Ethnicity at a youth club: An ethnographic study on ethnic categorization among Norwegian youths with immigrant background

Abstract

This thesis is about a group of youths who hang out a club in the east of Oslo. Most of them have parents with an immigrant background. I seek to understand how these youths understand, use, and categorize their ethnicities. Based on six months of fieldwork, I followed a group of youths and studied the many ways ethnicity became visible through the social interactions of daily life. Related to how the youths categorize each other, I investigate what it is that make the categories meaningful, how they relate to their multiple backgrounds, and how aspects of culture, religion and masculinity give content and meaning to the ethnic categories used in the local context. Negotiating the boundaries of the categories between themselves, we see how they are structured by stereotypes of reified categories, influences from other places, experiences and ascription by others made relevant in a local context. Through the act of categorizing each other I show how their use of the categories illuminate the construction of their ethnicities.