Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
57
explain the meaning of the notion ‘innvandrer’ (immigrant): She told him that she ‘had been born
and brought up in India but had lived in Norway for many years’. According to the professor,
‘she spoke Norwegian well, but not perfectly’. ‘Now I have lived in Norway for a long time’, she
told him, ‘I know Norway and have become a Norwegian citizen. Therefore I want to know if am
I still an immigrant (innvandrer)’. ‘Yes’, answered the professor, on the basis of his lexical
understanding of the problem, ‘You were born and bred in India, and this makes you an
immigrant to Norway.’ The woman, who had apparently hoped to throw off this label, voiced her
disappointment and posed a further question. ‘But for how long will I then continue to be an
immigrant?’ ‘All your life,’ answered the professor. The conversation then reached its peak, as he
later explained, in that the woman became angry. The professor, who is an amiable person, was
sorry to disappoint her, but found that the meaning of this word in Norwegian did not allow him
to do otherwise. In order both to explain his view and to comfort her, he therefore added: ‘This is
the way it was for Norwegians who emigrated to America too. You just have to accept it.’
(Gullestad 2002: 49-50).
This example illustrates very well that ‘imagined sameness’ is based not on becoming, but
on origin. This means that one is born Norwegian, that being Norwegian is not something that
one becomes. The foreigner or immigrant category in Norway also has a racist guise. As Norway
was relatively homogenous until the mid-20th century and intensive migration from non-
European countries is a relatively new phenomenon, the appearance of people that look different
was initially met with distrust (Howell and Melhus 2007: 54). On the other hand, the ‘foreigner’
category in Norway is understood not only through race. People from neighbouring Scandinavian
countries are understood as being more ‘like us [Norwegians]’, just like people from Western
Europe and North America; however, the question of the physical similarities with foreigners
from Eastern European countries – their looks being, for example, much closer to Norwegians’
than those of African migrants – casts doubt on attempts to explain similarities and differences
solely via categories of racial and sociocultural differences (Howell and Melhus 2007: 57).
‘The White Race’ and Belonging to the ‘Imagined Norwegian Community’
The new wave of migration from Central and Eastern Europe has engendered a debate on race.
New immigrants are subject to discrimination and are not seen as equals in host societies,
following the segregation model in place for immigrants with a different skin colour. But skin
colour is of course not the decisive factor here because, as noted above, the immigrants under
discussion here are generally white. Theoretical literature defines ‘whiteness’ as a culturally-
constructed and privileged social position and as a power mechanism that is represented as
‘natural’ and ‘normal’ (Herbert 2008: 34). On the other hand, it is usually clarified that this is not
a universal resource in the hands of the whole white population, that it is processual and socially
constructed (Herbert 2008: 34, McDowell 2007: 86). This means that although ‘whiteness’ is
understood as a hegemonic characteristic in Europe, some ‘whites’, especially immigrants, may
