“If you don’t speak Norwegian well, they think you are stupid”: Linguistic discrimination and Polish migrant workers in Norway (20145)
Although Poles constitute the largest migration community in Norway, they often remain “invisibly present” (Opsahl, 2021) in language policy discussions and language discrimination debates. Studies have also shown that Polish migrants tend to be stigmatized (Sapieżyńska, 2022; van Riemsdijk, 2013), exploited on economic basis (Rye & Andrzejewska, 2010), and overlooked in integration policies, specifically, limited access to Norwegian language courses (Gmaj, 2018). As language is assumed to be crucial for professional success, the knowledge of Norwegian or lack of thereof may include or exclude individuals from professional and social spaces in Norway.
This qualitative study (Meriam & Tisdell, 2016) examined how Polish migrants to Norway linguistically navigate the workplace and make sense of their experiences. Guided by the constructs of linguistic justice and linguistic racism (Tankosić & Dovchin, 2021), this paper drew upon narrative inquiry (De Fina, 2021) to gain in-depth understandings of participants’ perspectives and stories. Through convenience and purposeful sampling, nine participants with a wide array of jobs were recruited, each of whom was of Polish background, was employed in Norway, and used Norwegian at work. The data included semi-structured interviews, surveys, language policy documents, and researcher’s reflexive journal. Findings of this study provide nuanced insights into ways in which Polish migrant workers navigated linguistic discrimination and racism in the workplace in Norway through experiencing and reacting to it. Specifically, the study demonstrated how participants experienced linguistic discrimination and racism through various covert and overt microaggressions, including social, formal, and professional exclusion as well as stereotyping, labeling, and language shaming. In addition, participants reacted to it through denial, rationalization, calling it out, and challenging it. Results of this study can be helpful in addressing Polish migrants’ needs in creating linguistically equitable workplace settings by, for example, designing and organizing workshops for Norwegian employers.
