Fighting the Crocodiles: Immigrant Students and Their Perilous Routes at Campus

Crossing the Main Road

Once a year, a policeman visited our childhood school to teach us about traffic rules:

He put up a street intersection on the felt board and added two cars and asked, “Who has the right to drive?” Silence. Total silence. “Does anybody know?” More silence. 25 oysters. No one uttered a sound. This lively class transformed into seated pillars of salt. “Ok,” he said, and showed us by moving one of the flat paper cars.

He probably drove back to the police station downtown bemused at these rural, ignorant children. However, in the vacuum that followed we chatted about the incident. Our story. We were shameless. His uniform did not impress us. He was not ours. My uncle was head of the local police and we all knew him and the two other policemen. They were ours. We bicycled to school everyday and no one had ever been involved in a traffic accident. Sometimes we went skiing. We knew our roads, but not his.

Storying Disconnected Lives

My childhood memory has remained rooted inside my head. It can be told in many ways. This was my way. I always wondered about his. Probably not worth knowing. I know our story. My story. Our roads to school were by far more complex than in his illustration. It all looked so unfamiliar, too. Flat right-angled roads with zebra stripes. No trees or bushes, no dogs, no trucks or tractors. Ours were hilly with limited view, like the road that came out behind Ole’s barn crossing the main road over to Paulus’s road. No problem, even when galloping on my thoroughbred horse. Even crossing the intersection by the airport. I knew about traffic lights, though there were none in our village, and that one color signaled stop. But it was hard to remember which one. Our barn was red, and our fields green. All wonderful places. Red—danger? Why red? But, we maneuvered downtown by copying the others. No problem. We were masters of solving things.

Now I know about “dumming us down” (Gatto, 1992), about failed pedagogy (Edwards & Edick, 2013), about familiar questions in unfamiliar contexts, and about alienation. This incident has remained as an embodied experience informing my knowledge. I wonder, what about all our first- and second-generation immigrants at my university. What stories do we, as professors, tell them? What are their stories? Do our stories connect? or Are they an endless line of texts disconnected from their lives? Twelve years ago, after much effort and the support of students, I was eventually granted permission to start up a course in cross-cultural understanding. Many of my colleagues did not really understand why, but after many years in East Africa, I found that the mismatch between everyday life and methodology textbooks was striking (Ryen, 2007). In my Tanzanian seminars, I would ask “Why do you read recorded talks so flatly, when your everyday language is so playful and artistic?” (Fine & Weis, 2005, p. 35; Ryen, 2002, 2011). Do our courses in sociology and methodology invite, reflect, depart from, or connect with the complexity of biography and history (Richardson &St. Pierre, 2005), with the situational, fluent, elasticity of being both in, between and nowhere (Holstein & Gubrium, 2005)—are we relevant to our students’ lives? When they write their theses, what are their projects? I ask, “What do you want your text to do?” Texts have the capacity to change, transform (Bauman, 2005; Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Skeggs, 2010; Smith, 2005), and kindle a spark—talk is action (Atkinson & Coffey, 2002; Holstein & Gubrium, 2005; Peräkylä, 2005; Ryen & Silverman, 2000). With repetition and citation only, there will be nothing new. No talking back, no fights (Smith, 2005). Moving lives, fixed texts (Said, 2003; Sardar, 2006). “I love deadlines, because I love the sizzling sounds when they pass,” the author Adam Douglas said. Do student lives sizzle when they pass? or Do we reach them before deadline?

This article is about what institutional frameworks do to immigrant students’ lives (Borgna, 2016; Canella & Lincoln, 2006; Kjeldstadli, 2010). In my text, you will hear my own students’ voices and the reflections and dreams that they share with me. What stories do they have that we do not hear? This text is also about academic texts as muted lives, and about hope. To understand lives we also need to understand the contexts in which we live. Our first- or second-generation immigrant students come as children of migrant workers, as refugees from war zones, through family reunification, or as youngsters sent by their families in search of a better country (NOU, 2017). They enter a foreign culture promoted by a master narrative as a rich, noncorrupt, democratic country with an active state designed to safeguard the welfare of its citizens (Brochmann & Kjeldstadli, 2008). Their route may be long, and their new context is unfamiliar – a culture that celebrates equality, and with its own paradoxes (Hermansen, 2017). Although appealing, equality is also bewildering.

