Due to globalization and international migration to and from Sweden, the option to choose a life partner who is of migrant background has been increasing in Sweden. Despite the growth of and greater ethnic and racial diversity in mixed marriages in Sweden, however, few researchers have studied such unions to any great extent. This article focuses on mixed marriages in which one person is of Swedish background and the other of a different ethnic or racial background. It questions whether Sweden is becoming what is metaphorically described as a melting pot or a salad bowl. The article, first, includes a meta-analysis of existing research on mixed marriage and families in Sweden. These studies present the actual numbers and patterns of mixed marriages and the socioeconomic status of mixed families as well as attitudes toward mixed marriage. The second part turns to analysis of 2014 register data, which shows how such factors as gender, country of origin, and immigrant generation affect the composition of mixed marriages and the socioeconomic status of mixed families.

Delmi Policy Brief 2023:2 summarizes the main results of two EU-funded projects. The projects study how refugee integration policies stand in relation to the EU-directives and other EU countries, in contrast to the experiences of beneficiaries of integration policies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how people’s differentiated privileged and marginalised positions in society create instances of inclusion and exclusion in tourism. Eight authors utilised their diverse disciplinary and theoretical bases to engage in individual autoethnography and collaborative reflections of their personal experiences of being tourists and hosts. Through our Western and non-Western, White and non-White experiences, we reveal experiences from a multitude of perspectives, and problematise the dominant White racial frame. The methodology illustrates unquestioned privileges and feelings of discomfort when personally faced with exclusionary practices and creates an understanding of how individuals have different experiences of enchantment and the tourist gaze. The experience of marginalisation is serial and dialectical, which illustrates the complexity of tourism. The paper contributes to an enhanced and multifaceted understanding of tourism experiences and proposes measures to reveal issues of exclusion. Also, the use of autoethnography and collaborative reflection as methodological tools provide opportunities for researchers and practitioners to engage in reflexive conversation on discriminatory practices, and how they hinder certain individuals and groups from enjoying tourism products and services. 

Major sporting events (MSEs) have been used by governments to improve the image of cities and nations, and to attract tourists. In the wake of criticism of how global MSEs handle human-rights issues, governments are pressured to rethink how these events are organised and branded. Developing and employing an analytical framework based on inclusive place branding and pathways to progressive human-rights outcomes, this study explores how and to whom inclusiveness is communicated in five Olympic Games candidate files. A quantitative content analysis is performed using keywords related to inclusiveness and three characteristics of inclusiveness are analysed qualitatively: democratic representation, inclusive participation, and committed transformation. The findings show that three of the candidate files predominantly belong to the traditional place branding paradigm through their focus on external stakeholders, while two have adopted a more inclusive place branding strategy and put emphasis on internal stakeholders. The analytical framework introduced in this study can be useful for both researchers and practitioners – such as prospective hosts of MSEs and other events – as a conceptual tool to analyse and develop inclusiveness in major events.

Using 2010 Japanese census data, we critically interrogate the idea of integration through marriage in Japan. Intermarriage has been seen as a result of integration but the patterns of intermarriage and integration might depend on existing intersecting power structures in the receiving society. We explore assortative mating patterns in bi-national marriages in order to understand how citizenship status, race, gender, and educational level intersect and affect the patterns of intermarriage in Japan. We argue how ‘integration’ through bi-national marriage only perpetuates the structural hierarchy that premiers and maintain the status of the (male) native Japanese majority over Asian immigrants. 

This paper examines attitudes toward interracial marriages and the relationship between the amount of prior interracial contact and attitudes in Sweden. The analysis is based on an anonymous postal survey conducted in Malmö, Sweden answered by 461 white-European respondents. Several studies in the US address the question of contact and attitudes and find that those who have more interracial contact, especially interracial friendships, have more positive attitudes toward intermarriage. The results show that the majority of the white European respondents can imagine marrying interracially; however, there are clear preferences toward different racial groups. Moreover, as in the US context, respondents who reported interracial friendships, and not general or superficial contacts, are more apt to answer the question about interracial marriage positively.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of my ongoing dissertation project on attitudes towards interracial marriages. The findings are based on an anonymous postal survey conducted in Malmö, and the analysis focuses on 461 white European respondents who have answered the questionnaire. The result shows that the majority of the respondents can imagine dating or marrying interracially, however there are clear preferences of different groups. This paper also exhibits that respondents who have reported interracial friendships, and not general or superficial contacts, are more apt to answering to the question of interracial dating and marriage positively.

