The Burden of Being the ‘Token’ - The Exploration of Ethnicity, Professional Identity, and Career Navigation amongst Ethnic Minority Managers in Sweden

Abstract

The theoretical framework for this study is based on the following understandings. Firstly, that navigation is seen and described as a career practice. Secondly, that this form of career practice is influenced by ethnicity, of which we maintain is also a socially constructed phenomenon. Thirdly, we highlight the concepts of tokenism and meritocracy and their interplay between ethnic identity, professional identity, and navigation. Lastly, we employ the well-established concepts of the Glass Ceiling, the Glass Cliff, and the Labyrinth, to explore and explain the different stages and barriers in the careers of ethnic minority managers in Sweden. Methodology: Qualitative study with semi-structured in-depth interviews. Results of this study revealed that ethnicity had an impact on navigation as a career practice for ethnic minority managers in Sweden. The influence of ethnicity, or more precisely, belonging to an ethnic minority group, appeared in the form of tokenism. The implications of tokenism were mainly described as barriers by interviewees in various ways. Data illustrated the appearance of these barriers at the different junctures of the interviewees’ career trajectories, and seemed to force the interviewees’ to consciously and unconsciously react, test, and eliminate different methods and strategies. These methods were both tokenistic and meritocratic in nature and were employed as a way to balance home/work expectations, compensate, or even overcompensate, for a lack of informal influence, and avoid all of the negative implications associated with being a token. Moreover, they strongly suggest a correlation between the Glass Ceiling, Glass Cliff, and Labyrinth when used as theories, as well as an interconnectedness and inter-reliance between the effects of the barriers and the methods employed to navigate past them.