Beyond Integration : Intersecting Identities and Labour Market Outcomes for Tigrayan Women in Stockholm

Sammanfattning

Moving beyond conventional integration discourses, this thesis critically examines how intersecting identities of race, gender and migration interact with structural and institutional processes shape labour market outcomes of Tigrayan immigrant women, an ethnic group originating from northern Ethiopia, who have migrated and settled in Stockholm, Sweden. Employing a qualitative case study approach based on semi-structured interviews, the study explores how intersecting identities influence participants’ experiences of exclusion within the Swedish labour market. The findings reveal patterns of discriminatory hiring practices, racialised perceptions of competence, employment hiearchies, racialised othering, concentration in the secondary labour market, as well as wage and gender disparities. This analysis, guided by Acker’s theory of Inequality Regimes and supported by Crenshaw’s framework of Intersectionality, interprets the participants’ experiences as manifestations of systemic inequality embedded in organisational and institutional structures. By centering the lived experiences of Tigrayan women, the study challenges one-dimensional understandings of integration and engages with the field of International Migration and Ethnic Relations. It calls for a shift toward intersectionality-informed labour market policies and practices that actively confront, rather than obscure, the structural barriers facing racialised migrant women in Sweden.