This article considers how debates over antiracist identity in Norway were energized after a critical event-the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations and public debates. The analysis draws on 54 in-depth interviews with antiracist activists and allies, fieldwork during antiracist demonstrations, and on-and offline seminars. Three identity dilemmas emerged within the Norwegian antiracist movement during this time: the genuine engagement dilemma, the difference-in-sameness dilemma, and the spokesperson dilemma. This article analyzes each dilemma and concludes with notes on how collective identity and its dilemmas differ within and beyond antiracist movements.

This chapter focuses on how citizens, through identity work and activism, challenge images of what it means to be Norwegian and, more broadly, of a Nordic nation. The concepts of identity work, nationalism, and social imaginaries are central in analyzing how foreign adoptees and descendants of immigrants from the 1990s up until today understand, critique, and resist racism and feelings of outsiderness to the Norwegian nation. My empirical examples are drawn mainly from earlier and ongoing research in Norway, while illustrating tendencies central also to the other Nordic nations.

This article analyses the reactions of antiracist activists to public debates about memorials following the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. Based on 47 in-depth interviews with Norwegian antiracist activists, we examine three debates about memorials in two Norwegian cities. Theoretically, the concepts of connected histories and reflexive transnationalization inform our analysis, supplemented by a discussion of the relationship between European colonialism and the Nordic context. Our analysis suggests that Norwegian antiracists are ambivalent regarding these highly mediatized debates over memorials. While they believe that such debates are important in challenging portrayals of Norwegian history, they also fear that a focus on symbolic politics may damage antiracist efforts. We conclude by suggesting how an existing national self-understanding of innocence is challenged and better understood through an examination of the intersection between connected histories and existing national narratives.

In 2020, global debates on racism and antiracist terminology intensified, fuelled by the revitalization of discussions on race and structural racism through the Black Lives Matter movement. This article examines how Norwegian antiracists engage with analytical concepts from U.S. and U.K. literature, and how both travelling and locally developed identity categories are perceived across different segments of the Norwegian antiracist movement. Although there is broad agreement on the necessity of a clear Norwegian antiracist language, opinions vary regarding terms like "race" and "structural racism", as well as identity labels such as "black" and "melanin-rich", introduced by grassroots organizations. This study is based on in-depth interviews with 50 self-identified Norwegian antiracists, including representatives from various organizations and independent activists in literary and media fields. The analysis utilizes theoretical frameworks on conceptual travel and the relationship between common sense and scientific concepts.

The literature on racialization has typically focused on the situation of people of color in the Western world. In this article, we explore the analytical value of extending the concept of racialization to analyze symbolic boundaries that rely on and fortify the ascription of the specific skills and identities of white immigrants. The discussion builds on a review of the emerging literature on Polish immigrants in Norway since 2004. It reveals other everyday experiences of Poles and how they see themselves – and how others see them – differently compared to Norwegians and other immigrants and minorities. We examine how these processes of identity ascription are rooted in the Poles’ position as ‘labor migrants’ in predominantly low-waged and low-skilled segments of the Norwegian labor market. We also demonstrate how their location in the productive structure has far-reaching implications that work to construct symbolic boundaries, setting the Polish migrant apart from mainstream Norwegian society. The conclusion suggests a modified racialization concept, ‘gray racialization’, to conceptualize the discriminatory situation of the Poles as an immigrant and minority population, which we find to better allow for an understanding of power relations and social inequalities than its conceptual alternatives.

The introduction present key research questions addressed by the Special Issue: What is the character of the symbolic reproduction of racial, ethnic and/ or national boundaries and how are they interwoven into international migrants’ practices, experiences, and strategies within Europe’s low-waged workplaces? The four IS papers address this question from different perspectives; three of them by drawing on materials from the food production industries in the Scandinavian countries and the UK, the last discussing how Polish labour migrant in Norwegian society are objects of ‘gray racialization’ setting them apart from the majority population. A main contribution of the SI lies in the bridging of disparate literature in the fields of labour markets, migration, and social and symbolic boundary processes: The in-depth qualitative analysis demonstrates how migrants working in low wage, low skill labour markets are the object of ongoing processes of othering along racial, ethnic and national lines. Various agents representing the majority society – the state, employers, trade unions and local communities – each in their own ways contribute to these processes and thereby to the reproduction of social inequalities. Combined, the SI papers also demonstrate the role the migrants themselves play in the production and reproduction of these dynamics.

