Becoming a Part of Society in Rural Norway

How do people become part of a community in rural Norway? How do they talk about their experiences with their own and others’ ‘integration’? What role do mundane encounters play and what other topics are revealed in these narratives?

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In this study integration is not understood as a political goal, which is measurable through statistics and achievable through formal policies and structures.

Instead, in 30 biographical interviews and numerous notes, Angelina Penner explores the rather banal moments in which her interlocutors describe feeling more or less part of the community. Frustrations of not being able to make friends in a place where everyone seems to know everyone and narratives about the Norwegian “dugnad” reveal that not only immigrants and refugees are affected by an ideal of integration, which is connected to and perpetuates ideas of homogeneity and racialization.

Angelina Penner
is a PhD
Candidate at the Department for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at NTNU, her thesis is based on an ethnographic fieldwork in a small coastal Norwegian town.

Photo:
Denis Simonet on Flikcr.