“People like us”: experiencing difference in the working life of immigrant women

• Pages: 575-591
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-07-2012-0062
• Date: 09 August 2013
• Published date: 09 August 2013
• Author: Huriye Aygören,Monika Wilińska

“People like us”: experiencing

difference in the working life of

immigrant women

Huriye Aygo

¨ren

Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Organization and Leadership (ESOL),

Jo

¨nko

¨ping International Business School, Jo

¨nko

¨ping, Sweden, and

Monika Wilin

´ska

Department of Behavioural Science and Social Work, School of Health Sciences,

Jo

¨nko

¨ping University, Jo

¨nko

¨ping, Sweden

Abstract

Purpose – The main aim of this article is to research the lived experience of difference. In this article,

the authors are interested in the field of working life in the context of entrepreneurship among Turkish

women in Sweden.

Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on the stories of two immigrant women

entrepreneurs who reflect upon their experience of working life in the context of migration to Sweden.

These two stories provide a ground for a discussion regarding the responding to and re-making

of difference by individual subjects. The authors’ analysis is grounded in discursive approaches to

narratives, particularly in the positioning analysis.

Findings – In their discussion, the authors focus on the field of work to discuss the changing

conditions that affect and are affected by particular constructions of difference in a migration

context. In this, the authors present how difference is experienced and put into use differently by the

individuals, even under very similar descriptive categories of difference.

Originality/value – This article contributes with an experiential account of difference. It favors the

notion of lived experiences within the intersecting structures in the analysis of complex interactions

between structures, agents, times and spaces. It demonstrates the importance of attending to sp atial,

temporal, structural and subjective dimensions of difference.

Keywords Difference, Inequality, Lived experience, Immigrant women, Entrepreneurship,

Storytelling, Immigrants, Women, Sweden

Paper type Research p aper

Introduction

“There might be things you want to hear, definitely?” Ayla[1]replied to an invitation to

narrate her personal story of entrepreneurial activity. Ayla was a Turkish woman,

living in Sweden and running a private dentistry practice. We[2] were interested

in research on inequalities. What did we want to hear? Sharing the experien ce

of migration and having lived in Sweden for several years, we could anticipate

a story about cultural differences and perhaps discrimination, inequality and injustice.

Indeed, immigrants in Sweden, despite the politic al commitment to full integration

and comprehensive state support programs in labor market access and other areas,

suffer greatly from unequal employment rates, wage differentials, occupational

segregation and subordinated mobility compared to native Swedes. We could imagine

the story of difference that almost always invites power contestation and leads to

inequalities. We could have easily written about those issues, thus repeating the story

of oppressive structures that produce marginalized or resisting subjects. However,

we chose not to.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

Received 31 July 2012

Revised 25 October 2012

Accepted 8 November 2012

Equality, Diversityand Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol.32 No.6, 2013

pp. 575-591

rEmeraldGroup Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/E DI-07-2012-0062

575

“People like us”

Instead, we decided to focus on the lived experience of difference as narrated by our

interviewees. We chose to confront the actualities of life (Smith, 2005) and to listen

carefully to stories that included various temporal and spatial dimensions. Such a

perspective allows for moving beyond the victimhood discourse fou nd in studies of

inequality and difference. On the one hand, such a perspective recognizes the plethora

of stigmatizing mechanisms and practices; on the other hand, it allows for understanding

people who respond differently to such occurrences and actively engaging in the process of

de-stigmatization ( Bursell, 2011; Fleming et al., 2011; Lamont, 2009). Therefore,we chose to

speak with our interviewees in a variety of situations in social and physical environments

that take different forms and meanings according to each individual’s ownp rojects(Young,

2005).These projects are, however, far from stable and finished; instead, they are contingent

on changing living conditions in which people make decisions and choices. This definition

of projects stems from the acknowledgment of the role of human agency, which can be

understood as a “temporarily constructed engagement by actors of different structural

environments” that responds and/or (re)produces structures created in particular times and

spaces (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). In the case of immigrants, these projects are

simultaneously influenced by sometimes contradictory spaces and times.

In this paper, we are interested in the working lives and entre preneurial activities of

Turkish women in Sweden. We focus on choices that immigrant Turkish women have

made in relation to their occupational activities and the meanings these choices have in

their everyday lives and to their sense of identity. The discussion advanced in this

paper is based on two life stories of Turkish immigrant women, Ayla and Mine, who

engage in entrepreneurial activities in Sweden. Their stories are part of a larger

ongoing study[3] on the experience of Turkish immigrant entrepreneurship in Sweden.

We chose to focus on the stories of Ayla and Mine here because the story of their arrival

as well as structural conditions in Sweden was the same; for instance the institutional

contexts concerning migration and occupation al opportunities. In addition, their class

and professional backgrounds were very similar. They were both well-educated

women of similar ages who were actively involved in civic movements in Turkey and

migrated to Sweden in the aftermath of a military coup in the 1980s. However, their life

stories turned out very differently. In professional sense, although they both began

with a degree in dentistry, only Ayla pursued her career in that direction by

establishing a private dentistry clinic, while Mine started-up a health care retail and

service store and initiated a new career p ath.

We approach these women from an intersectional perspective, viewing them as

agents who are operating within structures of gender, ethnicity and class in the context

of migration and working life. Our aim is to demonstrate how their different lives

came about and what meaning was ascribed to these differences by our interviewees.

Our focus on two stories expresses our interest in opening and complicating

the category of immigrant women; using Halkier (2011), we apply the practice of

“zooming” by going in depth instead of breadth. Similar to what Bell’s (1999) account

articulated, zooming into the two life stories may demonstrate that even sharing

similar structural and discursive resources within a particular temp oral and spatial

context, their lived experiences can become so different. This way, we bring the subject

of working immigrant woman to the front.

Working life and immigrant women in Sweden

In the case of Sweden, immigrants enjoy equal access to social welfare benefits.

However, the working life of an immigrant in Sweden may be troublesome, particularly

576

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