Stikkord: foreigner

by Mari Rysst

In this blog I will address the phenomenon of social classification, here related to experience-near ethnic and racial categories among 12-year-old children in a suburb in eastern Oslo. This suburb has a majority population of families from non-western countries. In Norway as a whole, people from non-western countries are often categorized as foreigners both by themselves and others, as opposed to ethnic Norwegians, or just Norwegians. One boy expressed this well: “I don’t say I am Norwegian, mostly (name of parents’ country of origin). I don’t have any Norwegian blood in me, so I don’t understand why you (ethnic Norwegians) say I am “Norwegian”. I have a Norwegian passport, but”…….He looked upon himself as a foreigner like all the other children of non-western origin. The category foreigner includes only people from various non-western countries with different shades of coloured skin, and the people included in the category appear to experience belonging through this classification. This might be due to previous experiences with racism leading to their “othering” , which they appropriated and made a form of in their identity construction

In a study from 2023, in and around a football club in that suburb, I interviewed 14 boys and five girls, mostly about their football activity and other leisure activities. I also wanted to know about peer culture and friendship networks, and if racism and discrimination were existent issues.  I entered these themes by asking the question: “Which words do you use when you are quarreling or fighting?” The answer from a conversation with three boys, two of them having African origin and the third Asian, brought forth the dynamic character of the social construction of ethnic/racial categories, which I will illustrate below.

The boys told me that when quarreling and fighting, racist words were often used, such as the n-word or blackie (svarting), which indicates a possible hierarchy between the countries of origin. Earlier research shows that ranking in hierarchies put light skin on top, that is, the lighter the skin the better, which is also referred to as ‘colourism’ or ‘shadeism’. We were talking about which words and utterances they felt most humiliating when arguing and fighting, and it was motherfucker and the n-word which came out as the worst. However, it came forth that it was contextual whether the n-word was experienced as racist or not. They explained that if two havingorigin from African countries were close friends, they could call each other “negro” without it being racist, then it was only another way of saying “mate”, “friend”. But if a “white” person called them negro, the meaning being black slave, that was really racist. In this area people of Pakistani origin were in majority among the ‘foreigners’, and interestingly, the boys I interviewed defined Pakistanis as “white”:

Boy: Shall I tell you what we understand by ‘white’ person? It is not such ‘Norwegian person’, it is not them we understand here as ‘white’, but all those with white skin colour: Iraqis, Egyptians, Moroccans, Pakistani, all such persons who are white, they haven’t got the right to use the n-word.

Mari: But Pakistanis, are they “white” then?

Boy: They do not have the right (to use the n-word). They are not black.

So, what he is saying, is first, that only people racialized as black, that is mostly those having origin from African countries (but not North African) are justified to use the n-word:

Because we were harassed about it and we can use it because it is something (slavery) that has happened to us, but if you say it, it is a word that denotes nothing that has happened to you, so if you for instance call me negro, it means “black slave”, but if I say this to Moa (the other black boy in the interview), it means “friend”, “mate” only.

In other words, the n-word is understood to belong to people racialized as black, and if all others use it on them, the word is understood as racist. And secondly, what he is implying is that their understanding of white is contextual, or has changed, as those they define as white in this context also are understood as brown in other contexts, and definitely five-ten years ago. The phenomenon may point to a change in categorizations, so that we are in the process of having two categories, white and black, white being more inclusive than before. So, if white becomes more inclusive, the category foreigner may become narrower, to include only people with very dark skin. In other words, the utterance above about who is white suggests that the categories of Norwegian and foreigner also may change with changing contexts. Most interestingly, the utterance is an utmost example of how racial categories are socially constructed and suggests that changes may be motivated by the wish to belong in changing or new social contexts.