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‘Hey, teach these kids to eat their own food!’: Institutional intergroup contact in immigrant mothers' talk
Abstract
Although informal segregation often persists in multiethnic neighbourhoods, local institutions offering public services may act as an important setting for intergroup contact. Therefore, we studied how immigrant mothers of young children discursively construct institutional intergroup contact with workers of public playgrounds and kindergartens. We conducted longitudinal interviews with 10 immigrant mothers three times over the period of a year in 2 multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Helsinki, Finland. Using Critical Discursive Psychology, we analysed respondents' talk about the encounters and identified three interpretative repertoires: ‘contact as asserting rights’, ‘contact as helping’, and ‘contact as cultural rectification’. Our analysis showed how mothers positioned themselves and the workers differently in terms of agency and power in each repertoire. Our findings stress the importance of studying people's own sense-making of institutional contact, with different roles for participants, and that construction of agency within institutional contact is important for building equal membership in society.
This comprehensive review provides an overview of the current
state of integration in Finland. The electronic publication is available at https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/165441/TEM_oppaat_1_2024_Kotoutumisen_kokonaiskatsaus_2023.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Although the benefits of contact for positive intergroup relations are widely acknowledged, less is known about how group members construct the agency and responsibility of contact participants in intergroup encounters. Using critical discursive psychology, we analysed the interpretative repertoires that Finnish majority mothers (N = 13) and mothers with an immigrant background (N = 10) used when talking about a hypothetical intergroup encounter among Finnish and immigrant mothers in a ‘family café’ (a group for mothers and children). Our analysis identified five interpretative repertoires that differed in terms of the levels of categorization used (individual, group, motherhood) and how agency and responsibility for initiating contact were discursively attributed to the parties in the intergroup encounter. Overall, constructing someone as agentic did not automatically result in their being portrayed as more responsible for making contact. Respondents described contact to occur with only two repertoires, in which both agency and responsibility for initiating contact were discursively attributed to the same party. This highlights the need to consider both agency and sense of responsibility as possible factors preceding intergroup contact.
Informal segregation has been widely studied in various public settings but not on public playgrounds. Drawing on an 11-month ethnography among mothers of young children, we examine how informal segregation is (re)produced on public playgrounds in two ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Finland. Our findings reveal different normative practices. First, normative rhythms and parenting practices structure playground activities by limiting opportunities for contact between ethnic minority and majority groups and producing exclusive spaces. Second, group norms and the seeking of ethnic/racial ingroup members together regulate mothers’ interaction with outgroup mothers on playgrounds; mothers are inclined toward their ingroup while outgroup mothers are often ignored, resulting in only illusory contact. Based on our analysis, we argue that by better understanding the normative roots of segregation, more comprehensive and effective interventions can be designed to facilitate positive contact in this population.
Research on intergroup contact has considered how the occurrence and experience of contact is affected by ingroup members. Qualitative studies of contact in real-life settings have additionally highlighted how multiple actors can affect the manifestation of contact. This article shows how the presence of one’s child can shape immigrant mothers’ contact experiences in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods. Ten immigrant mothers living in Helsinki, Finland, were interviewed twice over a six-month period about their intergroup interactions in their locale. Using a thematic analysis, we identified three themes depicting immigrant mothers’ experiences of intergroup contacts in their child’s presence: i) feeling visible to others, ii) seeking harmonious contact, and iii) anticipating problems. The results illustrate how a child affords unique opportunities for an immigrant mother to engage in interethnic contact, but also brings distinctive threats. This suggests the need to further consider how different types of intragroup dynamics can shape intergroup contacts.
In accordance with the Nordic welfare model, the Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) system has traditionally been based on public provision and the idea of universalism. However, over the last twenty years the ECEC system has undergone market-oriented reforms. As a result, the share of private for-profit ECEC provision has grown significantly. By applying impression management theory, this qualitative research examines how representatives of private ECEC providers describe the selection and selectivity of their clientele and how they aim at managing the impression they convey through their descriptions. The study shows how three different mechanisms of selectivity are produced and legitimized in the interview talk. Furthermore, the study makes visible the cultural assumptions and expectations related to private ECEC provision and the potential selectivity it produces.