A global trend has shown an increase in intimate partnerships across nationality, race, ethnicity, and religion. As a result, the children of these unions (i.e. multiethnic and multiracial persons) are undeniably part of contemporary Swedish society. This study is one of the first studies in Sweden that solely focuses on the multiracial and multiethnic population and their identity. Based on 21 qualitative interviews, this article explores how mixed Swedes identify themselves and how they experience that they are identified by others. The analysis shows that, contrary to the flexibility in how mixed Swedes identify themselves, mixed Swedes experience that people in society categorize them in a fixed idea of ‘either-or’. The idea of being Swedish is strongly connected to the idea of being white; therefore, many mixed Swedes with a non-white phenotype experience that their identification as Swedish is questioned, and a feeling of misrecognition emerge. However, mixed Swedes who can pass as Swedish also feeling constraints in claiming their identity and feel misrecognized especially when they identify themselves as ‘mixed’.

This case study will present how I used mixed methods in my PhD dissertation project which investigated the majority society's attitudes toward interracial dating, marriage, and childbearing in Sweden. I will explain why I chose mixed methods and describe the mixed-methods model called follow-up explanations model of explanatory design procedures. I will also explain how the model was applied to investigate the attitudes. I address the four steps of follow-up explanations model, together with the results from my study on attitudes toward interracial relationships.

Sweden is a country of immigration, where fourteen percent of about nine million residents are born outside of the country. Immigration to Sweden has increased for three consecutive years, and it is expected that the number of immigrants to Sweden in 2014 will be the highest ever recorded. Up until the 1980s immigration to Sweden was dominated by European labor migrants; however, today it is dominated by non-European asylum seekers and family members of the existing immigrant population. As the type of immigration and the countries of origin have shifted, Sweden has faced different issues concerning integration and discrimination. Swedish society is reluctant to admit that race and visible differences matter. Swedish integration policy is based around the ideology of colorblindness, and consequently discriminatory problems faced by immigrants are often attributed to cultural and ethnic differences. In contrast to the current resistance to talk about race, Sweden was deeply involved with the development of the idea of race. This article challenges the current colorblind ideal and resistance to talk about race and visible differences in Sweden. A short presentation of previous research and the results from my own research on attitudes towards interracial marriages will demonstrate that race does matter in Sweden.

Even though the number of multiracial and multiethnic Japanese, socially recognized and identified as “haafu (half)” are increasing, their identities and experiences are seldom critically analyzed. How do they identify themselves and how do they feel that they are identified by others? Based on interviews with eighteen individuals who grew up in Japan having one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent, this article explores ethnic options and practices of covering and passing among multiracial and multiethnic individuals in Japan. The analysis shows that multiracial and multiethnic individuals possess different kinds of ethnic options and practice passing and covering differently.

Over the past ten years, Japan has seen a significant increase in foreign residents, with levels of immigration expected to grow even more. This growing immigrant population is also reflected in the increase in intermarriages and children with mixed background. Although the number of multiracial and multiethnic Japanese who are socially recognised and identified as haafu (half) has increased, their identities and experiences are seldom critically analysed: How do they identify themselves, and how do they feel others identify them? Based on interviews with 18 individuals who grew up in Japan with one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent, this article explores ethnic options and the practices of covering and passing among multiracial and multiethnic individuals in Japan. The analysis shows that multiracial and multiethnic individuals have various ethnic options available to them and that they practice passing and covering in various ways.

