Dressing down to fit in: Analyzing (re)orientation processes through stories about Norwegianization

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

“…Yet passing requires considerable efforts and performative changes in behaviour, speech, accent and dress (Sion 2014;Wara and Munkejord 2018). It is not the same as becoming, and may always end in failure (Ahmed 1999).…”

“…Feminist migration research demonstrates that such efforts are also gendered, as Eastern European migrant women struggle to resist stigmatization, racialization and sexualization (Diatlova 2019; Krivonos and Diatlova forthcoming). For example, Wara and Munkejord (2018) suggest that migrant Russian women's attempts to "blend in" in Norway by no longer wearing make-up or skirts are a form of bodily (re)orientation to avoid feeling stigmatized and out of place. Linda Lapiņa's (2018) autobiographical account of passing as a Dane captures the position of Eastern European migrants, who labour on their bodies to become whiter and more Western, even though their bodies already have the potential for conditional passing that non-white Others do not have.…”

To ‘go gender’ – A conceptual framework for analysing migration-related strategic gender practices

“…In a study of Russian women moving to northern Norway, Aure (2008) identifies a contested gender identity in the women's struggle to cope with the difficulties in adhering to two deep and inert gender structures. In and article on immigrant women in northern Norway, Wara & Munkejord (2018) discuss the transformation of the women's dressing practices in their efforts to adhere to a dominant gender practice in their new home. The authors find this orientation or reorientation practice is a way of adapting to a new place by assimilating the new social space and becoming 'Norwegianised'.…”

“…The authors find this orientation or reorientation practice is a way of adapting to a new place by assimilating the new social space and becoming 'Norwegianised'. Wara & Munkejord (2018) have been influenced by Ahmed's understanding of the postcolonial feminist phenomenology of orientation or reorientation practice as a mechanism for theorising how identity itself is predicated on movement or loss, which is a meaningseeking process (Ahmed 2006). According to Wara & Munkejord (2018), the women who migrated to Norway felt the need to orient or reorient themselves through new dressing strategies in order to fit in with Norwegian cultural practices.…”

“…Wara & Munkejord (2018) have been influenced by Ahmed's understanding of the postcolonial feminist phenomenology of orientation or reorientation practice as a mechanism for theorising how identity itself is predicated on movement or loss, which is a meaningseeking process (Ahmed 2006). According to Wara & Munkejord (2018), the women who migrated to Norway felt the need to orient or reorient themselves through new dressing strategies in order to fit in with Norwegian cultural practices. Thus, the practice of orientation or reorientation involves a notion of intentionality that makes a distinction between the objective, material, and body on the one hand, and the phenomenological lived body on the other hand.…”