One long-standing characteristic of schools in Norway is inclusive education as a primary goal. The last years, the Norwegian government has emphasised increased parent-school cooperation as a way to limit risks, i.e. of drop-outs. This article focuses on how parent-school relationship is played out in an economic and socially diversified urban borough in Bergen, Norway. It draws on fieldwork and interviews among parents, teachers and principals in three different schools. As this article shows, the increased focus on parents’ active engagement in the school encourages and creates expectations of an intensive parenting model. Yet, not all parents are ready, willing or have the capacity to pursue the intensive parenting model. We suggest that the current promotion of middle-class intensive parenting by schools, in practice, shifts the responsibilisation of equal education away from the state towards individual families and undermine the ideals of inclusive education and equal opportunities in Norway.
Despite being the first country in the world to introduce paternity leave in 1978, Finland’s current national leave scheme is complex with regard to incentivizing fathers’ take-up. Taking the unique Finnish leave scheme as a case example, this article examines fathers’ motivations and barriers to leave. Although research on fathers’ take-up of leave in divergent leave policy contexts has increased dramatically, fathers’ motivations and barriers to leave have remained underresearched. The article reports on a survey sample of 852 Finnish fathers of infants who were taking paternity, parental, and other forms of leave, drawn from the Population Register Center. Results show that less than 20% of fathers report taking no leave, with more than 80% taking some form of leave. A multinomial logistic regression analysis indicates that father’s work, partner’s education, and family income, along with father’s wish to take a break from work and wish to facilitate mother’s return to work or studies, are the key characteristics and motivations associated with fathers’ take-up of leave. The most common barriers to fathers’ take-up of leave were related to the family’s economic situation and the father’s job. It is suggested that decreasing maternalism in the leave scheme, by extending investment in fathers’ individual well-paid leave weeks, will also help promote greater gender equality for working parents in Finland following the path of Nordic neighbors.
Research on intergroup contact has grown exponentially over the past decade. Such research has typically extolled the benefits of positive interaction between members of historically divided communities, particularly on outcomes related to prejudice reduction. Emerging work in the field, however, has qualified this optimistic picture by identifying three gaps in the existing literature. First, in everyday life, contact may be construed as a negative experience that increases rather than decreases responses such as prejudice, anxiety, and avoidance. Second, in real-life settings, contact is often circumscribed by informal practices of (re)segregation that are easily overlooked if researchers rely primarily on examining structured contact and explicit processes using primarily laboratory and questionnaire methods. Third, positive contact may have “ironic” effects on the political attitudes and behaviors of the historically disadvantaged, undermining their recognition of social injustice and decreasing their willingness to engage in collective action to challenge the status quo. Although it is now a truism that intergroup contact can reduce intergroup prejudice, these developments emphasize the importance of maintaining a critical perspective on the “contact hypothesis” as a model for promoting social change in historically divided and unequal societies. They also lay the foundations for future developments in the field.
Social psychological research on immigrant integration has predominantly examined multiculturalism from the perspective of majority members, and has seen it to be in conflict with that of minority members. In this discursive psychological study, we analyzed how members of the Finnish majority and different immigrant groups discussed managing ethnic and cultural diversity. As a result, four different interpretative repertoires of multiculturalism were identified. The first two repertoires normalize the hierarchical relations between immgrants and hosts. The other two repertoires questioned and criticized multiculturalism as an official policy or as everyday practices that highlight the importance of ethnic and cultural group memberships and that enable the discriminatory and essentializing treatment of immigrants. Our analysis showed that both minority and majority members can make sense of and orient towards multiculturalism in many different ways and that, contrary to the common assumption based on previous research, the viewpoints presented are not always clearly divided between the groups. Finally, implications of the results for multiculturalism as an ideology and as practices are discussed.
