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Paper short abstract:

Finnish Integration training's objective is that migrants get employed, but their different backgrounds are often set aside in the process. In this paper, I examine with an intersectional gaze how the trainings’ instructors comprehend the diversity among immigrants and its effects in their work.

Paper long abstract:

Integration trainings are among the first societal institutions an immigrant attends after receiving the permit of residence in Finland. Thus, the “social integration” usually begins in an educational setting where, according to the National Core Curriculum for Integration Training for Adult Migrants 2012, “[--] all migrants receive information about their rights and responsibilities in Finnish society and its world of work [--].”

The education is mainly organized as labour market training for adults, which means that its objective is that migrants become familiar with the language and central institutions of their new country of residence, and, after suitable further training, enter the workforce. The objective is thus built on the idea of employment-based, universalist citizenship. In this mindset (e.g. in authoritative documents) differences such as gender, culture and religion can seem irrelevant or even harmful, since the same rights and obligations apply to everyone. What makes this institutional universalism, paradoxical, is that it can easily disregard the differences that matter, i.e. people’s diverse backgrounds, and lead into their unequal treatment.

Based on theorists of intersectionality, this paper focuses on the instructors’ understandings of diversity. This frame of research illustrates the fact that perceptions of social categories and their implications always reflect the actors’ personal positions within power hierarchies. Through ethnographic observations and interviews I examine how the instructors encounter, negotiate and (re)produce intersecting categories of “immigrant-ness”. I also need to ask what consequences the emerging differences have in the everyday interactions of integration trainings.