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A perfect match? A postcolonial perspective on well educated refugees at the Danish labour market. University of Warsaw September, 2016 Vibeke Andersen & Iben Jensen, Aalborg University , Denmark. Agenda. A perfect match? A postcolonial perspective
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A perfect match? A postcolonial perspective on well educated refugees at the Danish labour market University of Warsaw September, 2016 Vibeke Andersen & Iben Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark
Agenda • A perfect match? • A postcolonialperspective • White/Danish supremacy/National Capital • Project
A perfect match? • Welleducatedrefugees – freepositions • Labour market as solution to integration in Danish society • Expectations of learninglanguage, culture and add with a Danish education • Focus is on deficit not on ressources • Diversity management is the existingorganizationaltool, but is most likelyreproducingexsistingcategories
A postcolonialperspective ”Colonialismcontinues to live on in waysthat perhaps we have onlybegun to recognice” Nicholas Dirks Colonialism and culture (1992: 23)
Edward Saïd • … “without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possible understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage – and even produce – the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightment period.” (Saïd 1978:3).
Postcolonialreadings in Scandinavia • The Norwegiananthropologist Marianne Gullestadargues: • 1) thatmissionaires have brought back pictures of ‘the passive, helpless, childish, barbarianAfricans”, whichcouldlegitmize the missionairesexistence in Africa. • 2) thatequality in Norway is based on sameness – refugees must ‘fit in’ but also accept never being a real Norwegian
Danish/whiteSupremacy • To be Danish; born in Denmark by Danish parents, identifyingyourself as Danish and acknowledged by others as Danish is inspired by Pierre Bourdieu this is to have: National Capital (Jensen 1998) Ghassan Hage suggestedalso National capital in White Nation (1998)
Project • Aim of the project is to explorehow a company is capable of creating a room for refugees as a ressource for interculturalcompetence • Followthree organisations whichare part of a projecthiringwelleducatedrefugees
Methods • A practicetheoreticalaproach • Doings/sayings, relatings, practicearcitecture, materiality, bodies • Shadowingpractices, interviewing, documentanalysis, positioninganalysis • Action research • Creating an interculturalspace • Disturbingpractices • Put observed post colonialpracticesintowords
References • Gullestad, M. (2007). Misjonsbilder – Bidrag til norsk selvforståelse. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. [Mission pictures – Contribution to Norwegian selfunderstanding] • Jensen, I. (1998). Interkulturelkompetence I kompleksesamfund. Samfundslitteratur. København. [Intercultural communication in complex society] • Nicolini, D. (2012): Practice Theory, Work, and Organization An Introduction, Oxford. • Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Penguin Books