Third space epistemologies: Ethnicity and belonging in an ‘immigrant’-dominated upper secondary school in Norway

Abstract

This study explores typologies of modes of ethnic boundary-making among upper secondary school students in one school in Oslo, Norway, which has witnessed a seismic shift in its uptake of students who are mainly from non-White or ‘immigrant’ backgrounds. Wimmer’s typologies of modes of boundary-making – ‘contraction’ and ‘blurring’ – provide a useful heuristic framework to situate our findings. We employ an ethnographic approach in teasing out the challenges posed by a reconfiguration of majority–minority relations in an increasingly fragmented educational landscape where the elasticity of a discourse of egalitarianism has come under severe strain. Our study covers roughly two and a half school terms. Four classrooms in total – three first year classes and one final year class – have constituted the locus of study (91 students in total). The study finds that the stigma of difference is transvaluated into a discourse of empowerment.

Keywords

Boundary-making education ethnicity minority Norway upper secondary

Introduction

The last few decades in Norway have witnessed a steep rise in immigration particularly from the Global South (understood as developing countries mainly from Africa and Asia). This study concerns itself with the manner in which students in an overwhelmingly immigrant high school in Norway self-identify in terms of ethnicity and belonging. We contend that the ethnic boundary-making strategies outlined here are responses to what is called the ‘ideal of sameness’ (Gullestad, 2002) in Norway. In brief, this is a tacit yet palpable discourse of cultural standardization and homogenization (for Gullestad, this ideal was both imaginary and an obstacle to integration). Despite the ideal’s all-pervasive influence, students appeared impervious to its pressures of assimilation. We argue that this ‘ideal of sameness’ is parochial and that it spawns discourses of stigma and delegitimation which, in the final analysis, precipitate alternative quests for identity and belonging among minoritized students.

In 2004, the total number of upper secondary students with an ‘immigrant’ background in Norway – the focus of this study – was 13,800 (8% nationally). In 2013, this student cohort stood at 22,300 comprising a 52 percent increase over the course of just 4 years (2009–2013) (Statistics Norway; see Figure 1). Statistics Norway defines an immigrant as a first-generation immigrant (i.e. the individual and both parents are born abroad) and individuals born in Norway with two parents born abroad (Statistics Norway, 2005). This official way of labelling is what Gullestad (2002) calls ‘statistical reification’ (p. 51). On a national basis, Statistics Norway predicts, based on the figures for 2010, that 22–28 percent of the population of Norway will be from immigrant backgrounds in 2060 (Statistics Norway, 2010). Needless to say, these rapid changes present formidable challenges to the previously taken-for-granted ethos of egalitarianism based on assumptions of assimilation into ‘sameness’.

Figure 1.

Graphical representation of upper secondary school enrolment in Norway by 2009–2013.

The ‘ideal of sameness’

Until recently, Norway had one of the world’s most homogeneous populations which made achieving a certain level of ‘sameness’ within reach. The phrase ‘the ideal of sameness’ attributed to the Norwegian social anthropologist Marianne Gullestad (2002), is an Anglicized rendition of the Norwegian likhetsidealet (‘ideal of likeness’ or ‘similarity’). This collocation seems to suggest that successful integration is directly proportional to the degree to which individuals conform to societal norms. Aberration is perceived as a threat to this ‘ideal of sameness’ (Rugkåssa, 2012, p. 39). Its implications are explained in the quotation below:

For the sake of simplicity I call it ‘imagined sameness’. It is not only tied to the term likhet, but also to a whole range of other expressions such as ‘to fit in together’ (å passe sammen) and ‘to share the same ideas’ (ha sammenfallendesynspunkter). Often it implies that there is a problem when others are perceived to be ‘too different’. Then the parties often avoid each other. Open conflicts are seen as a threat to other basic values, such as ‘peace and quiet’. (Gullestad, 2002, p. 47)

In 1970, Statistics Norway reported that 2 percent of the population were foreign-born with 7.2 percent originating in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and Turkey. In 2001, the number had increased to 6.8 percent with 44.3 percent of them born in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and Turkey. As of 1 January 2014, the total number of those born abroad stood at 15.6 with 8.7 percent hailing from Asia, Africa, South America and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand) (Østby, 2002, p. 12; Statistics Norway, 2015). This seismic shift in the demographic landscape has no doubt strained the elasticity of the discourse of ‘sameness’.

Broader context

Our study complements international research on the topic of ethnicity and education. The findings, we argue, will be of interest to international audiences unfamiliar with contemporary challenges faced by a Scandinavian country traditionally associated with equity and high standards of living (except for 2007 and 2008, Norway has consistently topped the United Nation’s (UN) Human Development Index since 2001; UN Human Development Index). Stakeholders concerned with the manner in which issues of race and ethnicity intersect with education will, we trust, find the case of Norway instructive. The data are purely for critical engagement and gaining insights into students’ ethnic boundary-making/unmaking. The changes in the ethnic landscape have occurred rapidly in the last 10–15 years and, we argue, have taken most stakeholders in schooling in Norway by surprise. As such, this article’s salience lies not in prescribing solutions but disseminating information and understanding about some of these challenges (see also Thomas 2015a and Thomas and Breidlid 2015b). A mass influx of refugees and asylum seekers coupled with the expansion of the European Union in the last few decades has put unprecedented pressure on the educational system. This applies, in particular, to notions of citizenship and belonging. As Kymlicka and Norman (2000) note,