A global trend has shown an increase in intimate partnerships across nationality, race, ethnicity, and religion, and this is also the case in Sweden. As a result, the children of these unions (i.e. multiethnic and multiracial persons) are undeniably part of contemporary society. This study is one of the first studies in Sweden that solely focuses on the multiracial and multiethnic population. Based on 21 qualitative interviews, this article explores how mixed Swedes identify themselves and how they experience that they are identified by others using Brubaker’s (2016) conceptualization. The analysis shows that, contrary to the flexibility in how mixed Swedes identify themselves, mixed Swedes experience that people in society categorize them in a fixed idea of ‘either-or’ – either Swedish or not Swedish. The idea of being Swedish is strongly connected to the idea of being white; therefore, many mixed Swedes with a non-white phenotype experience that their identification as Swedish is not validated. However, some interviewees reject the idea of Swedish as solely being ‘white’ and are actively redrawing what it means to be Swedish through emphasizing nationality and cultural belonging.

One in ten Swedes today is of mixed background, with parents of differing countries of origin. Despite mixed Swedes being an integral part of Swedish society, little is known about their experiences. Based on fourteen qualitative interviews with mixed Swedes who reported to be racialized as Latino, Asian, Arab, or Black, this article explores the freedom and limitations in asserting their ethnic and racial identity. Mixed Swedes’ experiences show that while identification is flexible and the choice to identify as Swedish or mixed reflects their personal decision to connect with their national, cultural, and ethnic background, they cannot choose whether or how they will be racialized or racially categorized by others.

This dissertation focuses on the geographical area of Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden, and examines the majority society’s opinions and attitudes toward interracial dating, marriage and childbearing. The dissertation is driven by two theoretical frames: the theory of race as ideas constructed through the perception of visible differences and the theory of prejudice and stereotypes. Mixed methods have been chosen as a means of exploring people’s attitudes toward interracial relationships. Quantitative data was collected by means of an attitude survey and the qualitative data was collected by means of follow-up interviews with some of the respondents who participated in the survey. The study shows that although their attitudes vary depending on the different groups in question, the majority of the respondents and interviewees could imagine getting involved in interrelationships and would not react negatively if a family member got involved in such a relationship. The quantitative results address the importance of intimate contacts, in other words having friends of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds in having more positive attitudes toward interracial dating, marriage and childbearing. Age, gender, education and the place of upbringing also affects people’s attitudes. The qualitative inquiry probes the reasoning behind the survey results and points to the complicated relations between individual attitudes and the sense of group position. The interviewees’ words depict color-blind ways of talking about attitudes toward interracial marriage and different groups. Ideas of race emerge in this color-blind reasoning and the role of visible difference is highlighted both through the quantitative and qualitative inquiries.

This article compares the attitudes of white Swedes towards interracial marriages with someone of non-white migrant origin and a non-white transnational adoptee. The analysis is based on a postal survey and follow-up interviews conducted in Malmö, Sweden. Survey results show that transnational adoptees are not preferred as marriage partners by white Swedes to the same extent as white Swedes. Moreover, the differences in attitudes towards marriages with migrants and non-white adoptees are not statistically significant. Interviewees utilized the notion of cultural differences to explain the attitudes towards intermarriages with migrants. However, this was highly contested when talking about the attitudes towards non-white transnational adoptees. These results show how race and visible differences play a role in attitudes toward interracial marriages in Sweden.

Increasing immigration and intermarriage in Sweden and Japan have led to a growing multiracial and multiethnic population. Approximately 7% of the Swedish population and 2% of the Japanese population are multiracial and multiethnic today. Based on a total of 39 interviews with mixed persons in Sweden and Japan, I examine the self-claimed and ascribed identification among mixed Japanese and mixed Swedes. I argue that, despite the contextual differences, there are commonalities of experiences and identification. These commonalities of experiences shed light on the conditions the mixed individuals feel that they must fulfill in order to have their different claims to identities validated. The study gives a unique insight into how racial appraisal constrains individual choices of identity in a context where there is no official classification of racial and ethnic groups.

