Laurence Romani

Can a successful collective action frame backfire for its main audience? Extent literature would argue that if a frame underserves key stakeholders, the frame is likely to be revised, contested or replaced. We find, however, the case of a dominant collective action frame, which is actively maintained, despite excluding a large proportion of its key audience. Our in-depth investigation of Australia's refugee employment support industry shows how service providers maintain the dominant framing of refugees as talent in interactions with employers and refugees, despite its unintended negative effects. We explain this contradiction and advance framing theory with the concept of insidious framing, a process that operates deceptively against its purpose, but is actively maintained by key actors because they are unaware of its adverse impacts. Furthermore, we contribute to research on frame maintenance by elucidating a new form of frame amplification – versatility – that simultaneously narrows and expands the meanings attached to a frame. Finally, our findings contribute to broadening debates on refugee employment, demonstrating how a well-intentioned framing of refugees as having strong labor market value can undermine the effectiveness of employment support for the most vulnerable refugee jobseekers.

Can men enacting traditional masculine roles support more gender equality at work? Current research on gender performativity strongly revokes this thesis, instead arguing that disrupting the gender binary is the path to equality. We challenge this field assumption with our claim that the literature has yet to sufficiently differentiate between gender binary and gender hierarchy, and thus conflates masculinity with hegemonic expressions of masculinity. Our in-depth case study of women politicians’ work in Tamil Nadu (India) shows how men engage in traditional gender roles to support the emancipatory work of women council leaders. We propose a theoretical distinction between gender binary and gender hierarchy to establish four ideal types of gender performativity. Doing so allows the conceptualisation of currently overlooked gender performativities that are perceived as hegemonic, but are in fact realized in the service of gender equality. Our study also contributes by providing a framework that differentiates two ways of redoing gender: ‘redoing gender and hierarchy’, when the gender binary is disrupted, but not the implicit gender hierarchy; and ‘redoing gender for emancipation’, when the gender binary is preserved, but in service of an emancipatory agenda.

How does the misrecognition of their skills explain the under-employment of educated migrants in Europe? Our study addresses this question at the level of recruitment. Current research points to the potential limitations of recruitment processes, in particular in the screening of candidates with foreign sounding names, and in the international experience of the hiring team. In contrast to this recruiters' center approach, we opt for a process view. We approach recruitment as a social process of recognition that balances acts of identification and rationalisation of the boundaries established between those seen as worthy of employment, and those who are not. We take the case of an initiative specially designed for the recruitment of skilled migrants in a large Swedish organisation. By focusing on six steps in the recruitment process of skilled migrants -analysis of needs, position advertising, pre-selection, internal screening, speed interviewing, recruitment decision-making- we show how the perceived worth of skilled migrants is weak in early stages of the process, and how sometimes migrants’ ethnic capital, rather than their academic education is valued. We elucidate how each step of the recruitment process is about establishing a boundary and rationalizing it, in view of the perceived worth of candidates, itself judged in relation to other groups in society. This study stresses that the earliest phases of the recruitment process, thus before screening, are decisive in the establishment of the recognition of migrants’ skills and merit more attention in our theorizing of inclusive recruitment. Theoretically, the paper suggests the underemployment of skilled migrants is linked to their devaluation in routine recruitment practices that reflect an order of worth between social groups in society, rather than individual biases of evaluators and HR managers.

With growing scholarly interest in qualitative research in organizational studies, a critical challenge lies in navigating through qualitative data pertaining to silence and the unspoken in interviews or observations. Even though there is scant yet relevant attention in the organizational and psychotherapy literatures, how qualitative researchers, especially early-career ones, should make sense of the type of data has yet to receive methodological exploration or discussions. In this instructional symposium, a new format at RM Division, we bring together worldwide qualitative scholars to share their experiences and insights into how they have handled and managed silence and the unspoken in potentially stigmatized or sensitive contexts. In addition to a panel discussion facilitated by the organizers, participants will join roundtables and discuss how to analyze, theorize, and present data on silence and the unspoken for theory building. We aim to provide both theoretical and practical insights into being aware of and making good use of data on silence and the unspoken for interested qualitative researchers.