The health and stability of a modern democracy depends, not only on the justice of its institutions, but also on the qualities and attitudes of its citizens: e.g. their sense of identity, and how they view potentially competing forms of national, regional, ethnic, or religious identities; their ability to tolerate and work together with others who are different from themselves [. . . ]. (p. 6)

Several studies have explored the ways in which minorities have both been repressed by, and simultaneously carved out spaces of resistance from within, assimilationist educational structures and systems. For instance, McKinney (2010) considers the assimilationist policies of a desegregated girls’ school in South Africa and the manner in which the girls employ semiotic resources (e.g. rap music) to destabilize their positioning. Gropas and Triandafyllidou (2011) show the shortcomings of intercultural educational policies in Greece which fail to grapple with the burgeoning migrant population. Myers, McGhee, and Bhopal (2010) capture the tension inherent in mainstream educational systems tailored towards sedentary populations, on one hand, and English Gypsy and Traveller communities whose culture is denigrated, on the other. D’Arcy (2014) argues that English Gypsy and Traveller communities’ decision to home school is not the consequence of a way of life that is antithetical to schooling as the dominant discourse maintains, but is the upshot of discrimination in school; Philippou and Theodorou’s (2014, p. 264) study highlights the discursive mis/use of the concept of ‘Europe’ by Greek-Cypriot school children to ‘distinguish, evaluate and hierarchize the various “others” and to re-produce ethnic, racial Eurocentric stereotypes against national out-groups and their immigrant classmates’. The conundrum is aptly captured in the words, ‘At the centre of these lines of inquiry is the big question about whether education is doomed to replicate the inequalities in society or whether it can be an engine for challenging inequality and for promoting social justice’ (Barlett & Burton, 2012, p. 255).

Theoretical framework

The conceptualization of ethnicity which underpins this study resists any reification in terms of blood or ancestry, but is rather understood as a pliable social creation (Baumann, 1999). Fredrik Barth’s seminal studies on ethnic boundary-making elucidated the social plasticity of ethnicity as an aspect of relations between groups and not an essentialized congenital attribute which marks an individual from birth. In contrast to Herder (1800/1966), who promulgated a theory of ethnicity that neatly followed the contours of the cultural landscape (Wimmer, 2013), Barth recommended a study of the machinations involved in ethnic boundary-making which is inscribed into the landscape (Barth, 1998). Our study privileges the agency of minority students in the ethnic boundary-making process. Our use of the term minority must be qualified because our unit of analysis, the students, constitutes a numerical majority at the school. However, following Brewer and Hewstone (2004, pp. 278–279), the term is justified given the asymmetries of power and status.

Wimmer’s (2013) typologies of modes of boundary-making – ‘contraction’ and ‘blurring’ – provide a useful heuristic framework to situate our findings. In contracting, individuals disassociate (e.g. Chinese in California who dislike being categorized together with the Japanese as ‘Asians’) from an assigned ethnic category or create a new one, while in ‘blurring’ individuals de-emphasize ethnic categories and seek to affiliate with non-ethnic based ones (e.g. multi-ethnic cliques of adolescents in Britain), such as religion (Wimmer, 2013, p. 59). Boundary is understood as both a categorical and behavioural dimension. The former is concerned with social classification while the latter furnishes a script through which the two groups (‘us’ and ‘them’) interact. As Wimmer (2013) notes, ‘Only when the two schemes coincide, when the ways of seeing the world correspond to ways of acting in the world, shall we speak of a social boundary’ (p. 9). Wimmer (2013) draws on Bourdieu (2000, p. 187) who was concerned with the manner in which an individual ‘pursues not only the imposition of an advantageous representation of himself or herself . . . but also the power to impose as legitimate the principles of construction of social reality most favorable to his or her social being’.

The ‘ideal of sameness’, seen in this light, has become the ‘legitimate script’ through which any meaningful dialogue between Norwegians and non-Norwegians can transpire. The script, we argue, requires minorities to divest themselves of their cultural heritage although it is peppered with platitudes such as ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’. Part of the frustration arises from the fact that ‘sameness’ is an elusive concept, hence the discomfort on both sides. For instance, what place does the notion of a subjective shared ancestry (e.g. ethnosomatic) occupy in this ‘sameness?’ To what degree does ‘sameness’ accommodate belief systems (e.g. Islam) that appear dissonant with an until recently shared ethno-religiosity (Lutheran Christianity)?