Racial color-blindness, the belief that race should not be seen and noticed, is widespread in all aspects of Swedish society. However, color-blindness does not necessarily mean that there is no racial prejudice in Sweden. This chapter, based on interviews, explores the discourse of color-blindness in talking about attitudes toward interracial marriages in Sweden. The interview results show that color-blind talk is established through justification of racial attitudes as natural by stressing individual choice and gender equality and through focusing on the cultural differences that can bring problems to interracial marriages and undermine the welfare of the family. These explanations emerge as a rational way of understanding the attitudes and make the racial preference sound reasonable rather than prejudiced.

Mixed populations are becoming increasingly visible in Swedish society, although they are not always recognised as such. In a colour-blind Swedish society, mixed Swedes fall into the dichotomised binary of ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. The experiences of twenty-one interviewees with multiethnic and multiracial Swedes can be broadly categorised into three types: those who feel that they are not discriminated against or racialised, those who feel that they are not discriminated against but are racialised, and those who feel that they are both discriminated against and racialised. The analysis illustrates interviewed mixed Swedes’ unique position in the racial hierarchy in Sweden and how fluid their racial experiences are. Their different experiences also show how understandings of white and non-white racial groups are formed through the processes of racialisation and deracialisation in Sweden.

Detta är den första svenska nationella rapporten inom det Europeiska projektet „National Integration Evaluation Mechanism (NIEM)”.

As labor markets become increasingly global, competition among industrialized nations to attract highly skilled workers from abroad has intensified. Spurred by concerns over future economic needs caused by the demographic challenges of an aging population, both Japan and Sweden have joined this global competition. This article examines Japanese and Swedish immigration policies for highly skilled migrants and compares the highly skilled migrants' experiences in the two countries through interviews with these migrants. Despite Japan and Sweden's completely different approaches to immigration itself, both countries' policies, as well as the experiences of the skilled migrants, are strikingly similar. Highly skilled migrants experience language barriers and prejudice in both countries, making it difficult to build social networks with natives. Career development seems to be perceived as a common problem, although less so in Sweden, where labor markets are more flexible. Overall, these issues reduce both Japan's and Sweden's ability to retain skilled migrants. While they share similarities, Sweden's famed work-life balance and gender equality give it an edge in the competition for skilled migrants, which Japan does not share. This comparison identifies which social conditions facilitate or impede skilled migrant settlement.

This chapter gives an overview of the socioeconomic situation of Asian immigrants, and their decedents, in Sweden. With the steady growth in the number of immigrants from Asian countries to Sweden since the 1970s, Asians are becoming increasingly visible among the Swedish population. However, they are rarely represented in the public, political, and academic discussions. As a first step to tackle the “narrative scarcity” (Lee and Ramakrishnan, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 7 (2):, 1–20, 2021), we use register data to describe the educational position and employment situation of the 10 largest East, South and Southeast Asian groups in Sweden, in comparison to non-Asian immigrant groups. We found differences based on the regions of origin: East Asian groups are highly educated but have lower employment rates. Once employed, they work in highly skilled occupations. Southeast Asians have lower education and, therefore, are underrepresented in highly skilled jobs but have high employment rates. South Asians stand between these two groups.

This special issue brings together nine articles on the experiences of multiracial and multiethnic individuals from nine different countries across the globe – the United Kingdom, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Canada, the United States, Japan, Singapore and Israel. The articles in this volume address the diverse experiences of the identification, socialising and mainstreaming of multiethnic and multiracial individuals in different national contexts. The collection consists of both qualitative and quantitative research from various disciplines in the social sciences and thus contributes to an interdisciplinary understanding and a multi-method approach to this reality. Through a cross-country analysis of the results provided by each paper, this Introduction proposes a conceptual framework for better understanding the realities of mixedness globally.

Increasing migration worldwide and the cultural diversity generated as a consequence of international migration has facilitated the unions of people from different countries, religions, races, and ethnicities. Such unions are often celebrated as a sign of integration; however, at the same time as they challenge people’s idea of us and them, intermarriages in fact still remain controversial, and even to some extent, taboo in many societies. Research and theorizing on intermarriage is conducted predominantly in the English- speaking North American and British contexts. This special issue includes empirical studies from not only the English-speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, and the UK, but also from Japan, Sweden, Belgium, France, and Spain and demonstrate the increasingly diverse directions taken in the study of intermarriage in regards to the patterns, experiences, and social implications of intermarriages. Moreover, the articles address the assumed link between intermarriage and ‘‘integration.’’

