Vita fläckar : Om integrationspolitik, ledning, och mångfald i Malmö stad

• Malmö has a long history of immigration and integration work. Ambitions have kept pace with immigration and are high among the political leadership and many managers of municipal organisations. Experience relating to different integration policy ideas and practical integration work is considerable. It is important to stress that our presentation of critical analyses of integration policy and diversity management is by no means a denigration of these ambitions or insights, but rather indicates the difficulties of implementing integration policy and diversity management measures in a large municipal organisation. The municipal authority's integration experiences lead to the continual revision of its own internal integration policies, of which the diversity idea and diversity management are included. Revisions, new ideas and measures – ad infinitum – seem to be natural features of integration policy. This is particularly evident in the political rhetoric, as well as in the different integration plans and measures. One reason for this is that integration and diversity issues are dealt with reactively as problems arise, i.e. the discovery of a problem triggers some kind of action. In contrast, the opportunities and possibilities that human diversity offers are given very little attention. The three articles appearing in this issue describe and analyse how diversity issues have difficulty in being included in management practices and how the discoveries of diversity and its content are either curtailed or fail to materialise in the organisation of the City of Malmö. The first article describes how integration policy alternatives arising from the diversity idea are difficult to establish in relation to, for example, alternatives relating to the introduction programme and employment opportunities for immigrants. The issue of diversity is a white spot in the municipality's integration policy. One myth about the white spot's content, and which affects integration policy, is that the potential of diversity is known, culturally ordered and can be quantitatively represented. Another myth is that so called social engineering can deal with the content of the white spot. A similar problem arises in the second article, when the diversity issue is identified as something primarily concerned with "arranging diversity in society", while diversity issues are dismissed in the internal organisation. Internal diversity issues thus become a white spot for managers. One myth, which affects the organisation, is that the content of the internal white spot is charted and included in the organisation of its own accord. The third article deals with the struggle between whether it is core work or the diversity perspective that is in focus. Core work is experienced by managers as the most central. The diversity issue thus becomes a white spot in that it is placed outside the core work frame. One myth is that the unfamiliar content of the white spot can be prevented from impacting the existing organisation. All three articles point to the fact that managers and political leaders have difficulty in identifying the benefits of diversity for the internal and external organisation in anything other than general terms. This observation probably reveals an important reason as to why the diversity issue has not been picked up by management and put into practice.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Internationell migration och etniska relationer (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- International Migration and Ethnic Relations (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)