derogatory categorization. A clue as in how it can be achieved lies in precisely what Multilex is unwilling to do, namely formally legitimizing the presence of religious diversity and the loss of cultural authenticity. The act of overtly acknowledging that one does not possess control over one’s native language and culture, and is unwilling to claim the privilege of defining its boundaries, makes the transformation of power relations possible. To conclude, the renunciation of authority over cultural signification process means letting go of the notion of cultural supremacy, as Derrida (1996: 1) so elegantly formulates: – Picture this, imagine someone who would cultivate the French language. What is called the French language. Someone whom the French language would cultivate. And who, as a French citizen, would be, moreover, a subject of French culture, as we say. Now suppose, for example, that one day this subject of French culture were to tell you in good French: “I only have one language; it is not mine.”
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
