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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how settings in Swiss integration promotion reproduce institutional whiteness through an affective economy of positivity. It shows how this affective economy forecloses discussions about racist structures and institutional inequalities, thereby reproducing racial hierarchies.

Paper long abstract

Debates around migration and integration are deeply racialised, yet often framed as neutral efforts to foster cohesion, equality, and inclusion. This paper examines how settings in integration promotion in Switzerland reproduce institutional whiteness and racial hierarchies through an affective economy (Ahmed 2004, Fortier 2010). Based on ethnographic research of state-affiliated educational workshops for volunteers, I analyse how whiteness operates through an affective economy of positivity. In these workshops, racism appears in workshop materials and in interactions but is consistently unnamed or positively reframed. Drawing on feminist affect theory (Hemmings 2012, Guschke 2023), I use my own affective trajectories as a racially privileged researcher to trace how comfort, ease, and humour are cultivated, while discomfort or anger are excluded. I argue that this affective economy of positivity reproduces institutional whiteness in these settings: It secures comfort, and security for those not subjected to racialisation, while discomfort or anger related to racism and racist inequalities are excluded or stopped. By situating these dynamics within Switzerland’s post-racial discourse (Boulila 2019), the paper shows how institutional whiteness is reproduced through an affective economy that prevents from talking about racist structures and from dealing with institutional inequalities. The contribution speaks to anthropological debates on the reproduction of whiteness through institutional and everyday interactions in contemporary Europe.