What an ethnic lens can conceal: the emergence of a shared racialised identity position among young descendants of migrants in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The article problematises the use of the ethnic lens in research on the young descendants of migrants. It discusses methodological and theoretical insights derived from an interview study on young people from the same neighbourhood in Stockholm, Sweden – the majority of whom had parents with varying ethnic identifications. Because the study did not use any one particular ethnic group as an entry point, it illuminates processes of racialisation that exceed ethnic boundaries and the development of a racialised identity position shared by descendants with different ethnic ties. It thereby contributes to an expanding field of European studies that ethnographically illustrate racialisation of the migrant descendants in different European contexts, and their diverse answers to racialisation. Compared to US experiences, this specific European mode of racialisation limits the range of identity positions offered to a higher extent and furthermore positions a wider span of people as non-white. By focusing on the relationship between how people are represented and how they perceive themselves the article further questions the transnational perspective as an alternative means for circumventing the ethnic lens. The incorporation of a transnational perspective in this research was namely perceived by the participants as ascriptions of ethnic otherness.

KEYWORDS:

• Young people
• descendants of migrants
• transnationalism
• identification
• racialisation

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nina Glick Schiller, Emeritus Professor in Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, and Maja Povrzanović Frykman, Professor of Ethnology, Malmö University, for very thoughtful comments to prior drafts of this article. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers. Responsibility for the conclusions reported herein is solely of the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Statistics from the Municipality of Bremboda and Statistics Sweden concerning 2004–2005 (www.scb.se).

2 In recent years the label invandrare has been problematised in public and state contexts and replaced by the term foreign background. However, this has not amounted to any qualitative change in the content of the category.

3 For a discussion on other modes in which scholars have tried to define their research sample beyond ethnic and national groups see Norvicka and Ryan (2015).

4 The interviews show the informants' presentation of self, not evidence that the informants did not actually participate in transnational networks. Other identity positions may also be displayed later in the life cycles of the interviewees, for example more diasporic ones (cf. e.g. Waters 2011).