Being the Damned Foreigner: Affective National Sentiments and Radicalization of Lithuanians in Iceland (original) (raw)

Being “The Damned Foreigner”: Affective National Sentiments and Racialization of Lithuanians in Iceland

Nordic Journal of Migration Research

The discussion draws from recent writing on the meaning of ‘whiteness’ in the Nordic countries, emphasizing the importance to understand racialization in different localities. Racism is entangled with affective meanings related to discourse of the nation, furthermore, as shaped by global discourses and class. The discussion exemplifies this in the context of migrants from Lithuania in Iceland, demonstrating how they become racialized in Iceland during the boom period in the early 2000s.

Being a desirable migrant: perception and racialisation of Icelandic migrants in Norway

In the aftermath of the financial crisis that hit Iceland in October 2008, increased numbers of Icelanders migrated to Norway to seek employment due to difficult economic circumstances in Iceland. Using critical perspectives from postcolonial studies and critical whiteness studies, the paper explores how these Icelandic migrants in Norway make sense of their new position as economic migrants within a global economy characterised by a growing sense of precariousness, while past inequalities and racism continue to matter. We also examine how these migrants are perceived in Norwegian media, and how social discourses of Icelandic migrants reflect larger Norwegian debates on racism, desirability and cultural belonging. Media discourses in Norway and interviews with Icelandic migrants reveal a hierarchy of acceptability of migrants. Icelanders are positioned as highly desirable compared to other migrant groups due to the intersection of perceived racial belonging, nationality and class. O...

"We blend in with the crowd but they don't": (In)visibility and Icelandic migrants in Norway

Placing emphasis on often overlooked migration within the affluent North, this article focuses on Icelanders who have migrated to Norway in the aftermath of the Icelandic financial collapse in October 2008. The article draws on critical whiteness studies and is based on fieldwork and qualitative interviews with 32 Icelandic migrants in Norway. The findings show how the participants construct their belonging through racialization, emphasizing their assumed visual, ancestral and cultural sameness with the majority population. This article, furthermore, reveals how whiteness, language and class intersect -resulting in differing degrees of (in)visibility and privilege among the participants. Despite somewhat different positions, all the participants have the possibility of capitalizing on their Icelandic nationality to receive favourable treatment. The article argues that the preferential treatment of Icelanders and narratives of sameness must be understood in relation to contemporary, intertwined racist and nationalistic discourses that exclude other migrants due to their assumed difference.

Navigating the Radar: Descendants of Polish Migrants and Racialized Social Landscapes in Sweden

Nordic journal of migration research, 2021

This article takes interest in descendants of white migrants in Sweden and their experiences of racialization. Although research on descendants in this category is rare, they are sometimes assumed to be unproblematically integrated into Swedish whiteness. The article contributes with an empirically based investigation of the subject by analysing in-depth interviews with an up till now almost non-researched group: people who grew up with Polish parents in Sweden. Inspired by critical race- and whiteness studies, it explores how they express being racialized, how the norms of Swedish whiteness surface in their narrations and how they negotiate these norms. The article makes visible a Swedish version of whiteness that requires on the one hand possession of materialized, physical whiteness, and on the other hand performative abilities, performative whiteness. It shows how these whiteness norms works for people in the special position of descendants to white migrants and that they–in con...

Three phases of hegemonic whiteness. Understanding racial temporalities in Sweden

Social Identities, 2014

After the election in Sweden in 2010, the racist Sweden Democrats party entered parliament. Post-election reactions and discussions were largely preoccupied with the issue of how the presence of a racist party in the Swedish parliament disturbs the country's exceptionalist image and privileged position – both in the West and in the non-Western world – as humanity's avant-garde and beacon for antiracism. This article aims to understand the current situation in Sweden from a critical race and whiteness studies perspective. We regard contemporary Sweden as a ‘white nation in crisis’, and diagnose Swedish society as suffering from a ‘white melancholia’. In order to disentangle and shed light upon what is perceived to be mourned and what is seen as being lost for the future, the article offers an historicised account of three principal phases, stages and moments of Swedish nation-building and whiteness; ‘white purity’ (1905–1968); ‘white solidarity’ (1968–2001); and ‘white melancholy’, from 2001 onwards. The analysis also takes into account how these three nation-building projects and hegemonic whiteness and racial grammar regimes are interrelated, and intersect with the different gender and class relations; racial formations; minority discourses; and various political ideologies and affective structures characterising these three periods.

Black Protests in Iceland: Transnational Flows and Entanglements

Mobility and Transnational Iceland: Current Transformations and Global Entanglements, 2020

This chapter discusses the Black Protest demonstration organized by Polish migrants in Iceland in October 3, 2016 to support women striking that day in Poland against a proposed abortion ban. As an expression of migrants’ continued social embeddedness in the sending society, the event provides an interesting example of diaspora politics, or what is otherwise called long-distance nationalism. Although intended to influence domestic politics in Poland, due to the universal character of women’s reproductive rights, the demonstration in Iceland can be perceived as a manifestation of transnational activism and as part of the general feminist movement. Furthermore, the generous involvement of the local population shows how migrants’ transnational practices enhance Iceland’s transnational entanglements. Finally, Black Protest exposes a process of growing global interconnectedness and relates it to cross-border flows of meanings and ideas.