The above strategies of ethnic boundary-making do not arise in a vacuum but as a reaction to a gestalt of stigma which is the upshot of deviating from the hegemony of ‘sameness’ (Gullestad, 2002), we argue. In this regard, Goffman’s (1963) theory of stigma is salient because the management of an ascribed deviance is central to this study. The term is defined as ‘an attribute that is deeply discrediting’. Like Wimmer’s (2013) boundaries, stigma arises in the interstices of relationships which are constantly being negotiated. Stigma is closely related to stereotype which together function as arbiters in the encounter between the normal and abnormal. If one way of looking at stigma is as ‘an ideology of inferiority’ which seeks to account for the danger the stigmatized represents (Goffman, 1963, p. 16), we consider what coping strategies students employ as a response to this ideology. The issue of ‘acceptance’ lies at the core of stigma (Goffman, 1963, p. 19). As the interviews reveal, some of the students shared that they opted to join ‘East High’,¹ despite its poor reputation as an innvandrer skole (a pejorative term for a school with too many foreigners mainly from non-Western backgrounds) because they felt discriminated against in schools where they were in the minority. This conflates with Goffman’s (1963) observation:

I am suggesting, then, that the stigmatized one – at least the ‘visibly’ stigmatized one – will have special reasons for feeling that mixed social situations make for anxious unanchored interaction. But if this is so, then it is to be suspected that we normals will find these situations shaky too. (p. 29)

What this study attempts to put the spotlight on, among others, is what lies beneath the comforting notion of ‘sameness’. As mentioned earlier, the national discourse appears to be one which brooks no discussion of its validity and authority. We see the boundary-making strategies as employing ‘third space’ epistemologies. Third space is a strategic place adopted by the oppressed, the peripheral ‘Other’. If first space is the physical architecture itself (e.g. a school, a building, the body), second space refers to the thoughts or mental images projected onto first space geographies (e.g. stigma, stereotypes or acclamations) (Soja, 1996). Third space epistemologies, then, negate the stifling confines of the first two, producing new arenas of ‘becoming’. The notion of hybridity is central to third space. Hybridity is not contingent on former trajectories, but is an authentic space at the margins. The students at East High, for example, find themselves in that authentic space by virtue of imbibing mainstream Norwegian and their own ethnic cultures. The question, however, is to explore the form this space assumes in the confrontation with the discourse of ‘sameness’ in an educational setting. This third space is not about fulfilling conventional expectations associated with liberal discourse, but the freedom to be ‘who we can be and still be black’ (hooks, 1989). Third space seeks ‘a multiplicitous “alterity,” a transgressive “third way” that is more than just the sum or combination of an ordinary dualism’ (Soja, 1996, p. 107).

Research site, access and methodology

The study

To reiterate, this study’s focus is students who are not ethnic Norwegians in a mainly immigrant-dominated high school and their ethnic positionality vis-à-vis a national discourse of ‘sameness’. Inherent in this ideal is the term ‘colour-blindness’ which Gillborn (2008) calls ‘an obstinate refusal to consider ethnic diversity despite a wealth of evidence that minorities are not sharing equally’ (p. 715). How does this macro-level discourse impact students’ sense of identity and belonging at ‘East High’? These considerations inform the research questions below:

Within the framework of a Barthian self-ascription approach to ethnic boundary-making, how do students at East High position themselves in terms of identity?

How does this self-ascription in turn feed into notions of integration and ‘sameness?’

The school has approximately 650 students enrolled in general studies and vocational training. Our study covers roughly two and a half school terms (August 2013–June 2014 and August–October 2014). Generalizability is obviously limited given the sample size. Nevertheless, demographic projections for the city of Oslo indicate figures of ca. 47 percent immigrants by 2040 (up from the current 30%) which clearly amplifies the significance of this study (Akerhaug, 2012).

The school is located in the south-east of Oslo and is one of the three local provinces (15 in total) with a population of over 50 percent immigrants mostly from the Global South. The school reflects the ethnic and cultural diversity in the district. Several of the female students wear hijabs. There are comparatively few White students with many of East European extract. Given its poor reputation, the school often attracts students with below average academic grades. However, as several of the students in the first year shared with us, once the initial ‘shock’ of being lumped together with so many ‘fellow-immigrants’ is overcome, students settle in socially and develop a positive overall picture of the school. As one student stated in class with many others nodding,

I was shocked to see so many foreigners in the beginning. Norwegians don’t want to come here because it is a ‘Black school’. Some say this is the ‘ghetto’. The Norwegians are afraid that their grades and language skills will suffer here. But after some time, I made friends here and the teachers are really good, so I feel I fit in here. It’s not as bad as the media hype paints it. (Male, 16, of Iraqi origin)

Access and participants

Commensurate with research guidelines in Norway, we first sought official permission to conduct the research through the school principal. This was granted after a tentative proposal was submitted. Four classrooms in total, three first year classes and one final year class, have constituted the locus of study (91 students in total). The age of the first cohort was on average 16, while the latter was 18. Prior to 1997, the school catered mainly for a Norwegian, ‘white’ intake of students but, due to settlement patterns, but also choice, the tables were turned with an overwhelming 98 percent of the intake now being students from an ethnic minority background. In all, 75 percent identify as Muslims. Figure 2 is a representation of the study cohort’s countries of origin. Groruddalen, the district of Oslo where the school is situated, has become synonymous with ‘White flight’, immigration and deteriorating schools. Among the reasons often cited for parents’ decision to move to another catchment area, the following loom large: fear that their children’s Norwegian skills will deteriorate (Morken & Theie, 2015), the inconvenience of being a ‘minority’ in one’s own country and the psychological impact of frequent and negative media coverage. For instance, the former school councillor for Oslo, Robert Wright, whose son was enrolled in the first grade at Stovner School in Groruddalen in 2010, made headlines when he stated that White Norwegian students, such as his son, should be grouped into the same classrooms to stop the haemorrhaging of White students. Critiquing the current policy that required one-third of pupils to be White Norwegians, he said, ‘My children are a minority, spread thinly across to embellish the statistics. Our children become tools to ensure integration of others, guinea pigs in a relatively strong social experiment’ (Neegard, 2010). The above is commensurate with the observation that ‘When choice is available, the fact that relatively more advantaged children leave their home schools and districts has an adverse effect on what they leave behind’ (Lee, Croninger, & Smith, 1994, p. 449).