The aim of this special thematic section is to bring together recent social psychological research on the topic of citizenship with a view to discerning the emerging trends within the field and its potential contributions to the broader interdisciplinary area of citizenship studies. Eight papers spanning diverse theoretical traditions (including social identity, social representations and discursive approaches) apply an array of methods to consider different aspects of citizenship across a variety of cultural and national contexts. Some focus on individuals’ perceptions and discussions of citizenship, others examine the group dynamics which flow from these understandings, and the rest examine the potential for citizenship to exclude as well as include marginalised communities. While diverse, the contributions share some core commonalities: all share a concern in trying to understand citizenship from the perspective of the citizen; all conceptualise citizenship as an active and reflective process occurring between members of a community; and all highlight the irreducibly social and collective nature of the experience and practice of citizenship in everyday life. We propose that these elements of convergence have the potential to give the social psychology of citizenship a solid basis and recognisable profile in order to contribute to the broader arena of citizenship studies.
In a time of welfare state restructuring, migrant background ‘stay-at-home’ mothers have become a politicised social category, constructed as unproductive and socially disengaged. The article examines the ways newly arrived women, who take care of children at home, enact and negotiate their own and their families’ early citizenisation process, with a particular focus on institutional encounters. Drawing on two case stories from the capital region of Finland, I discuss the dynamics of mothers’ claims-making for a transitionary citizenship, from the sphere of the home via social rights based public daycare to language training and education. I conclude that the constrained agency migrant mothers are subjected to, risks shaping a new gendered and racialised order of parenthood and ultimately of citizenship in the transforming welfare states.
This article aims to describe and promote a discursive psychological approach to studying men and masculinity. It begins by showcasing some of our own research in this area, before moving on to compare and contrast the central tenets of this approach with those underpinning one of the mainstays of North American scholarship on men and masculinity: the gender role strain paradigm. We argue that, despite significant points of overlap, discursive psychology differs from the gender role strain paradigm in several key respects, including its treatment of variability, its theory of ideology, and its model of the social actor. We claim that, in line with the precepts of discursive psychology, gender researchers need to pay closer attention to the nuances of men's talk and to see masculinities as practical accomplishments, rather than the (inevitable) playing-out of particular role prescriptions.
The use of public spaces can promote social cohesion and facilitate interpersonal interactions within the community. However, the ways racial and ethnic groups interact in public spaces can also reflect and influence informal segregation in the wider community. The present study aimed to examine patterns of intergroup contact within public spaces in Victoria, Australia through short-term observation in four localities. Data were collected on within-group, intergroup and absence of contact for people from minority and majority groups. A total of 974 contacts were observed. Findings indicate that in the observed public spaces, people from visible minority groups tended to have no contact with others or to interact with people from other ethnic/racial groups. In contrast, those from the majority group tended to interact predominately with other majority group members. This suggests that majority group members are more likely to ‘self-segregate’ in public spaces than those from minority groups.
Abstract In this paper we report an analysis of individual and group interviews with thirty-eight Scottish Muslims concerning their encounters with authority ? especially those at airports. Our analysis shows that a key theme in interviewees? talk of their experience in this context concerns the denial and misrecognition of valued identities such as being British, being respectable and being Muslim. One reason why such experiences are so problematic concerns the denial of agency associated with being positioned in terms that are not one's own. The implications of these findings for understanding the dynamics of intergroup relations are discussed.
In this paper we report an analysis of individual and group interviews with thirty-eight Scottish Muslims concerning their encounters with authority ? especially those at airports. Our analysis shows that a key theme in interviewees? talk of their experience in this context concerns the denial and misrecognition of valued identities such as being British, being respectable and being Muslim. One reason why such experiences are so problematic concerns the denial of agency associated with being positioned in terms that are not one's own. The implications of these findings for understanding the dynamics of intergroup relations are discussed.
This paper distinguishes a series of contingent and necessary problems that arise in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of open-ended or conversational qualitative interviews in psychological research. Contingent problems in the reporting of interviews include: (1) the deletion of the interviewer; (2) the conventions for representing interaction; (3) the specificity of analytic observations; (4) the unavailability of the interview set-up; (5) the failure to consider interviews as interaction. Necessary problems include: (1) the flooding of the interview with social science agendas and categories; (2) the complex and varying footing positions of interviewer and interviewee; (3) the orientations to stake and interest on the part of the interviewer and interviewee; (4) the reproduction of cognitivism. The paper ends with two kinds of recommendation. First, we argue that interviews should be studied as an interactional object, and that study should feed back into the design, conduct and analysis of interviews so that they can be used more effectively in cases where they are the most appropriate data gathering tools. Second, these problems with open-ended interviews highlight a range of specific virtues of basing analysis on naturalistic materials. Reasons for moving away from the use of interviews for many research questions are described.
