Maintaining Social Boundaries Through Equal Treatment A Qualitative Study on the Integration of Immigrants at a Swedish Workplace

Abstract

In recent years several different labour market initiatives have been established in Sweden in order to encourage companies to take their responsibility for the integration of the record number of immigrants. The current literature within the field of labour market integration largely has been studying the efforts before immigrants get a position within a company while workplace integration has not received as much attention. This paper thus focused on what happens after employment through studying the workplace integration of immigrantengineers at a Swedish engineering consultancy company. When interviewing individuals from the integration project at the company it became possible to illustrate the dominating practices related to workplace integration. From the data it was possible to see how processes for managing the integration were developing into an organisational routine for handling this new group of organisational members. The concept of boundaries contributed by showing how the company, through aiming for equal treatment in their integration processes, was creating a difference between the immigrants and other employees and hence maintaining the societal social boundaries.