"Antiracist discourse. Theory and history of a macromovement." Ethnic and Racial Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

This paper looks at how research communication in Norwegian migration and diversity research has changed over time. The main themes in the analysis are researchers’ motivations to enter the field and their experiences of, and reactions to, critique from colleagues and other audiences. Theory about credibility contests and boundary work on the interface of the academia and media, along with ideas about explicit and implicit normativity, inform the analysis. A main conclusion is that, as the field has matured, contests over normativity have changed from internal contests over implicit normativity to external charges of explicit normativity. The empirical analysis builds on 31 interviews with Norwegian researchers about their experiences of, and views on, public research communication in newspapers, social media, radio, TV and face-to-face panel debates. The interviewed researchers are of different age, gender, and ethnicity and they work in 10 different universities and research institutes across Norway.

This special issue focusses on how migration and diversity researchers experience and perform their role as academic experts in politicised public debates about migration and diversity. In a world wherein experts are increasingly demanded for policy development and wherein migration as well as ethnic, racial and religious diversity are among the themes dividing voters the most, migration and diversity researchers find themselves in a challenging position. How do they view their obligation to participate in public debate and how does their identities as researchers relate to such participation? This special issue will discuss the impact and implications of these challenges in the Scandinavian context, although the theme of researchers’ roles in politicised public debate is of a broader relevance both to other geographical regions and to other controversial research fields. Debates on public sociology, on the science/media interface, and on present challenges to academic expertise more generally, are central to the discussion.

How do Norwegian migration and diversity researchers experience and maneuver participation in public debate? And do their experiences and strategies fit with Michael Burawoy's image of Norwegian social science and with his model of public sociology? In this article, the concept of public sociology is expanded to public social science, encompassing communication of research not just from sociology but social science in general. Semi-structured interviews with 31 Norwegian migration and diversity scholars from 10 academic institutions about their experiences of, and views on, public research communication constitute the empirical material. The article concludes that Burawoy is right about the relatively high participation in public debate among social scientists in Norway. And his ideal-typical distinction between four types of sociology is helpful in analyzing how researchers relate differently to the science-public interface. Yet the results indicate that his perspective on public sociology is overly optimistic and not sufficiently attuned to the normativity already attached to highly politicized issues in public debate.

Sannhet og objektivitet er viktige mål i vitenskapen, men også mål mange forskere ser som umulige å oppnå fullt ut. Når forskere kommuniserer med omverdenen, vil likevel mottakerne vurdere forskningens objektivitet og sannhetsverdi. Noen ganger, som etter NRK Brennpunkt-dokumentaren «Lykkelandet» om romfolk som var involvert i kriminelle nettverk i Bergen (april 2017),1 blir resultater fra ulike kunnskapsformer, her journalistikk og forskning, satt opp mot hverandre. I dette konkrete tilfellet ble konklusjoner fra en forskningsrapport om romfolk i Oslo fra 20152 trukket fram og kritisert i etterkant av visningen av dokumentaren på TV. Forskerne ble anklaget for å spre løgner og pynte på funn etter egen overbevisning,3 og de måtte ut i krevende debatter der de redegjorde for forskningsmetodologi og forklarte forskjellen på hva man fant i TV-dokumentaren og i forskningen.4 Her sto forskningens troverdighet på spill. Forskerne sto på anklagebenken og måtte arbeide hardt for å gjenopprette tillit til egen forskning. Oftere enn konkurranse mellom ulike kunnskapsformer, vil publikum forholde seg til ulike konklusjoner fra forskere som alle representerer vitenskapen. Pierre Bourdieu hevder i boken Homo Academicus at den representasjonen av virkeligheten som anerkjennes som vitenskapelig alltid vil vinne (Bourdieu, 1988, s. 28). Her kan det åpenbart være forskjeller mellom interne og eksterne kriterier for anerkjennelse. Anerkjennelsen av vitenskapelighet har ifølge Bourdieu en egen

Det er et instrumentelt syn på kunnskap i store deler av den politiske eliten. Og det smitter over på forskningsområdet som også i siste instans er politisk styrt. Det trenger ikke være dårlig forskning av den grunn. Altså problemorientert forskning kan godt være kjempeinteressant, men de som utfører den forskningen vet jo også at om de hadde stilt et annet spørsmål da, stilt spørsmålet på en annen måte overfor den samme empirien, så ville man fått en annen analyse. Og det må du ha klart for deg. At du velger side allerede i et du formulerer en hypotese eller en problemstilling (I5, universitetsforsker, 50-årene).