In this article, we use the results from two studies, one on interracial relationship and the other on transnational adoption, to explore how notions of race and ethnicity shape family policies, family building and everyday life in Sweden. Transnational adoption and interracial marriage in Sweden have previously never been compared in research, even though they both are about transracial family formation. By bringing these two topics together in a critical race theory framework we got a deeper understanding of how transracial families are perceived and affected by societal beliefs and norms. The analysis revealed a somewhat contradictory and complex picture on the norms of family formation. The color-blind ideology that characterizes the Swedes’ self-understanding, together with the privileged position of whiteness in relation to Swedishness, makes the attitude towards different forms of transracial families ambivalent and contradictory. Transracial children and their parents are perceived differently depending on their origin and degree of visible differences and non-whiteness, but also based on the historical and social context. Since family formation involves an active choice, the knowledge and discussion on how race and whiteness norms structure our thoughts and behavior are essential in today’s multicultural Sweden.

This article is based on the results of a pilot study which examines and compares how multiracial and multiethnic advertisement is looked at and perceived in Sweden and the US. Research involving eye-tracking is growing in several disciplines but still underexplored in the Social Sciences. Eye trackers enable recording of eye movements both in a natural and isolated/experimental context. Combining eye-tracking data and other types of traditional data such as interviews or surveys has a great potential to analyze and challenge the data bias, such as social desirability needs and race of interviewer effect. Even though we did not find any statistically significant results due to the limited sample size, the results points to interesting trends and tendencies which need to be addressed in further studies. We did not find any statistically significant differences in the preference in monocultural advertisements among Swedish and American students. However higher prior interracial exposure had some significance in a higher preference in multicultural advertisement.

This article examined and compared the US-born and Swedish-born college students' preferences towards monoracial or multiracial advertisement. We showed four fashion advertisements, tracked their eye movements with a stationary eye-tracker, and asked questions through survey and debriefing to understand how students see and perceive advertisements with and without racial diversity. We found that both Swedish and American students exhibited higher preference in monoracial advertisements. We also found that Swedish and American students' preferences towards advertisements were quite similar, but there were some variations in the reported level of attractiveness of the advertisements, reaction times, and dwell time between the Swedish and American students. Even though we did not find any statistically significant results from the eye-tracking data due to the limited sample size, the results point to interesting trends and tendencies that need to be addressed in further studies.

In the current literature on methodology and knowledge production, there is a substantial imbalance in interracial and interethnic research: the perspective has primarily been that of the ‘white gaze’. This article reverses that gaze and attempts to initiate a methodological discussion that is missing today: what occurs when non-white researchers interview a white-majority population or persons of the same racial but different ethnic background? Based on the experiences of a female researcher with an East Asian background (Sayaka Osanami Törngren) and a male researcher with an African background (Jonathan Ngeh) who conducted interviews in Malmö, Sweden, this article analyzes incidents in which the boundaries between race, ethnicity and non-Swedishness in relation to non-whiteness are implicitly and explicitly communicated between the researcher and the researched. Our experiences reveal that the demarcation of these boundaries is not fixed but highly fluid.

This is one of the first studies in Sweden testing the notion of racial color-blindness empirically in a Swedish context, by asking a sample of Swedish participants to assign race to images of faces with different phenotypes, rate how ‘Swedish’ the faces are perceived (referred to the degree of ‘Swedishness’) and identify the skin color of the faces (through the NIS skincolor scale). We also use eye-tracking to explore whether participants look differently at faces of different racial groups. The results show that skin-color is a decisive factor in the racial ascription as Black, while skin color is not determinant of the degree of Swedishness. What determines the degree of Swedishness is the racial assignment itself, in other words, how individuals perceive and categorize phenotypes into different racial groups. We conclude that Swedes are not truly racially color-blind and race does indeed matter in Sweden.

