Ethnic Diversity in Care Institutions

Workplace diversity is often promoted as a key value and as a driver for innovation. However, the discourse of workplace diversity is often vague and ambiguous and lacks contextual meaning and relevance. This ambiguity persists in a political context that simultaneously values diversity and promotes assimilation as an ideal.

Paid employment is positioned as both a goal and a tool within integration policies. To understand how these policies translate into practice, this study employs Institutional Ethnography to explore how ethnic diversity is managed and experienced by migrant-background employees.

This study adopts a non-essentialist view of ethnicity, recognizing ethnic boundaries as fluid, contested, and constantly evolving (Barth, 1969). Unlike conventional workplace diversity research, which typically focuses on productivity outcomes, this study investigates the unique value and challenges of ethnic diversity in care work, where interpersonal relations are vital. It focuses on child welfare institutions, nursing homes, and kindergartens—settings with significant migrant representation that provide fertile ground for examining how diversity is constructed and influences institutional practices.

Through 29 semi-structured interviews with ethnic minority-background employees (12), union representatives (11), and managers (6), this research explores how workers’ experiences are structured by broader institutional relations and power dynamics. A central question to be answered is how ethnicity is made relevant in their everyday work, and how it may represent a capital for the employees and for the workplace in general. I also explore the burden and extra challenges their minority position may represent, and mechanism for inclusion and exclusion.

Preliminary findings reveal that while diversity is formally promoted, institutional practices may reinforce existing boundaries and exclusions. This research aims to map these practices, providing a more nuanced understanding of how workplace diversity is enacted and experienced, and offering insights into the complexities and contradictions of diversity in care work.