Figure 2.

Students’ countries of origin (i.e. where their parents were born).

Data collection and analysis

This study has employed an ethnographic lens. Diaries were kept and entries made in the wake of incidents relevant to our study. Some official documents from Statistics Norway and government publications on social inclusion have also been analysed. Some of these include the following:

Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion (2008) . Action plan for the integration and social inclusion of the immigrant population.

Ministry of Education and Research (2007) . Education: from kindergarten to adult education.

Statistics Norway (2005, 2010, 2014).

As in other European contexts, various stakeholders with differing motivations seek to influence the public discourse on immigration in Norway. Our choice of methodology was informed by the fact that the voice of the marginalized (the subaltern) gets lost in the cacophony of noises emanating from official statistics, think tanks and politicians. The ethnographic method in contrast contests the atomization procedures underpinning much numerical research. Ethnography seeks to arrive at a holistic understanding using a multiplicity of methods such as participant observation, interviews and conversations, documents, field notes, accounts and memos in order to approximate the worldview of the participants through a hermeneutic process (LeCompte, Tesch, & Goetz, 1993, p. 3).

Among others, our modus operandi consisted of administering various written and oral tasks to the students which precipitated introspective reflection and debate with respect to issues of identity and positionality in a segregated school. For instance, the questions and assignments were interlaced with and timed to coincide with syllabus topics covered in English, such as ‘Somewhere I belong’, which sensitizes students to the plight of First Nations in Anglo-American contexts and ‘Global Dignity Day’ (GDD) in a religious education class. GDD is an annual nationwide celebration of individual worth and self-esteem in all upper secondary schools in Norway. It is our contention that, given the ‘comfort zone’ of the class environment and the non-interventional method of our working, the students found the latitude to give free reign to their innermost thoughts. Several hours of focus group discussions, responses to semi-structured questions and diary notes went into the reservoir of data accumulated. A total of 46 responses to the semi-structured questions were submitted for closer scrutiny and interviews conducted with 10 of the students. Some texts were in English while others were translated from Norwegian. Interviews were translated from Norwegian into English, transcribed, codes generated and analysed using the software NVivo10. Simple descriptive analysis and figures were generated using SPSS22. In the interest of safeguarding the school, students and staff, all names are anonymized.

Researcher identities

The researchers were all immersed as participant observers in a school where all are employees (Bryman’s (2004) ‘ecological validity’). Two are fully fledged teachers at the ‘chalkface’ level, while a third researcher functions as a student advisor. Admittedly, in researching one’s own classes, the onus was on us to maintain constant vigilance (treating phenomena as ‘anthropologically strange’, to borrow from Hammersley and Atkinson (2007, p. 9)) and suspending preconceptions in an environment familiar to us. Previous research in diverse fields and intermittent comparison of notes helped ensure a modicum of professional distanciation (Changezi & Biseth, 2011; Thomas, 2012).

Findings

Figure 2 is a representation of the student cohort’s countries of origin. By this is meant the parents countries of origin as divulged by the students. The 46 students – an amalgam of first year and final year students – hail from 19 countries all categorized under ‘Immigrants and Norwegian-born immigrants with immigrant parents’ in Census reports (e.g. as reported in Table 1 (Statistics Norway, 2014a)). Following the narrow parameters of taxonomization practised in the Census, only 2 students in this cohort (both autochthonous) qualified as Norwegians meaning that the students and both their parents were born in Norway. The numerical strength of immigrant students at East High can be gauged by the fact that they constitute 95.6 percent of this cohort of 46 students compared with only 8.4 percent of the population of Norway as a whole. A breakdown of the countries would be as follows: Thailand, Sri Lanka, The Philippines, Lithuania, Gambia, Dominican Republic, Chechnya and Bosnia had each 1 representative; Turkey, Palestine, Norway, Eritrea, Albania and Afghanistan had each 2 representatives; Vietnam/China, Morocco and Iraq registered 3; Kurdistan had 5; and Somalia had 12. Obviously, Kurdistan and Palestine are not countries but have been defined as such for the purposes of this study which treats students as active ‘agents’ in ethnic boundary-making strategies.

Table 1.

Immigrants and Norwegian-born immigrants with immigrant parents, 1 January 2014.