How do Swedes, who are not exposed to administrativeroutines of reporting race and ethnicity, perceive, andcategorize faces with different phenotypical features? Thisstudy examines identity contestation that can occur andaddress how race affects the way you are perceived asSwedish. A sample of Swedish participants were asked toassign racial categories to images of faces with differentphenotypes, identify the skin color of the faces and ratehow ‘Swedish’ the faces are perceived. We also use eye‐tracking to explore whether participants look differentlyat the faces of different racial groups. The results showgreater identity contestation among Latino and Black faces.Moreover, while Swedish respondents identify the skincolor of faces self‐identified as Black as darker compared toother racial backgrounds, the differences in skin color re-ported between Asian, White and Latinos were very small.Despite these small differences in the perception of skincolor among Asian, White, and Latino faces, faces self‐reported as White were rated as significantly more Swed-ish by the respondents compared Asian and Latino faces.All these results contribute to the understanding of notonly how race matters in Sweden but also to the under-standing of constructivist nature of race.

Although immigration to Japan has been subtle and slow, Japan is becoming home to more and more visible immigrant communities, with residential segregation and ethnic communities establishing more visible identities in Japan. This is due not only to increasing immigration but also to the consequent increase of the descendants of immigrants and the increase of intermarriages and mixed children born in such unions. Despite the change in the population, the current Population Census fails to capture the diversity that exists in contemporary Japanese society. The census and statistical classification needs to be modified to reflect the changes in the population and to acknowledge the new generation of diverse Japanese, together with the discussion of what it means to be Japanese. This chapter will first briefly introduce the Japanese census categories from 1920 onwards. It will then highlight the invisibility of race, ethnicity, and mixed categories in the contemporary Japanese census category of nationality, and how this is connected to the perceptions of mixed persons in Japan. We argue that there is a need for further discussion and we propose ways of incorporating classifications of race, ethnicity, and mixed categories into the Population Census in the future.

In 2011, the Swedish national tourism organisation, Visit Sweden, together with the Swedish Institute, launched a campaign – Curators of Sweden (CoS) – on Twitter, which ended in 2018. Each week a ‘Swedish’ person was chosen as a curator to tweet whatever they liked through the @Sweden account. All the curators were chosen because they represented ‘values, skills, and ideas’ which, according to the campaign, ‘all combined, makes up Sweden’. In this article, we try to understand the contradiction of CoS offering a cacophony of ‘diverse’ voices from Swedes but, at the same time, speaking with the ‘same’ voice. Through dialogism, we locate the different voices, agendas and diverse contexts in reality, and examine how the values, skills and ideas were managed and engineered through the CoS, in a bid to imagine Sweden and Swedish identity. 

Although the number of multiracial and multiethnic Japanese who are socially recognised and identified as haafu (mixed) has increased due to a rise in intermarriages, the identities and experiences of mixed persons in Japan are seldom critically analysed. Based on interviews with 29 multiracial and multiethnic individuals residing in Japan, this article explores not only how multiracial and multiethnic Japanese identify themselves but also how they feel they are identified by others in society. The analysis shows that multiracial and multiethnic persons self-identify in a way that goes beyond either-or categories and the binary notions of Japanese/foreigner. It also reveals how both multiracial and multiethnic persons face a gap between self-identity and ascribed identity and that they negotiate this gap in various ways. However, the gap and the negotiation process that multiracial persons face differ to those of multiethnic persons. Multiracial persons whose mixedness is phenotypically visible experience more constraints in their ethnic options and have more difficulty in passing as Japanese, whereas multiethnic persons whose mixedness is invisible can pass as Japanese more easily but face constraints in their ethnic option to be identified as mixed and in claiming their multiethnic background.

INTRODUCTION: A large body of research has established a consensus that racial discrimination in CV screening occurs and persists. Nevertheless, we still know very little about how recruiters look at the CV and how this is connected to the discriminatory patterns. This article examines the way recruiters view and select CVs and how they reason about their CV selection choices, as a first step in unpacking the patterns of hiring discrimination. Specifically, we explore how race and ethnicity signaled through the CV matter, and how recruiters reason about the choices they make.

