Performing whiteness: racism, skin colour, and identity in Western Switzerland

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the process through which a white nation commonly considered as “raceless” is producing race and racism. Whiteness is a relevant concept to analyse the process of incorporating non-white minorities across everyday social interactions. It explores socio-cultural expressions of white normativity and possible interpretations of the notion of whiteness as an identity in Switzerland and beyond. The paper considers how non-white citizens with migration backgrounds incorporate themselves by adopting the dominant discourse that denies the presence of races and racism in the country. The Anthropological data and analysis illuminate how the participants make their settlement possible via presentations of self-alignment with Swissness/whiteness and misalignment with other immigrants. The paper discusses the process of reinforcing white national identity via the prevailing assumptions in Europe. It is designed from the reflexive viewpoint of a white anthropologist who collected subject narratives during fieldwork.

KEYWORDS:

• Whiteness
• skin colour
• national identity
• Swissness
• racism
• reflexivity

Acknowledgements

The author sincerely thank the two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments helped her sharpen her arguments. The author warmly thank Lauren Tuchman for her thorough proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All the names have been changed to ensure confidentiality.

2. Chocolate spread.

3. The notion of “racial–ethnic” allows to account for the convergence of “racial” and “ethnic” criteria of common sense categorization (Essed and Trienekens 2008, 55–56). I use “ethnic–racial” here.

4. Switzerland is a specific country in the middle of Europe that is not part of the European Union nor the European Economic Area. However, the country does participate in the Schengen Area and the EU’s single market through a number of bilateral treaties.

5. Lavanchy (2016).

6. Original fieldwork was carried out in collaboration with Thierry Amrein and the team of the Regional Centre for Alpine Populations (CREPA), in Sembrancher.

7. My translation.

8. http://www.sentierdeslegendes.com/les-sobriquets1.html (accessed July 9, 2015).