To investigate racial discrimination in the marketplace, we conducted a field experiment to examine both overt and subtle forms of retail discrimination. “Customers” browsing in high-end retail stores asked a salesperson if they would remove a security sensor from a pair of sunglasses prior to trying them on in front of a mirror. Although the request to remove the sensor was granted in all conditions, the salespersons showed greater levels of suspicion (i.e., staring, following) in the Black conditions, especially in the male-group condition. These findings are consistent with current field research examining subtle biases toward other stigmatized groups.
This article discusses the ways in which ethnic minority and majority group members account, in an interview context, for the existence of discrimination in Dutch society. Taking a discursive approach, the focus is on the strategies used to describe and explain discrimination.In both groups,certain members were found to use discursive strategies questioning the omnipresence of discrimination and problematizing its causes,whereas others employed devices that made discrimination appear factual, with the Dutch as its main agents. The use of these strategies was examined in relation to subject positions that the participants took up throughout the interview. It is concluded that the discursive strategies used can be understood in relation to the way speakers position themselves within particular discourses. Hence, similar discursive strategies function in different ways in different contexts, and both mainstream and discourse analytical studies on discrimination should not start from a simple majority-minority dichotomy.
The contact hypothesis proposes that interaction between members of different groups reduces intergroup prejudice if--and only if--certain optimal conditions are present. For over 50 years, research using this framework has explored the boundary conditions for ideal contact and has guided interventions to promote desegregation. Although supporting the contact hypothesis in principle, the authors critique some research practices that have come to dominate the field: (a) the prioritizing of the study of interactions occurring under rarefied conditions, (b) the reformulation of lay understandings of contact in terms of a generic typology of ideal dimensions, and (c) the use of shifts in personal prejudice as the primary measure of outcome. The authors argue that these practices have limited the contact hypothesis both as an explanation of the intergroup dynamics of desegregation and as a framework for promoting social psychological change. In so arguing, the authors look toward a complementary program of research on contact and desegregation.
The present article presents a meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. With 713 independent samples from 515 studies, the meta-analysis finds that intergroup contact typically reduces intergroup prejudice. Multiple tests indicate that this finding appears not to result from either participant selection or publication biases, and the more rigorous studies yield larger mean effects. These contact effects typically generalize to the entire outgroup, and they emerge across a broad range of outgroup targets and contact settings. Similar patterns also emerge for samples with racial or ethnic targets and samples with other targets. This result suggests that contact theory, devised originally for racial and ethnic encounters, can be extended to other groups. A global indicator of Allport's optimal contact conditions demonstrates that contact under these conditions typically leads to even greater reduction in prejudice. Closer examination demonstrates that these conditions are best conceptualized as an interrelated bundle rather than as independent factors. Further, the meta-analytic findings indicate that these conditions are not essential for prejudice reduction. Hence, future work should focus on negative factors that prevent intergroup contact from diminishing prejudice as well as the development of a more comprehensive theory of intergroup contact.
This work investigated how group-based power affects the motivations and preferences that members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups bring to situations of contact. To measure the preferred content of interactions, desires to address particular topics in intergroup contact were assessed for both experimental groups (Study 1) and real groups (Study 2). As predicted, across both studies, the desire to talk about power was greater among members of disadvantaged than of advantaged groups. This difference was mediated by motivation for change in group-based power. Study 2 further demonstrated that more highly identified members of disadvantaged groups wanted to talk about power more. Members of advantaged groups generally preferred to talk about commonalities between the groups more than about group-based power, and this desire was greater with higher levels of identification. However, perceiving that their group's advantage was illegitimate increased the desire of advantaged group members to address power in intergroup interactions.