METHODS: We recorded data from 40 respondents (20 pairs) who are real-life recruiters with experiences in recruitment of diverse employees in three large Swedish-based firms in the finance and retail sector in two large cities. The participating firms all value diversity, equity and inclusion in their recruitment. Their task was to individually rate 10 fictious CVs where race (signaled by face image) and ethnicity (signaled by name) were systematically manipulated, select the top three candidates, and then discuss their choices in pairs to decide on a single top candidate. We examined whether respondents' choices were associated with the parts of the CV they looked at, and how they reasoned and justified their choices through dialog.

RESULTS: Our results show that non-White CVs were rated higher than White CVs. While we do not observe any statistically significant differences in the ratings between different racial groups, we see a statistically significant preference for Chinese over Iraqi names. There were no significant differences in time spent looking at the CV across different racial groups, but respondents looked longer at Polish names compared to Swedish names when presented next to a White face. The dialog data reveal how respondents assess different CVs by making assumptions about the candidates' job and organizational fit through limited information on the CVs, especially when the qualifications of the candidates are evaluated to be equal.

The field of migration and ethnic studies in the European context has grown in a predominantly White context criticising the power dynamics of Global North and the South. Scholars, both White and non-White, engage in how to break the legacy of the coloniser and the colonised. Our experiences as researchers located outside of the country of “origin” (Japan), which historically and structurally belongs to the North and has acted—and continues to act—as a (neo-)coloniser, simply cannot be captured by dichotomy from the perspective of the researchers from the European and White Global North. The ambiguity and the alienation that we feel in this dichotomised discourse are seldom properly addressed. Based on academic discussions and our own personal experiences, we address layers of internalised personal experiences which cannot be explained through a simple binary of the North and South, White and Black, the coloniser and the colonised. We call for all “allies” from academics from the White majority, but also from academics of colour, to seek awareness towards intersectionality, while paying attention to how systems of privilege and oppression interacts.

Just as we inhabit multiple positions and identities in our everyday life, when conducting fieldwork and analysis, we also both consciously and unconsciously draw on different positions as researchers. Simultaneously, through field interactions, we, too, are positioned by research participants. Some of these positions and identities can be flexible and fluid while other positions such as ‘race’ or gender can be imposed and rigid. There are ample methodological discussions interrogating the question of insider-outsider positions. One of the conclusions in this body of literature highlights the importance of reflexivity and awareness of positionality. This line of literature, moreover, focuses on the fluidity of social positions by emphasising the transgressing of hierarchies between the interviewees and the interviewed. However still, methodological discussions tend either reinforce the insider-outsider binary thinking, and not to further than reflexivity. Our key claim is that it is precisely because reflections written from the perspective of researchers belonging to a minority group of different kinds are still scarce to date. Thus, there is an urgent need to critically engage with a ‘traditional’ gaze as a researcher. In this article, we take a step to unsettle the taken-for-granted mode of knowledge production by reflecting both upon our own experiences of conducting research across various social differences in Austria, Germany, Japan, and Sweden.

In this commentary piece, we argue that we must interrogate the meaning of race and examine why and how race does matter in different societies across contexts before we can even consider moving "beyond race." We understand race as fundamentally related to power, privilege, and oppression; we discuss how we cannot go "beyond race" in the face of persistent racisms, hierarchies and maintenance of power and privilege. We address that demographic changes in itself does not bring us "beyond race" and the importance of active policies and political mobilization through addressing race as an analytical category is necessary to go "beyond racism."

From a social equality representation perspective, advertising should ideally mirror the multicultural composition at the national market, because mass-mediated identity representations may act as cultural resources for those with marginalised identities. To investigate the observance to such an ideal in a context where the ethnic and racial composition of the population saw a rapid change, this article examines 676 Swedish TV commercials in over the period 2008–2017, and analyses the representation of non-White persons of colour (POC). Through this quantitative and qualitative examination, we find that POC are indeed visible in the commercials, but predominantly in the background or playing minor roles. With the, at times, unproportionally high representation of racial and ethnic diversity in Swedish advertising, we find significant tokenism, or in other words, the structurally ineffectual approach common in market-based multiculturalism.