Equality as Sameness

Insofar as it is possible to generalize about Norwegian culture, the late Norwegian anthropologist Marianne Gullestad (2010) coined the term “equality as sameness” as a master characteristic of Norwegian culture, with implications for social practice and for establishing and maintaining social relations. This suggests that togetherness rests on a feeling of the mutual confirmation of equality combined with a diminishing of inequality in everyday interactions, which makes equality a requirement or basis for being together. When social differences are experienced as too great, Gullestad claims, we avoid interaction by use of strategies of distance to communicate social borders. However, these local ways may be rather subtle, they still carry connotations of rejection.

From the outside, Norway “looks equal,” with well-kept houses and gardens even in the most remote areas, and signs of poverty and suffering are hardly visible apart from the presence of a few drug addicts (they, too, receive welfare benefits) and Roma beggars in the downtown pedestrian streets following the legalization of begging in the name of sympathy that was legalized a few years ago. We address each other by the first name, have overlapping networks, in general go to the same schools (perhaps even with the Prime Minister’s children), and guns, apart from a very few annual incidences, are for game hunting only. The Crown Prince married a single mother with a rave-party background, and in 2016 the King gave a speech saying that Norway—his (or rather our) kingdom—consists of boys who love girls, girls who love boys, boys who love boys, and so on. Moreover, when the Crown Prince and his wife moved their first born, ranked second in line to the throne (after her grandfather, the present king), from a public to a private school with English as its daily language, it meant driving a wedge in the trust between “King and his people”—and this has still not healed. Not unreasonably, this apparent lack of distinctions makes it harder to grasp “the Norwegian way.” A Chinese described Norwegians as resembling a thermos: “Cold on the outside, warm on the inside—just that it takes time to get there.” Most often, they leave before you get there, some immigrants report. All this was well-portrayed in a Simpsons TV episode some years back that depicted Norwegian men as somewhat naïve though easygoing bearded carpenters in dungarees, and happily building a big (prior-Trump) wall. When they discovered they were cut off from those on the other side, they quickly made openings for free passage—equality as sameness. However, the Simpsons text writers did not capture the subtle distinctions employed in the local work of category building.

Norway with its long coastline has a rich history of migration, from traveling Vikings to affluent German Hansa traders on the western coast, business with the Netherlands, a long emigration history with North America, and itself as a colony under Denmark and Sweden. You can still trace remnants of these in words and pronunciation, in double citizenship—and in orientation. Statistics on immigration and integration offer a window into the modern complexity of the former minority as the new majority, so let us now turn to a quick notion of the wider context—a matter I will come back to later.

If Context Matters

Sociologists like Wright Mills insisted on the intersection of the biographical and the historical, and, as described by Laurel Richardson,

For me, now, discovering the intricate interweavings of class, race, gender, education and religion, and other diversities that shaped me early on into the kind of sociologist I became is a practical way of refracting the worlds—academic and other—in which I live. (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005, p. 967)

Furthermore, immigrant university students are becoming, rather than being on their way toward unknown destinations. Despite its dubious promise, a statistical snapshot of the contemporary history of higher education and work pretends to offer what may resemble what Richardson (2005) refers to as “the shapemakers of our lives that we can choose to confront, embrace or ignore” (p. 967).

In a country with 10% of the population as foreign-born (compared with 13.7% for USA, 13.9% for Sweden, 7.3% for Denmark), our concern is with people’s life chances. In terms of education, 2008 data show that 91% of all 16- to 18-year-old youths attended high school, 70% for immigrants of same age group and 89% for Norwegians born of immigrant parents (SSB, 2015). There has been an increase in percentage for these groups from 64 and 82 respectively in 2000 (Dzamarija, 2010). A study of those completing high school shows that social background matters, but the effect of immigrant background disappears when taking account of parental education and income (Bratsberg, Raaum, Røed, & Gjefsen, 2010). It also shows that the children of immigrants have a higher probability than majority pupils of completing high school. Furthermore, immigrants and their children with a high school education have a higher probability than the majority pupils of proceeding to higher education. As of autumn 2009, 16% of all immigrants, and 37% of their children aged 19 to 24 years were engaged in higher education compared with 31% of the total age group. Women have a much higher probability than men of choosing higher education, and there is an increase in the percentage in higher education for Norwegians born to immigrant parents. Immigrants from refugee groups that have stayed just briefly in Norway, such as those from Somalia and Afghanistan, have a lower study probability. For other Norwegians born to immigrant parents, the probability is very high, as in the case of those from Sri Lanka and Vietnam, and considerably higher than the average (NOU, 2017, section 9.5). Persons from Iran, Chile, Iraq, and Bosnia report the highest level of education in contrast to those from Turkey and Somalia with the lowest. To sum up, statistically immigrants do rather well in the educational system, motivated by parental aspirations on behalf of their children (Nadim, 2017) in a country where free education forms an integral part of a policy to provide a more equal society.