Developing work on the nature and consequences of negative intergroup contact, this study explores its potential role in sustaining everyday experiences of dehumanization; that is, experiences in which participants report feeling deprived of full human status. As a case study, we explore domestic service relations in a neighbourhood of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, analysing interviews (n = 22) conducted with Black domestic workers and their families (n = 64 participants in total) about their day‐to‐day interactions with Indian employers. Drawing on thematic analysis of accounts of paid domestic labour and food‐sharing practices, we argue that negative contact experiences may cumulatively engender a sense of dehumanization and associated feelings of humiliation: a response marked by intertwined constructions of shame and injustice. Implications for understanding wider problems of intergroup conflict and political solidarity are discussed and avenues for future research proposed.
Significance
Diversity in public institutions is thought to improve provision for minority group members. However, the effects of such diversity on majority group members’ prejudice toward minorities are unclear. In this paper, I demonstrate that diversity in health care institutions can facilitate positive intergroup contact between majority group members and minorities in elevated social positions. In turn, this unique contact serves to reduce prejudice. These findings emphasize how the demographic makeup of public institutions and specifically, institutions providing health care can affect mass attitudes, even in a context of intractable conflict.
This paper departs from an ethnography of Somali parents in Oslo, Norway, which examined perceptions of the Child Welfare Services (CWS). We explore how young second-generation parents portray middle class identities when they interact with school and kindergarten personnel. These are institutions under legal obligation to report to the CWS if they suspect neglect of children. Drawing on Goffman, we analyse how parents conduct and meticulously prepare for encounters with school and kindergarten personnel. These preparations pertain to countering ethnic stigma and avoiding racial scrutiny, in large part to avoid referrals to the CWS. Our paper makes the following contributions. In the study of child welfare and ethnicity, we stress the importance of visible ethnicity – or ‘race’ – and show how scepticism of CWS derives from suspicions of racial prejudice; strained relations between migrants and the CWS extend far beyond interactions between caseworkers and clients as they also stem from interactions with adjacent institutions. Regarding the study of ethnic relations, we argue that understanding performance of ethnicity requires inclusion of institutional contexts, such as the schools, kindergartens and the CWS.
This article examines how Ugandan immigrants in Norway experience cultural shifts in parenting. Data were collected from six parents by using narrative inquiry and micro-ethnography in the setting of the family’s everyday life. The parents’ narratives emphasized how they struggled to understand Norwegian parenting values and reconcile Norwegian and Ugandan parenting values and norms. Thus the title Parenting in Double transaltion. The parents tried to adapt their parenting practices according to Norwegian parenting expectations while also preserving their own cultural practices. Consequently, two worlds frame the parents’ social identities and parenting experiences over time, creating a difficult split with consequences for their parenting practices and entire existential situation. Parents felt that failing to meet the expectations of parenting attracted interventions from Norwegian Child Welfare Services, and these interventions were found to be frightening and difficult to understand. The findings are relevant to social work because they emphasise how the interaction between immigrant parents and welfare professionals may cause parents to feel they are not ‘good’ parents and may produce marginalisation and feelings of social exclusion in Norwegian society.
Domestic labour in South Africa has historically been a site of racial inequality which has continued into the post-apartheid era despite extensive transformation efforts. This article argues that silence presents an avenue for understanding how such racial hierarchy has persisted. We present a qualitative case study of a domestic labour dyad utilising the diary-interview method to analyse the presentation of labour troubles and the perceptions, interpretations, and implications of the unsaid regarding such troubles. Drawing from the data, we demonstrate how intimacy is foregrounded in talk, while domestic labour activities and domestic labour itself go unsaid. We conclude that the intimate nature of domestic labour allows participants to speak about their relationship in ways that make the labour relationship and its racial inequalities become invisible in talk, making it a difficult institution to challenge and change.
This chapter explores interactions between migrant mothers and public health nurses (PHNs, helsesøstre) in the Parent and Child Health Services (helsestasjonen) in ethnically diverse Alna borough, Oslo. The chapter explores PHNs’ governing ideals and practices, taking their dual mandate and their empowerment perspectives as point of departure. It also examines migrant mothers’ expectations of and reactions to PHNs’ governing practices. The analytical focus is on the discrepancies between mothers’ and professionals’ expectations and perspectives on governing. The exploration of the governing of diverse populations in a local institutional context leads to questioning Gullestad’s notion of equality as sameness and further the opposition between public/private boundaries that she proposed. Rather, a messier social practice is identified in which PHNs adjust their own governing ideals and practices when meeting a diverse population, building, and drawing on a practice-oriented diversity competence, facilitating diversity, but also essentializing migrant mothers, marking them as different.
