Pragmatics
Volume 22, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 301-325
The discursive construction of gender, ethnicity and the workplace in second generation immigrants' narratives: The case of Moroccan women in Belgium (Article)
Van De Mieroop D.*
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a
KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts, Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, P.O. Box 3308, B- 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Abstract
This article examines the professional identity construction of three young 2 nd generation immigrant women of Moroccan descent who have university degrees and high-skilled jobs. More specifically, I focus on how they construct this professional identity in relation to their gender and ethnicity. The data consist of interviews in which the interviewer explicitly probes for the relation between these topics. Interestingly, all the interviewees construct their professional identities in relatively similar ways. Furthermore, they resist the interviewer's projections of ethno-professional identities and replace these by professional identities, thus making ethnicity irrelevant for the discussion. Finally, when discussing gendered identities, they all orient to the Western hegemonic model of the struggle in finding a work-life balance. As such, these interviewees bracket ethnicity which may be related to the role of the interviewer, interviews as a genre, and the interviewees' orientation to societal norms.
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Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84862682509&doi=10.1075%2fprag.22.2.06mie&partnerID=40&md5=b37c0c6c242464cb573506b067d36d75
DOI: 10.1075/prag.22.2.06mie
ISSN: 10182101
Cited by: 3
Original Language: English