However, the labor market is somewhat more problematic. Close to 20% of the immigrants, in contrast to more than half of the total population, have jobs that demand higher education. Immigrants and members of the majority population have systematically different chances in the labor market. While we find 17% immigrants and 46% majority members in office, sales, services, and manual jobs, as well as drivers and operators, we find 17% and 3% respectively for jobs that demand no education. The reasons are complex, but studies show that some of the variation is caused by discrimination in the recruitment process. For an applicant with a name that does not sound Norwegian, there is a fall in the probability of being invited for a job interview. The researchers claim that the reasons range from a variation in employer knowledge of ethnic minorities, former experiences, stereotyping, to a frequently irrational feeling of insecurity with job performance compared with equally qualified ethnic majority applicants (Birkelund, Rogstad, Heggebø, Aspøy, & Bjelland, 2014; Midtbøen & Rogstad, 2012).

The majority population’s attitudes toward immigrants are mostly stable and positive overall, despite some skepticism (Blom, 2015). In 2015, close to three quarters agreed that “in general immigrants make a useful contribution to Norwegian work life” (11% disagreed) and almost 90% agreed that immigrants should have equal rights to paid work in Norway as Norwegians (8% disagreed). Around half disagreed that “most immigrants misuse social benefits” (25% agreed), and close to 60% disagreed that “most immigrants cause insecurity in society (26% agreed). The economic recession following after the fall in oil prices seems to have had no impact on the scores. There are systematic variations between groups with women more positive than men, the elderly (67-79 years) more skeptical (dependent on topic) than the youngest (16-24 years), and the somewhat older (25-44 years) most “immigrant friendly,” along with the highly educated, people who interact with immigrants, and people in more densely populated areas (100,000+). For the time span 2002-2015, we also find a fall in the percentage reporting that they would feel uncomfortable having an immigrant neighbor or a lodger (for both, a stable low and decreasing percentage), or son- or daughter-in-law (a clear drop in percentage from 40 to around 17). This invites us to see higher education and the labor market as intricate shapemakers that call for both embracement and confrontation though numbers cannot tell us how such makers operate.

The Situational and Intersubjective Aspects of Organizational Processes

Qualitative researchers are not easily impressed by statistics, despite our concern with orderliness. Statistics simply cannot account for the inside of “the black box” that rearranges the numbers put in. If gender or ethnicity matter in education, we still do not know exactly how they matter, or the mechanisms that produce such correlations. Micro-sociologists criticized statistical truth claims decades ago. They problematized numbers, asked about processes, and criticized decontextualized responses. They opposed to formal-analytic sociology’s reliance on social order as something maintained by norms. Based on Alfred Schutz, Harold Garfinkel ironically argued that the actor is no “cultural dope” or “norm guided player” (vom Lehn, 2014). Social order is not accomplished normatively, but by constitutive rules and sensemaking continuously produced by actions that render it observable and reportable without revealing the trust that underpins it. This trust, as a presumed alignment of orientation, is tacitly attended to by members. It is our trust in the orderliness of the situation that is shattered when participants encounter unexpected events. Clashes between the basic rules and everyday expectations that underpin the social order of the everyday life generate descriptions of actions as deviant and sanctionable. This makes sensemaking an intersubjective and observable practice, rather than a cognitive and subjective process.

This brings us to institutional settings, talk and meaning, and to universities as organizations by “attention to how organizational processes derive from concrete actions of people engaged in specific tasks” (p. 14), as Silverman (1997) puts it in his criticism of Stinchcombe’s structural model of organizations. Garfinkel shows us how people by their accounts restore the trust in the orderliness of the situation despite violations. This makes higher educational institutions resemble crocodiles. Despite their tears, their empathy is not with their victims.