	Immigrants and Norwegian-born immigrants with immigrant parents in all	Immigrants	Norwegian-born with immigrant parents	Percentage of total population of immigrants and Norwegian-born with immigrant parents
All in all	759,185	633,110	126,075	14.9
EU/EEA, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand	331,590	307,188	24,402	6.5
Asia, Africa, South America, Oceania except Australia and New Zealand, and Europa except EU/EEA	427,595	325,922	101,673	8.4

Source: Statistics Norway https://www.ssb.no/innvbef/

EU: European Union; EEA: European Economic Area.

Based on the responses, two overarching strategies of ethnic boundary-making emerged. Although not watertight delineations, the broad contours of these strategies are fruitfully analysed in the next section using Wimmer’s (2013) typologies of boundary-making.

Typologies of modes of boundary-making

Contraction

I am a Norwegian-Pakistani girl who is 18 years of age. I was born and brought up in Norway. Despite this Norwegians still say that I am a foreigner (utlending). When I am on holiday in Pakistan, the Pakistanis consider me to be a foreigner from Norway. I am a bit confused.

Wimmer (2013) defines contraction as a strategy of narrowing boundaries with the aim of ‘disidentifying with the category one is assigned to by outsiders’ (p. 55). This, according to Wimmer (2013) is achieved through fission – a rupture of an existing category – or opting for more precise nuances in multitiered systems of ethnic classification. The majority of respondents who grappled with the question ‘Are you Norwegian?’ could not bring themselves to answer in the affirmative despite the fact that the overwhelming majority were born and brought up in Norway. The word utlending (alien or foreigner) is pregnant with connotations of racial and cultural inferiority in common parlance. Like the word innvandrer (immigrant), it taps into topoi of deviance and delegitimation:

Innvandrer is today not only a word in the dictionary, but a rhetorically powerful concept. Within such a frame of analysis, innvandrer has become a stigmatizing way of labelling ‘them’ . . . The meaning of the word now seems to oscillate between an implicit code based on ‘Third World’ origin, different values from the majority, ‘dark skin’, working class (unskilled or semi-skilled work). (Gullestad, 2002, p. 50)

The girl quoted above is caught in the interstices of what Goffman (1963) calls stigma – ‘an attribute that is deeply discrediting’ (p. 12). Goffman (1963) makes a distinction between virtual and actual social identity. Attributes, assumptions and imputations assigned to a stranger ‘in effect’ constitute virtual social identity as opposed to the category and attributes the stranger may be proved to possess. The statement below, from a boy who self-identified as having a Somali background is a case in point:

My affinity towards Norway has undergone some changes since I moved back after a few years in the UK in 2011. While in England, I felt a connection with Norway since I was born and brought up in western Norway. Since I returned, I feel less Norwegian. The rhetoric of politicians, the language and agenda of the media, all this makes people with immigrant backgrounds feel less Norwegian, although we are actually Norwegians.

When probed further, the citation above alluded to the rise of the right-wing Progress Party which is currently in a coalition government and the devastating attacks perpetrated by the racist terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, who ruthlessly murdered 77 people. The boy said, ‘Whenever we are mentioned, it is only as a problem’. The disconnect between politicians and these adolescents is illustrated in the quotation below from the government’s ‘Action plan for the integration and social inclusion of the immigrant population’:

In 2007, the Action plan for the integration and social inclusion of the immigrant population contained measures costing more than NOK 300 million. In 2008, the efforts will be continued and increased by more than NOK 212 million, NOK 70 million of which is related to measures to combat forced marriage. In addition, NOK 18 million has been allocated to combating genital mutilation. (Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, 2008; USD1 is roughly 7.5 NOK)

Implicit in the ‘ideal of sameness’ sketched above is a denigrating conception of integration in terms of earmarking money to solve a problem and expunging ‘unsavoury’ cultural diacritics (Wimmer, 2013, p. 11) – such as ‘a mode of speaking, a costume, a decorative scar’. The term ‘immigrant’ is manifestly revealed as shorthand for a certain segment of the population, mostly from African and Middle-Eastern backgrounds given the mention of forced marriages and genital mutilation. In this manner, majorities superimpose a skewed virtual social identity on minorities triggering contraction strategies:

I was born in Oslo, Norway. My parents are originally from Kosovo. I’m raised with a mix of the Norwegian and the Albanian culture. I have lived in Norway my entire life, but I have never felt Norwegian. In the summer vacation, my family and I always travel to Kosovo, but the Albanian people say ‘Here is the Norwegian girl’. So I have never felt Norwegian nor Albanian. People look at me in Norway and think that I am an ethnic Norwegian girl. However, I feel more like an Albanian than Norwegian. (Female, 15)

My parents are from The Dominican Republic but I was born here in Norway. I see myself as a Latino because I like the culture in The Dominican Republic. I have lived there for 3–4 years and know much about the country. I do not see myself as a Norwegian boy because I don’t particularly like this country. (Male, 17)

