“Eastern European”, Yes, but How? Autoethnographic Accounts of Differentiated Whiteness

ABSTRACT

This article examines how intersecting markers of difference shape differentiated whiteness. In so doing, it contributes to scholarship on whiteness and racialization. The authors draw on autoethnographic vignettes from fieldwork in Copenhagen to analyse the emergence of similar-yet-divergent researcher and migrant positionalities. Both authors are female researchers from Baltic countries living in Denmark and often perceived as Eastern Europeans—as not-quite-white and as “Europe’s ‘internal others’”. Both of us conducted fieldwork in the same district of Copenhagen. Mantė carried out research on friendships among teenagersn a racially diverse public school and in youth activity clubs. Linda explored social inclusion and exclusion in contested urban spaces. However, our researcher positionalities played out differently. We analyse how ambiguous, contested and relational notions of (Eastern) Europeanness, together with intersecting racialized, classed and gendered tropes of Eastern European migration, made themselves manifest in our positionings and movements. Through an intersectional analysis of Eastern European racialized positionalities, our discussion of differentiated whiteness highlights how whiteness is intersectionally constituted, multiple and mouldable. These findings serve to nuance research on hegemonic whiteness in the Nordic setting.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• racialization
• whiteness
• Eastern Europeanness
• autoethnography

Acknowledgments

We thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable questions and comments, and our informants for sharing their time and experiences with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Lapiņa

Linda Lapiņa (cand.psych., PhD) is a researcher, a migrant and a dancer. She works as an assistant professor of Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University in Denmark. Her research areas include racialisation and whiteness, affect and embodiment, contested urban spaces and intergenerational and more-than-human memories of migration. A portion of her current work draws on autoethnography and memory work on East-West migration in Europe, Danishness and transnational researcher positionality. Lapiņa is also working on elaborating affective methodology with respect to dance and standby temporalities, as well as a paper on more-than-human memories of forced migration and intergenerational trauma.

Mantė Vertelytė

Mantė Vertelytė (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, Danish School of Education. Her research interests include racialization, nationalisms and Europeanness, with a particular angle on education and youth studies. Her previous research explored anthropological notions of friendship and it’s role in nation-state formation through schooling. Currently she works on a project ‘Diversity work as Mood Work in Education’, which explores affective atmospheres, moods and emotions that play a part in student’s racial experiences and educator’s strategies to respond through antiracist education and critical pedagogies.