The Interactional of Higher Education

Not all talk in institutions is “institutional,” just as institutional talk also may take place outside the institution (such as talking or supervising your students on mobiles, emails, and Skype from your home office, or when traveling, or accidentally meeting them on the way to the local shop). Rather, as Maynard and Clayman (1991, cited in Silverman, 1997) argue, we need to examine how members in fact do talk institutionally by structurally adapting the conversation for institutional purposes. Drew and Heritage (1992, pp. 22-25, cited in Silverman, 1997, p. 7) have identified certain dimensions through which talk becomes institutional. First, “It is usually goal-oriented in institutionally relevant ways . . . people design their conduct to meet various institutional tasks or functions.” Second, “It is usually fashioned by certain constraints,” which means that we find variations across contexts as in a class where constraints may be more clearly perceived, as compared with extra-class activities which are more open to negotiating how we should relate to constraints. Last, they argue, talk becomes institutional by being “associated with particular ways of reasoning or inference-making.” This opens for a continuum of forms and a range of formalities in such talk. In formal school or university settings, we find reductions in options for action, though less so when there is no audience. It follows from this that informal settings are characterized by less uniformity and by the absence of normatively sanctionable turn-taking procedures. Drew and Heritage caution us about importing our own intuitions concerning how institutional settings or contexts impact actions and accounts in institutions. This is an empirical question. We simply need to explore how people accomplish whatever they do in institutional contexts to find out: “Interaction becomes institutional insofar as participants’ institutional or professional identities are somewhat made relevant to the work activities in which they are engaged” (Drew & Heritage, 1992, pp. 3-4, cited in Silverman, 1997, p. 8). To conclude, members coproduce a context by their ongoing work. When we see context as locally produced, we cannot take it for granted and it cannot be something external that members automatically adhere to. Our questions would be, how does talk in a university context impact on talk or action and what mechanisms bear consequences to the talk?

Supervision will provide an illustration here. The term itself refers to an institutionally relevant activity, but the participants may negotiate the constraints around their activity. If taking place in the supervisor’s university office, this may inform the members perception of constraints. However, the supervisor as supervisor at the university may invite the possibility of making the setting less formal. The participants’ prior experiences in such settings may impact on how they coproduce these constraints. A student with a background from a strong hierarchical order may hear an invitation to more informality differently from his or her co-student familiar with more symmetrical relations. This way, participants may implicitly make culture relevant to this negotiation. Such cross-cultural meetings may include or exclude non-majority members at universities with staff firmly positioned in “majority- or our ways,” simply by interfering with negotiations of constraints in organizational setting in undue ways. This may have consequences regarding the realization of full student performance. We may learn from Maynard and Clayman (1991, pp. 406-407, cited in Silverman, 1997, p. 7) who calls us to “examine if and how interactants reveal an orientation to institutional or other contexts.”

So, how do we look at being an immigrant student in higher education? I am concerned with institutional practice at university campuses or, more precisely, in inquiring into the hows of social order from within (Garfinkel, 1967).

Ethnomethodology therefore looks for the methods people use to produce meaning and order in everyday life and how members hear answers to questions as relevant or not. As Silverman (1997) insists, such “studies show how such members transform organizational rules into practical solutions and (re)constitute organizational structures as flexible gestures of their work” (p. 6).

So, let me inquire into the university in a culture known for equality. However, as we saw, conversational analysts remind us of the impact of context on interaction just as they also remind us that such concepts also may prohibit us from seeing aspects of the interactional of what takes place. We cannot just assume that institutions are relevant: ethnomethodologists insist we need to show how.

Local Production of Disorder: Negotiating Constraints

As institutional talk deals with the perception of constraints, such talk is usually more clearly perceived in the lecture hall compared to in less formal extra-class activities such as supervision. Less formal settings are more open for negotiating how we should relate to constraints, partly due to the absence of audience. This may invite or close student performances as in the stories below by my first- and second-generation immigrant students. These are external tags that tend to fix their identities as stranger, whereas I argue identities “self” and “other” as contextual and elastic outcomes of intersubjective meetings. I reluctantly employ them here as pedagogical devices in the discussion of how higher education exercises the power to include and exclude, conserve or transform. Their contexts may facilitate or close negotiations. My question deals with how immigrant friendly universities still exercise subtle power. Power takes many masks, and to voice my students’ stories is to unmask how such power may be intricately exercised. Let us look at some students’ stories about negotiating meaning and social (dis)order, (ir)relevance and opposition, and voice and silence.