The girl quoted here looks phenotypically Norwegian (blond and blue-eyed). During an excursion in the second week of school in August, she was overheard correcting other students who assumed she was, to use her own word, an ‘ethnic’ Norwegian. It is significant that, like many others in this study, she insists on self-identifying as an Albanian despite her admission that she is not fully accepted as one in Kosovo. Similarly, the boy, who is born and bred in Norway, states that he ‘knows much’ about The Dominican Republic, despite the relative brevity of his sojourn there. This oscillating self-ascription can be interpreted as a deliberate strategy in which a member of a minority group disaggregates from the social field where majority stigma holds sway. This ‘cognitive–affective crossfire’ (Brewer & Hewstone, 2004, p. 283) is commensurate with the observation that

On the one hand, group membership appears to take a central and therefore particularly salient position in the cognitive self-definitions of members of low-status minority groups, while on the other hand, its negative value connotations make it an unattractive self-aspect. (Brewer & Hewstone, 2004, p. 283)

The collective categorization utlending (foreigner) takes on new symbolic meaning among the tribally stigmatized. The social field of the school, dominated by other utlendinger (foreigners; a term often used by East High students), is no longer perceived as a deprived ghetto teeming with underachievers and social outcasts, but metamorphosizes into an arena of camaraderie and resistance – a ‘third space’ of evolution and becoming with no communitarian closure. This can be gauged from the several responses where students jettison words like ‘ghetto’ and the pejorative ‘utlendinger’ for words like ‘multicultural’ and ‘being yourself’:

The school has students from diverse cultures. It is a multicultural school. (Male of Iraqi origin)

When I was about to begin at East High, I heard that this was a ghetto school with a lot of fights going on, but now I think this is a really good school. I like to be with people from different cultures. You can be yourself here. (Somali female, 18)

That this is a school with many immigrants doesn’t make it a bad school. This is media propaganda. I was told the school is a ghetto school and I heard many bad rumours. Actually, this is a good school and the teachers are clever. (Female of Turkish origin, 16)

This ‘third space’ may employ the rehabilitated word, utlending, as a ‘badge of honour’ but concomitantly gives latitude for diversity and ethnic boundary-making on an individual level, something which is not accorded in the social space outside the school. One of our co-authors is himself of African origin. He has often been included endearingly by students in the appellation vi utlendinger (we foreigners). Probing further, he was told, ‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but we consider you to be one of us – utlending. You should be proud of that’. This attitude underpins the statements below:

Here [East High] you can be yourself. You don’t need to worry about how you look, your accent or your food. (Male of Kurdish origin, 18)

The atmosphere here is much more relaxed. The others accept you for who you are and we don’t go around feeling like outsiders as in other schools. (Sri Lankan male, 16)

In this school, despite what others say, you are respected. (Palestinian male, 18)

Norwegians tend to stick together while those who are non-ethnic Norwegians seem to hang together. You can be yourself here. (Eritrean female, 18)

This becomes a case of not only leaning on the crutch of stigma, but playing golf with it (Goffman, 1963). The ‘blurring’ gels into another typology of ethnic boundary-making called ‘transvaluation’ (Wimmer, 2013, p. 57) in which ‘the symbolic hierarchy is put on its head so that the category of the excluded and despised comes to designate a chosen people, morally, intellectually, and culturally superior to the dominant group’. Hence, the concern with rectifying perceptions of her as an ethnic Norwegian on the part of the 15-year-old Albanian girl mentioned earlier. In a paradoxical way, and as Goffman (1963) notes,

The individual’s real group, then, is the aggregate of persons who are likely to have to suffer the same deprivations as he suffers because of having the same stigma; his real ‘group’, in fact, is the category which can serve as his discrediting. (p. 137)

This is often distilled in the aforementioned vi utlendinger – a phrase which evokes solidarity among the ‘othered’ students. There are parallels here with McKinney’s (2010) conclusion in the context of a South-African school:

However, in contrast with previous research, the fact that ‘black’ girls have replaced ‘white’ girls in this school and are thus overwhelmingly in the majority in the school space enables a different kind of dynamic in which they seem more able to assert their presence. (p. 204)

So far, we have considered the machinations of how stigma sensitizes individuals from minority backgrounds to the tension inherent in the process of identity construction. In contrast to contraction mechanisms which saw students draw more parochial boundaries and disaggregate from assigned categories, the next section explores another mechanism, ‘blurring’ (Wimmer, 2013, p. 61), which seeks to divest from ethnic categories.

Blurring

I would never answer that I am Norwegian if someone asked me where I was from. One thing which does not confuse me is my religion. Although I am born in a Christian country, I am confident that I am a Muslim. I am born and bred in a Muslim family and have been conscious of this since childhood. This is not just something I have been groomed into saying. Now as an adult who can make up her own mind, and can make decisions, I have examined the religion I have called ‘mine’ and concluded that it is true. (Female of Moroccan origin, 18)

In blurring strategies of ethnic boundary-making, the salience of ethnicity is downplayed, while ‘Other nonethnic principles are promoted and the legitimacy of ethnic, national or ethnosomatic boundaries undermined’ (Wimmer, 2013, p. 61). Finding no haven in the confining and stigmatized social space defined by the majority, some minorities find religion to be a universal and empowering identity marker placing them in the ‘centre of the social and moral universe’ (Wimmer, 2013, p. 62). Whereas the conflicting and complex demands of membership in Norwegian society spawn ambivalence, religion’s appeal lies in its simple demarcation between ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ and its promise to expunge socially attributed stigma. (Another example is ‘untouchables’ in India who convert to Christianity.) The Moroccan girl’s statement, ‘I have examined the religion I have called “mine” [. . . ]’, bears testimony to religion’s ability to enhance self-esteem and dissipate the miasma of national membership fraught with debate and hurdles. There are parallels here with disaffected figures such as Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X who converted to Islam in the heyday of the civil rights era:

I am a 17 year old boy from Afghanistan. My religion is Islam. I used to attend [another upper secondary school] in Oslo but I changed to East High. I like this school because it is a multicultural school. The school has many different students from all over the world. Here we all respect each other regardless of your country of origin.

