Don't care what they say about you in the media - ! or ? : perceptions of mediated Lithuanian identity by Lithuanians

Abstract

Open country borders in EU and EEA have allowed a free flow of labour migrants between Norway and Lithuania, and recently there has been increased labour migration from Lithuania to Norway, as well as increased criminal activity of Lithuanians in Norway. Media‟s attention to such events is unanimous, and Lithuanians in Norway are usually portrayed in the public debates as criminals. This paper examines the Lithuanian minority in Norway and their perception of how media coverage portrays Lithuanian identity, and how they negotiate such understandings in their private and public social lives. The findings indicate a complex identity development, in which strategies of distancing themselves from the media‟s portrayal are actively employed in everyday lives. As a result of the stereotypical perception of Lithuanian identity, Lithuanians disguise their ethnic character with a phantom identity, making Lithuanians a phantom minority. Disguised as a phantom, Lithuanians are employing their cultural and social capital to not differentiate themselves from the perceived Norwegian majority „crowd‟. In this way they avoid encounters with the popularly mediated stereotypes of Lithuanians in Norway. Secondly, to maintain their phantom character the Lithuanian minority engage in popular discourse, which sees a non-western immigrant as a problem. In this way they mark out their identities as counter to those of non-western minorities.