Institutional Dislocation

Ortiz and Jani (2010) talk about institutional arrangements as social constructed mechanisms that regulate social interaction. In a department with majority members only, students of color or of minority background are confronted with a range of dilemmas where they encounter what Ortiz and Joni refer to as a form of ideological dislocation when their interests are not consistent with curriculum and acceptable research questions as in case of the bachelor thesis above. The general invisibility of diversity means that many students have difficulties in finding curriculum with a content that speaks to them. As in Hawa’s case she explained her choice of supervisor by her “I will not sit in supervision and explain ‘Africa’ every time” as a recognition of my more than two decades of research in East Africa. To illustrate institutional dislocation, first-generation immigrant students appreciate critical Muslim voices that I incorporate in my courses, and they use them for critical reflexive moves in ways not necessarily possible by other students. These texts speak to their own experiences. When we put academia and power on the agenda in the lecture hall we legitimize critical voices. Such dislocation may materialize in multiple ways. One way is by polite requests for alternative theses literature even when supervised by others. Institutions may also add to their dislocations in other ways. A few years ago, my course on cross-cultural issues was without notice rescheduled to the last bachelor semester. This is after the deadline for sending in their topics for their theses which ruled out cross-cultural topics. I as well as my students complained, all in vein. The absence of rebellion in my department resembles what other have described as “ . . . in the psyche of the dominant group there is no challenge to the idea that the world belongs to them, resulting in White privilege . . . Non-Whites, however, seldom assume privilege’ and get their self-esteem shattered and aspirations muted” (Romero, 2008, cited in Otiz & Jani, 2010 p. 181).

“Stereotype Threats” in the Land of “Insiders Without”

As problematic is the lack of “mentors who can assist them in successfully navigating the learning environment” as Ortiz and Jani (2010) put it (p. 181). They do not necessarily come to my office out of choice, but due to lack of alternatives. Staff diversity is an institutional responsibility though often withering away in presumable neutral bureaucratic committee work. Lack of diversity can then be justified in other creative ways such as “have been living abroad,” or “with experience from foreign aid or NGOs.” When this is mistaken for scientific knowledge and critical orientation, institutions can perpetuate majority privilege. For decades Scandinavians have been working in NGOs and foreign aid in non-Western countries. However, they are there to materialize organizational missions, usually live in more affluent areas different from the local population, and their children usually attend more privileged, international schools. As in colonial times, privileged people live privileged lives. This makes “have been living abroad” in this context into colonial rhetoric best described by playing with Hill Collins’s “outsider within” into “insider without.”

I have lately also observed majority researchers’ interest in immigrant students as data collectors in projects on minorities acknowledging their preferential access. The students have enthusiastically told me they have been selected, and to proof they are right, they tell me about immigrant interviewees who in confidence have told them “I would never have told ‘them, but with’ you it is different.” I struggle with project leaders’ uncaring ethics when internally shared stories in the benign bonding in situ with locally negotiated loyalty is grounded on apparently a confusion of the “them” and “us” of fieldwork. As data collectors, the students have no control over the representation of these stories given in confidence (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Jones & Jenkins, 2008).

Again, institutional talk may in intricate ways impose constraints upon minorities by generous appeals to come inside only to exploit their marginalized positions as in colonial times (Ryen, 2007). As referred, this resembles Gullestad on equality as sameness when she argues that togetherness rests on a feeling of mutual confirmation of equality combined with a diminishing of inequality. Invitations to participate in projects are usually heard as a compliment, but when immigrant students are allocated positions as marginal project members, they reinforce social borders and consolidate their outsider status. It also illustrates how subtle local ways may work.