Like the Moroccan girl above, religion is a salient aspect of this boy’s identity. During two English periods on the same day, 11 out of 17 in one class and 14 out of 17 in another expressed the opinion that teachers in training should be permitted to wear the niqab if they so choose. Significantly, the only ethnically Norwegian girl supported the use of niqab:

Who is a woman wearing a hijab hurting? There are Norwegian women who wear miniskirts and very tight pants so why can’t others wear niqabs? (Male Albanian, 16)

I agree with the class, it should be an individual choice. (Female Norwegian, 16)

The discussion arose as we read a text about the importance of body language such as facial expression, gesture and body posture in oral communication. The practice of wearing a niqab has sparked an impassioned debate nationwide and several colleges and upper secondary schools have banned its use. The alienating effects of a postmodern world, or what Zygmunt Bauman (2000) calls ‘liquid modernity’, where affiliations are dispersed, ephemeral and fragile, coupled with a general hardening of attitudes towards Islam in the aftermath of 9/11, are dislodged by students’ recruitment of an explicit Muslim identity. The concept of ummah is germane in this regard. This is the transnational Muslim ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 2006) which transcends local parochialism. Speaking of ‘blurring’, Wimmer (2013) writes,

General human qualities and the ‘family of mankind’ are often evoked, it seems by the most excluded and stigmatized groups. Michele Lamont has shown how working-class African-Americans as well as Maghrebine and African immigrants in France use the universal language of religion to deny legitimacy of ethnoracial hierarchies and to position themselves at the centre of the social and moral universe. (p. 62)

Although no causal link is claimed, the above discussion is relevant to recent media focus on why some young Norwegian Muslims have travelled to show solidarity with Syrian fighters without their parent’s knowledge. In October 2013, two Norwegian-Somali female students aged 16 and 19 years travelled clandestine to Syria to ‘assist’ the fighters, to the utter horror of their father. Groping for an explanation, Linda Alzaghari, a spokesperson for the think tank Minotank which represents minorities in Norway, told NRK, Norway’s main public broadcasting corporation,

The girls perhaps feel alienated and have disappeared. It is possible we have done ourselves a disservice by imposing a niqab ban in Akershus [a municipality adjacent to Oslo]. Young girls who have grown up in Norway are very conscious of their rights. (NRK, 2013)

With 75 percent of East High students coming from Muslim backgrounds, it is understandable that several of the students elevated this ‘blurring’ category ahead of any ethnosomatic or cultural identity markers. In the aforementioned religion class, four out of eight girls wear the hijab. Some of them saw no conflict in the hyphenated identity, ‘Norwegian-Muslim’. As one Somali girl put it, ‘I am a Norwegian-Muslim girl who attends “East High”’. Another boy, who did not mention his parent’s ethnicity said, ‘I have always seen myself as a Norwegian-Muslim’. Goffman (1963, p. 43) coined the term ‘courtesy stigma’ – those who are related to a stigmatized person or structure (Islam in this case) may respond by embracing their fate and learn ‘to live within the world of one’s stigmatized connexion’. This, we argue, goes some way in explaining the current proliferation of segregated schools in Oslo. The ummah becomes a ‘third space’ that ruptures the aforementioned stigmas that seek to localize and confine:

I used to attend [another upper secondary school] in Oslo but I changed to East High. I like this school because it is a multicultural school.

The ‘other school’ he used to attend earlier made national headlines a few years ago for clustering first year students according to ethnicity. Fearful of being labelled an ‘immigrant school’, and hoping to attract more Norwegian students (at that time the number of ethnic Norwegians at the school was down to 30%), this school clustered White/Norwegian students separately from non-ethnic students. Faced with student demonstrations at the school (both White and non-White) and national accusations of apartheid, this ‘pigmentocratic’ policy was nipped in the bud. The above experience of discomfort and alienation at the ‘other school’ is echoed by another student who writes (the ‘other school’ is the same one),

I am an 18 year old Iraqi boy. Why did I apply to this school? I attended [another upper secondary school] prior to this. There were many ethnic Norwegians and I experienced discrimination which is why I applied here. The teachers here are so familiar with many non-ethnic Norwegians that they do not discriminate. (18-year-old Iraqi boy)

Both these students do not spell out concretely what form the ‘discrimination’ at the ‘other school’ assumed. But the denouement of the perceived effect is unequivocal – they disengaged from that milieu. Speaking once more of the ‘other school’, a 16-year-old ethnic Norwegian girl states,

Very many schools choose students with Norwegian names instead of Arabic, for example. I know a person who is ethnically Norwegian at the ‘other school’ whose grade was no higher than someone I know from Pakistan who didn’t get in. Racism if you ask me.

