Interlopers, immigrants and others Difference and ambivalence in the 'new' Norway

The politics of integration have come to define contemporary European debates on citizenship, rights and the disconnects of globality. Norway--known for its high standard of living and generous social welfare programs, presumably in danger of being cut back in tandem with new immigration legislation--has only recently confronted increased non-European migration across its borders. This dissertation explores how residents of Norway, a country hailed for its adherence to social democratic principles, and where concepts of equality, solidarity and decency are historically well established, apprehend these ethical standards and behaviours in the face of discourses of difference and multicultural anxieties: encounters which have come to disrupt an ostensible belief in the absolute 'likeness' of every person, and amplify persistent contradictions to already ambiguous (self)understandings of the nation. Based on thirty months of ethnographic research, I examine the presumption of an ethic of solidarity and universal goodness common to characterizations of the Scandinavian region, in light of emerging technologies of inclusion, which nevertheless render certain bodies and identities illegible and impossible. In this place that insiders and outsiders alike consider to be at once primordially European and exotically homogenous, I interrogate metaphors of belonging and consider the ideological processes and shifting moral vocabularies through which individuals are incorporated into, and (re)construct, the nation. Each chapter reflects my ethnographic maneuvering through the matrix of integration and racial encounters: bureaucrats and civilian employees within a governmental institution regulating the legalization and naturalization of new migrants; municipal police teams assigned to patrol "immigrant neighborhoods"; participants in a refugee assistance initiative of an international human rights NGO; and individuals and families caught up in the cultural, political and policy status of "immigrant." My concern is not only with technologies of legislative control, or regulation of alienage, but also with the mundane ideological processes that render experiences of integration contingent and ethically ambiguous for everyone involved. In particular, I ask how does a preoccupation with the 'failure' of integration come to disguise the everyday affinities and negotiations that frame hidden transcripts of moral outrage over the production and reproduction of racism and inequality?