The Invisible Generation? Exploring the Role of Stereotypes in Employment Discrimination among Children of Immigrants in Norway

Although children of immigrants usually will have acquired fluency in the majority language as well as domestic educational qualifications and work experience, recent quantitative and experimental studies indicate that the ‘second generation’ experience discrimination in accessing entry-level jobs in Western European countries. In this article, I use data from fortytwo in-depth interviews with Norwegian employers to explore the decision-making processes leading to the disadvantages observed. While economists and quantitatively oriented sociologists often favour theories of statistical discrimination when explaining discrimination of children of immigrants, the qualitative material suggests that employers use ethnically distinctive names as proxies for foreign education and lack of language proficiency – that is, stereotypes often associated with the immigrant experience. The implications for the employment opportunities of children of immigrants are potentially severe. Instead of experiencing equal access to the labour market, they encounter attitudes and stereotypes attached to their parents’ generation, making their domestic educational qualifications and linguistic fluency ‘invisible’ in the eyes of employers.