Social psychologists typically conceptualize intergroup processes in terms of unequal pairs of social categories, such as an advantaged majority (e.g., 'Whites') and a disadvantaged minority (e.g., 'Blacks'). We argue that this two-group paradigm may obscure the workings of intergroup power by overlooking: (1) the unique dynamics of intergroup relations involving three or more groups, and (2) the way some two-group relationships function as strategic alliances that derive meaning from their location within a wider relational context. We develop this argument through a field study conducted in a grape-farming town in South Africa in 2009, focusing on an episode of xenophobic violence in which a Zimbabwean farm worker community was forcibly evicted from their homes by their South African neighbours. Discursive analysis of interview accounts of the nature and origins of this violence shows how an ostensibly binary 'xenophobic' conflict between foreign and South African farm labourers was partially constituted through both groups' relationship with a third party who were neither victims nor perpetrators of the actual violence, namely White farmers. We highlight some potential political consequences of defaulting to a two-group paradigm in intergroup conflict studies.
The impact of community stigmatisation upon service usage has been largely overlooked from a social
identity perspective. Specifically, the social identity-mediated mechanisms by which stigmatisation
hinders service use remain unspecified. The present study examines how service providers, community
workers and residents recount their experience of the stigmatisation of local community identity and
how this shapes residents’ uptake of welfare, education and community support services. Twenty
individual and group interviews with 10 residents, 16 community workers and six statutory service
providers in economically disadvantaged communities in Limerick, Ireland, were thematically analysed.
Analysis indicates that statutory service providers endorsed negative stereotypes of disadvantaged areas
as separate and anti-social. The awareness of this perceived division and the experience of ‘stigma
consciousness’ was reported by residents and community workers to undermine trust, leading to
under-utilisation of community and government services. We argue that stigmatisation acts as a ‘social
curse’ by undermining shared identity between service users and providers and so turning a potentially
cooperative intragroup relationship into a fraught intergroup one. We suggest that tackling stigma in
order to foster a sense of shared identity is important in creating positive and cooperative service
interactions for both service users and providers.
This article focuses on Schegloff's (1997) comments on critical discourse analysis and evaluates their force in relation to the analysis of a segment of a group discussion with three young white middle-class men concerning an episode in one of the participant's recent sexual history. The post-structuralist-influenced writings of Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 1987) are presented as an alternative analytic frame for the same data. The analysis examines the contextualization of the event which is the topic of the conversation and the positioning taken up and offered to the young man involved, drawing on the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoire and ideological dilemma. A critique of the post-structuralist concept of subject positions is developed and also of the methodological prescriptions Schegloff proposes for critical discourse analysis. The implications for critical discursive research in social psychology are discussed.
In many contemporary societies, the potential benefits of racial integration are undermined by de facto or informal segregation. The present research focuses on this phenomenon, and its role in (re)producing group boundaries, particularly those realized spatially. A multimethod approach was employed. Naturalistic observational techniques were used to examine the seating patterns of 26 undergraduate tutorial groups across a full academic year. Results from the longitudinal study show strong patterns of racial segregation. Focus group discussions were conducted in order to explore the social practices and processes that underlie informal segregation. We argue that an implicit system of unofficial rules governs intergroup relations and shapes contact opportunities among students. The perpetuation of racially homogenous spaces—intentionally or incidentally—is proposed as both a key outcome and as a key determinant.