The pervasiveness of race, ethnicity, and culture is a central feature of defining and explaining social life. When an Italian is complimented for being on time, the compliment reinforces a culturally based generalization as an everyday expectation that Italians are usually not on time. Hawa’s case resembles this. Inquiring on services without physical or mental problems, she was locally produced as an exception understood as a deviant that did not fit the front desk bureaucrat’s known categories. His perceived description may have overshadowed or transformed her request into a not recognizable request. This office typically assists in cases of physical and some other problems. I have several times assisted students replace written exams with oral due to physical problems with writing, or even arranged a “training-oral exam” for a blind student. Also, the university had no problems when I suggested a Turkish student take her exam in my course while in Turkey as opposed to traveling back to Norway for three hours. Procedures were already available. The bureaucrat may have mistaken Hawa’s institutional identity as a student in need of assistance with an identity as able-bodied immigrant possibly reinforced by her blackness, an identity itself not relevant for access to their services. If she had spoken out, she might have been perceived as a spokesperson for all colored students at campus. This is what Steele (1999) refers to as a “stereotype threat” that students of color learn to live with in a structure that “neither has been created for their benefits nor attends to their needs” (Ortiz & Jani, 2010, p. 180). Further inquiries could have generated an unfavorable description as provocateur, or a context where constraints are more clearly perceived. Her minority status has increased her awareness of the delicate of certain encounters. Had she tried she might have succeeded. The point, however, is her perception of implied risk.

To learn about the intricate of minority status should be mandatory in knowledge institutions as when another of my colored students generously shared her experiences with me. After her graduate exams, she gave a short talk and thanked her supervisors myself included as a former supervisor. However, the interest is with her words in the lecture hall. While thanking people for all help, she addressed me by “thank you for the you know what we have been taking about.” By elegantly reframing her greetings, we get to understand how she perceived this formal public setting as well as the risk of stirring up descriptions that could backfire. We looked at each other and smiled. I noticed how she redefined the common and apparent tidy lecture hall into a muddy terrain laid with risks for the few.

Culturally Responsive Collaboration

Transformational ways to center stage diversity can also be done by collaboration across institutions, not as a compensatory devise but as a fully integrated model as in the case of the locally constituted network across institutions and countries of origin in my research group. The network operates with a moving hob dependent on project and event. It started with the Albanian local diaspora and their project on anti-radicalization. I was contacted by a former student of mine, now head of cross-cultural dialogue in our municipality, when the Albanian Society of Islamic Culture and Religion was looking for a suitable hall to arrange a project to provide the younger generation with positive Albanian identities. The goal was to challenge the dominant master narrative of Albanians as criminals engaged with drugs, terror, and illegal affairs. The event included talks and critical discussions, Norwegians and Albanians, researchers and religious leaders, Christians and Muslims, politicians, film directors, and the main artists in the film Besa: The Promise (Williams, Morgan, Romero, & Goslins, 2015) that all other activities referred to. It ended with a great meal the day prior to their constitutional day.

This sparked off more collaborative events with the municipality, the Directorate of Immigration, the Albanian Society of Islamic Culture and Religion, and the university. We have built up a track of collaborative events where we draw on each other’s competences. We mutually invite each other to talk at events for students, for voluntary organizations, at university courses, we can involve undergraduate and graduate students and we collaborate across gender and generations. The aim is to inform and to raise majority members’ awareness, to understand and respect alternative knowledges, competences and experiences as mothers and fathers, as somebody’s daughters, minorities’ meetings with nurseries, schools and the labor market, immigrants who work as bus and taxi drivers and who no longer dream about practicing what they once were formally or informally trained for in their country of origin. Our audiences are highly educated professionals, voluntary workers, or others who now experience that who is teacher/pupil, instructor/instructed, trainer/trainee, knowledge/wisdom is contextual and elastic. We talk from our respective positions dependent on issue. Our institutional arrangements open to transformation of social relations through dialogue as in critical and emancipatory theories. By collaborating with students of immigrant background, we eventually hope to transform the university with diversity as the new normal (Rados, Rustad, & Ryen, 2017).

Conclusion

To ignore how issues of diversity permeate all aspects of institutional contexts previously tailored for a more homogenous population is classic and the privilege of the powerful. However, critical approaches invite us to nuance the apparent social order as well as the numerical successes expressed by statistical numbers. They are outcomes of organizational processes that derive from “concrete people engaged in specific tasks” as Silverman reminds us. It also makes “Immigrant student” a category constructed by constitutive rules and sensemaking in the everyday of institutional settings where members negotiate how to relate to institutional constraints. How and at what costs wither away in statistics.

We need to explore how these ways continuously are being produced as outcomes of intersubjective practices that conserve and resist, that marginalize and make irrelevant, that facilitate and prioritize. When Dvora Yanow (2014/2015) reminds us that categories communicate meaning and shape reality, he also reminds us of the potential danger with its achievement through shared, tacit knowledge. These are institutionally produced achievements we are called to inspect and to challenge by “crossing the road in our own cars.”