Suchergebnisse

Organizational practices of migrants' labour market integration have by and large been overlooked in favour of research on societal-level/macrolevel factors, policies, rules and regulations and their impacts on migrants' positions and perspectives on the labour market in the host country. Organizations are conceptualized as key sites that can open doors for meaningful employment and career progression or close them by way of producing inequalities. This change of focus, which we advocate, has a potential to not only increase our understanding of how migrants' labour market integration is organized and practiced at the organizational level, but also shed light on migrants' own mobilizations and agency in these processes. Research on organizational practices of workplace integration of migrants is also relevant as economic and political migration is still high on the agenda in many European countries, particularly since the so-called 'refugee crisis' in 2015, when hundreds of thousands of refugees made their way to Europe. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine in 2022 reminds us of the heightened importance of this issue. In this article, we start by outlining what has motivated this Special Section. Next, we briefly review the relevant literature that directly or indirectly focuses on practices of organizing migrants' labour market integration in European host countries. We then introduce the two contributions to this Special Section, presenting and discussing their main lines of reasoning and how each of them answer our call for papers. We conclude by elaborating what is, from our point of view, still missing and suggest possible avenues for future research.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to challenge the dominance of the mainstream discourse and practice of diversity management (DM) by identifying and problematizing three distinct but related issues that it encompasses: first, its tendency to displace all alternative approaches; second, its general neglect of the social-historical context and third, its almost exclusive focus on the business case rationale for supporting diversity.


Design/methodology/approach
– Employing ethnographic research methods, the empirical material was collected in an international manufacturing corporation based in Sweden. It consists of three different, but interconnected approaches: archival research, interviews and observations.


Findings
– The paper shows that in neglecting power, identity, intersectionality and the changing socio-historical context of diversity, a well-meaning corporate diversity programme tended to obscure ethnic and age-related disadvantages at work.


Research limitations/implications
– The limitations of this research relate largely to its dependence on a single case study and the limited focus on diversity as it affected able-bodied, white male immigrant workers. A broader study of the multiplicity of types of discrimination and ways in which diversity is managed in a range of countries and organizations could facilitate a more in-depth exploration of these issues and arguments.


Originality/value
– Although not entirely new, the three arguments that have been drawn upon to discuss, analyse and illustrate DM through our data have rarely been brought together in one theoretical and empirical study.