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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.

Processes of homogenization and differentiation have characterized international sports organizations and competitions for more than a century. So have imaginaries of race as these are linked to sportive stereotypes in various sports. In this article, I discuss how racial imaginaries in two Norwegian sports, basketball and track and field, are informed by the real and imaginary links to the same sports in the USA. Theoretically, the article is informed by Paul Gilroy's theory of the Black Atlantic. I ask whether Gilroy's theory illuminates present-day processes in Norwegian basketball and track and field, and how the Norwegian case may relate to broader, global processes in sport. The empirical analysis is based on a wide material from Norway, including observational data and interviews with non-white top athletes, coaches, managers, sport journalists and representatives of ethnic minority organizations.

This article explores the usefulness of traditional sociological perspectives on inequality in light of marginalization processes affecting immigrant youth in Norway and in other Western societies of today. Departing from general theories on inequality and marginalization, and the more specific perspectives on ethnic minority youth in Europe, a trenchant argument in the article is that increasing attention to the construction of normality and otherness in respect to majority-minority relations is needed. The 1990s public debate about immigrant youth in Norway, as earlier in many other Western societies, has been characterized by sensational media stories about 'problems' with youth gangs and forced marriages. Another characteristic of the Norwegian public debate is making links between ad hoc political 'needs' to solve these problems and researchers' definitions of the energizing factors of marginalization. In relating the Norwegian situation to the broader European one, where an increasing support for populist right-wing parties and differentialist racist arguments has been a major trend throughout the 1990s, various visions of the future for immigrant youth in Norway are examined.