This paper aims at proposing that class, and in particular, cultural capital is a dimension to be considered in the understanding of highly-skilled migrants’ (HSM) inclusion at work. Inspired by Bourdieu, we see class work as positioning in the negotiation of various capitals and we approach inclusion as a situated power struggle. Based on an in-depth qualitative case study, we present an exemplary organization committed to the promotion of diversity and actively working on increasing the ethnic diversity of its workforce. In this organization, however, we find that employees participate in acts of positioning. HSM engage in practices of demarcation to distinguish themselves from those with a similar ethnic origin, often associated with low social status. Ethnic majority employees engage in practices of reduction and non-recognition of the cultural capital of the HSM. We argue that these acts of positioning between the groups of employees reveals that inclusion can be understood as a field in which employees struggle for their class capital. This paper contributes to assert the place of cultural capital and broadly the acknowledgement of social class belonging in the understanding of HSM’s experience of inclusion at work.

Extant research on tokenism has well documented the adverse consequences for employees in minority positions and, for example, how women’s possibility of action is constrained in male-dominated contexts. We present an in-depth qualitative case study of a male- dominated organization in a masculine industry in which, despite all expectations, the experience of tokenism for minority women is ambiguous. Furthermore, these women also display a strong agentic role in an organization in which culture favours gender equality. This unique case reveals an aspect previously overlooked in studies of tokenism: the importance of organizational norms. By exposing and challenging the implicit masculine norm, this organization actively engages in the change of gendering processes and contributes to establishing an alternative norm. Theoretical contributions show the impact of organizational normative control on the experience of token, and how it provides a frame for action toward gender equality. Implications for work for change are briefly discussed.

This case study illustrates how the voluntary engagement of the HR personnel into diversity initiatives targeting migrants inscribe their actions into an act of benevolence that re-establishes a social hierarchical relationship between natives and migrants. Through diversity initiatives, HR practitioners create an ambiguous social relationship blending solidarity towards migrants with a clear social order in which their existing value system prevails. This hierarchical order is materialized in the case study company’s structural discrimination, producing an inequality regime based on ethnicity and class. In addition, the initiation of HR personnel relationship with migrants is performed as a generous (benevolent) act, implicitly seen as a form of gift. HR professionals see themselves as giving migrants a chance, an opportunity, to enter the labor market. This implicit framing as a gift blurs the view of the social domination taking place and explains why HR professionals have difficulties in seeing their role in the discrimination of migrants taking place in their organization. Our study introduces the notion of benevolent discrimination. Benevolent discrimination articulates the well-meaning dimension of acceptance with the construction of the others as deficient and vulnerable, and therefore, in need of an act of benevolence for their empowerment. However, this empowerment is defined and limited by the initiator of benevolence into the existing naturalized order.

Research on recruitment of ethnic minorities is often focused on discrimination and hinders for entering organizations. In contrast to existing literature, this study investigates an inclusive organization that recruits high skilled migrants and ethnic minorities. It focusses on actual recruitment practices using participant observations of employment interviews and assessment of candidates. We identify two key recruitment practices in the construction of acceptability: association and adequacy. These practices assess candidate in view of their similarity with existing employees (association) and in view of their adequacy with the position’s conditions (who will they be working with, what are the possibility of career). We show how association and adequacy are constructed around the ethnic background of the candidates, placing ethnicity in a central position in the construction of acceptability. Our results contribute to recruitment theory, by showing that acceptability is constructed the same way with all candidates (ethnic minority and/or migrants, or not) and that it is the ethnic order in place that leads to different assessment outcome: acceptable, or not. We introduce the concept of inclusive subordination to discuss the implications of our results for recruitment and policy makers.