In summary, these students views conflate with other findings from France (Keaton, 2006) and Sweden (Gunnarson, 2013) in which interviewees ‘[. . . ] experience a dilemma in their sense of national and cultural belonging. In contrast, religious identification was more rigid. Religious identity was discussed as both a uniting and segregating factor’ (p. 105). Soja’s (1996) ‘third space’ applied to this study is salient in that it challenges mainstream rhetoric that perceives schools such as ‘East High’ solely through the lens of gloom and doom. Why would students, who themselves are ethnically non-Norwegian, be ‘shocked’ to encounter other ethnically non-Norwegian students at ‘East High’ initially? We argue that this is a testament to the powerful discourse of conformity feeding into ‘sameness’. Despite this, these students, in replacing pejoratives such as ‘ghetto’ with ‘multicultural’, and secreting positive values into East High, subvert the edifice of ‘sameness’ and send out a clear signal that this is their school.

Furthermore, third space is evident in ‘blurring’ strategies. In particular, with respect to the overt declarations of allegiance to Islam. The retort was often heard that the media and politicians were biased against Islam. Obviously, this presents challenges in regards to the more unsavoury aspects of religious interpretations. However, third space in this sense becomes a place of refuge for the marginalized – an oasis where the oppressed congregate and explore their beliefs without the constraints of ‘sameness’. ‘East High’ then becomes synonymous with ‘third space’ – a space where, paradoxically, the tables are turned.

Conclusion

We have seen that ‘contraction’ was the main strategy of ethnic boundary-making among the participants in this study. Others were caught in a cognitive–affective crossfire: ambivalence towards both a sense of ‘Norwegian-ness’ and belonging to their parents’ countries of origin. It is significant that the majority of these students who were born and bred in Norway – a country which has invested heavily in their integration – disidentify with the category ‘Norwegian’.

The media intermittently provides anecdotes of Norwegian parents whose children feel alienated in minority-dominated schools in Oslo and move out to ‘whiter’ areas (‘white flight’ phenomenon). In a study from 2008, which analysed patterns of migration in Oslo, the author concludes that school catchment areas with more than 40 percent minorities from non-western backgrounds experience a higher exodus of ethnic White Norwegian families (Sundell, 2008, p. 72). According to the study, the odds of an ethnic White family moving in such cases is 80 percent higher than figures for non-ethnic Norwegians. The author concludes, ‘It is therefore reasonable to assume that “white flight” and “white avoidance” are causal factors driving the segregation of schools in Oslo’ (Sundell, 2008, p. 75). Our study has briefly looked at official documents which have cemented the ‘Otherness’ of immigrants. First, a Norwegian citizen born and brought up in Norway will perennially be categorized as innvandrer (immigrant) as long as his or her parents were born abroad (Table 1). Furthermore, we have alluded to the manner in which government white papers envision integration and social inclusion within a framework of ‘weeding out’ unacceptable ‘immigrant practices’, like forced marriages and genital mutilation. The ‘ideal of sameness’ morphs into a form of ‘soft cultural imperialism’ that enforces a regime of virtue. Paradoxically, the school arena which is supposed to be the ‘poster boy’ for championing equality and ‘sameness’ has morphed into one where parents consider pigmentation as well as average grades when selecting schools.

Additionally, the rupture effectuated by the ‘ideal of sameness’ leads these young and impressionable students in a quest for a more powerful and stable entity to belong to. This can explain the salience of religion as a ‘blurring’ strategy among the participants, especially with the rise of the right in politics:

The rise of the new radical right, by excluding those considered ‘too different’, leaves out an important number of people – mainly some immigrants and Muslims. By denying them the right to belong, they are being condemned to the status of ‘permanent outsiders. (Guibernau, 2013, p. 4)

The three ethnic boundary-making strategies considered in this article – contraction, blurring and individual crossing – give expression to students’ agency as a response to an ‘ideal of sameness’ that beckons, lures, teases, obfuscates, excludes and denigrates simultaneously. Rather than kowtow, these students resist binaries and create a ‘third space’ of self-identification in which they contract, blur and, very rarely, crossover. This is what Soja (1996) calls ‘thirding-as-Othering’ (p. 5). We have shown how the stigma of difference is transvalued into the empowering ‘we immigrants’. In carving out this niche of resistance – a third space domain where the marginalized and ‘Othered’, in an ironic reconfiguration, in turn ‘Other’ attempts at ethnic, linguistic, cultural or educational ‘incarceration’. This new third space terrain is unchartered (what Foucault (1984) refers to as ‘heterotopologies’ (p. 252)) and contingent upon a matrix of unpredictable variables (e.g. definition of citizenship, discourse of inclusion/exclusion, political rhetoric). However, one thing is certain: the conventional modes of conceiving social identities and spaces are detonated and deconstructed ‘not to be comfortably poured back into old containers’ (Soja, 1996, p. 163).

Footnotes

Notes

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