The terms of inclusion: How migrant professionals negotiate inclusion in organizations

Abstract

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This dissertation explores what happens when organizations make effortsto include migrant professionals. Drawing on sociology and organizationstudies, the dissertation analyzes a program targeting highly skilled migrantsstriving to become part of a new workplace. An 18-month ethnography re-veals the complex power relations involved in inclusion processes. It showshow inclusion brings about multiple tensions, providing opportunities toexpose unequal power structures. By situating the analysis in tensions, thismonograph disentangles the conditions under which inclusion takes place.Taking the migrant professional’s perspective, this dissertation responds tothe question, ‘how are the terms of inclusion engaged with?’. It argues for anunderstanding of inclusion as a process characterized by negotiation underarbitrary conditions. Such negotiation often contradicts official discourses ofmigrant professional success. This finding brings the reader into the every-day barriers and enablers migrant professionals experience regarding skills,professionalism, ethnicity, culture, class, language, and religion in a neworganizational context. The dissertation proposes to give a central place tothe terms and conditions under which ‘the other’ is invited to be part of anorganization and society.