27.9.2019
13:00-14:00
Room 229, Psychologicum (Siltavuorenpenger 1 A, 00170 Helsinki)
Daria Krivonos: Whiteness and tactics of passing among young Russian-speaking migrants in Helsinki
Abstract
“I just googled ‘Beautiful Swedish surnames’ and picked up the one I liked”.
In this paper, I approach whiteness as not only a structural position of advantage and privilege shaped by histories of European colonialism, but also as a direct embodied experience of a differential ability to navigate social space. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interview data with young Russian-speaking migrants in Helsinki in 2014-2016, I analyse how, on the one hand, young Russian-speakers are able to utilize their embodied white capital strategically to pass as white Finns. They attempt to pass as white Finns and not to pass as ‘Russians’, which may help them evade experiences of everyday racism and, for example, gain employment. On the other hand, I argue that the very effort to pass as white and the desire not to be recognized as ‘Russian’ points to the unequal access to social positions with a positive value. The racialised position of ’Russianness’ is then lived as a concern with an external categorisation. In other words, these are the bodies which feel and remain ‘out of place’ despite phenotypical whiteness, and for whom whiteness may not come as a habit. These efforts can be then understood as tactics (de Certeau, 1984) as an adaptation of the non-powerful as they cannot capitalise on their positioning. I demonstrate that passing as white involves the labour of learning and approximating the habitus of the white middle-class body. Passing involves anxiety and insecurity that one can be caught up and revealed. These efforts are deeply gendered and classed.
About the speaker
Daria Krivonos is a sociologist specialising in migration, labour, racialisation and critical race and whiteness. Her PhD thesis has examined young Russian-speakers’ quest for Europeanness through migration to Helsinki with particular focus on their aspirations to become modern through their migratory projects to the ‘West’ and their struggles to claim membership in whiteness. She is starting as a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EuroStorie), where she will continue her work on the Eastern margins of Europe, labour, racialisation of whiteness, and postcolonial East/West dynamics of race.
Daria Krivonos is a sociologist specialising in migration, labour, racialisation and critical race and whiteness. Her PhD thesis has examined young Russian-speakers’ quest for Europeanness through migration to Helsinki with particular focus on their aspirations to become modern through their migratory projects to the ‘West’ and their struggles to claim membership in whiteness. She is starting as a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EuroStorie), where she will continue her work on the Eastern margins of Europe, labour, racialisation of whiteness, and postcolonial East/West dynamics of race.
Daria Krivonos is a sociologist specialising in migration, labour, racialisation and critical race and whiteness. Her PhD thesis has examined young Russian-speakers’ quest for Europeanness through migration to Helsinki with particular focus on their aspirations to become modern through their migratory projects to the ‘West’ and their struggles to claim membership in whiteness. She is starting as a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EuroStorie), where she will continue her work on the Eastern margins of Europe, labour, racialisation of whiteness, and postcolonial East/West dynamics of race.