Conversational interview accounts were used to explore everyday understandings of political participation on the part of young white adults in England. Analysis focussed on dilemmatic tensions within respondents' accounts between values of active citizenship and norms of liberal individualism. Respondents could represent community membership as engendering rights to political participation, whilst also arguing that identification with local or national community militates against the formulation of genuine personal attitudes and rational political judgement. Respondents could represent political participation as a civic responsibility, whilst also casting political campaigning as an illegitimate attempt to impose personal opinions on to others. Formal citizenship education did not appear to promote norms of political engagement but rather lent substance to the argument that political decision-making should be based on the rational application of technical knowledge rather than on public opinion or moral principle. In conclusion we question whether everyday understandings of responsible citizenship necessarily entail injunctions to political action. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article presents a discursive analysis of interview material in which single women reflect on their relationships and reasons for being single. Despite changing meanings of singleness, it remains a ‘deficit identity’ (Reynolds and Taylor, 2005) and the problem for a woman alone is to account positively for her single state. Our analysis challenges theorisations which would suggest autonomy and agency in how identity and self are constructed. It employs the methodological approaches developed in critical discursive psychology (for instance Wetherell, 1998) to look at the detailed identity work of speakers as part of the identity project proposed by Giddens (1992, 2005), Bauman (1998) and other writers associated with the ‘reflexive modernisation’ thesis (Adkins, 2002). By approaching ‘choice’ as one of the cultural resources available to speakers, we present a more complex view of the dilemmas around a speaker's identity work in her accounting for her relationships and the course her life has taken
Research evaluating intergroup contact has tended to rely on self-report measures. Drawing on recent micro-ecological research, the two studies reported here used a multi-method approach to examine contact in a more holistic fashion. This involved the measurement of observable behavior at the micro-level, intergroup attitudes via infrahumanization and focus groups. Participants were taking part in a community intervention program in Northern Ireland. We conclude that micro-ecological behavior is not necessarily indicative of outgroup attitudes. Although behavior and attitudes changed in line with one another in Study 1 (less aggregation and significantly less infrahumanization), there were no infrahumanization differences between those who sat beside an outgroup member and those who did not. Importantly, the work presented here illustrates a unique method that allows micro-ecological behavioral observations to be made for the first time in non-racial settings.
This paper uses critical discursive psychology to examine expressions of dissatisfaction and complaint by people with learning disabilities. UK government policies stress that people with learning disabilities should have more control over their lives. Expressing dissatisfaction about services is an important aspect of this process. However, given that such individuals are often treated as incompetent, and given the delicate nature of complaining about services one might rely on for day-to-day support, this can be difficult to do. In building complaints, speakers drew on repertoires about competence and incompetence, the right to free choice as a principle, and tempered dissatisfaction to make contrasts between good and bad supporters and practice. While the complaints show many of the general features of complaints identified in previous work in the general population, they were crafted to the particular institutional context of social care, and attended both explicitly and implicitly to the particular issues of competence, power, and authority found in those services. Speakers positioned themselves as competent, and service workers as more or less competent in their roles. Issues of power in social care services were observed explicitly in the accounts, whereby people described staff as controlling and it being difficult to voice dissatisfaction. They were also implicit in the way speakers drew on the others with institutional authority for corroboration and comparison.
This article examines the everyday thinking on multiculturalism of majority group members in The Netherlands. Using material from two empirical studies, it investigates what ethnic Dutch people think about multiculturalism and how they justify or criticize multicultural notions. The first study examines the reasons and arguments perceived to exist in society for supporting or questioning multiculturalism. This study maps the meanings that have been created within Dutch society in response to increased ethnic diversity. The reasons used to justify or criticize multiculturalism were found to form two sets of arguments. The second study examines the ways that people in the context of an interview actually construct different versions of multiculturalism and account for their positions. Here, the focus is on the interpretations used and the discursive consequences of their deployment. Two main interpretations were identified and it is shown how these are actually and strategically used to justify and criticize particular ideas and views on multiculturalism.
The analysis of contact between groups must proceed from an uncomfortable realization. Notwithstanding its formal abolition in many societies, segregation remains pervasive as an informal mechanism for ordering and defining social relations. Social psychologists' tendency to investigate contact under 'optimal' conditions may obscure this fact. This article discusses an observational study that attempted to chart some varieties of informal segregation on an 'open' beach in post-apartheid South Africa. The study used a novel methodology to plot the ecology of racial distribution within this public setting over time. The analysis, which included measures of dissimilarity (D) and exposure (P), indicated that processes of segregation operated in various ways to limit the opportunities for racial contact. Follow-up interviews conducted with 'white' holiday-makers suggested that such processes embodied shared assumptions about the 'proper' socio-spatial organization of race relations. Some implications for research on the contact hypothesis are discussed.
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