”Olenko minä niin eksoottinen?”: Pakolaistaustaisten naisten työelämään liittyvä identiteettityö

Authors

• Tytti Steel
• Annamari Tuori

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30666/elore.79258

Abstract

This article explores working life identity construction of women with refugee background, who have moved to Finland. The presented point of view is intersectional: the interest lies in the identity construction at the intersections of different social categories (see, e.g., Adib & Guerrier 2003; Essers & Benschop 2007). The focus on working life enriches Finnish migration-related research, which often deals with more general questions such as encountering racism or living in diaspora. The article combines viewpoints of ethnology and organisational research.

The research data consists of two parts: interviews conducted by the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas within the framework of two projects in 2006–2007, and teaching material based on the interviews published on the internet. This study concentrates on the identity construction of women who have moved to Finland as refugees from outside of Europe. On these grounds we have analysed interviews with five women of varying ages.

The theoretical frame is positioned in the intersection of the concepts of identity work and intersectionality. We explore the multiphase construction of the interviewees’ working life identities. The research method is the intersectional analysis of levels of interpretation, developed by us to enable systematic examination of the ‘stratification’ of the levels of identity construction. Central in the method is identifying the different levels of interpretations, different interpreters, and different interpretations in connection with reflexive positioning and the adaptation of meanings moving from one context to another.

In the sources, themes significant in connection with working life are silenced working experience and know-how, language as an enabler and a hinderer, and silenced experiences of racism and intersectional overlapping discrimination. In the sources, the interviewees are strongly represented through the category of being an immigrant, which the interviewees partly resisted. We ask how women with a refugee background are represented and which aspects are silenced.