Colour-blindness as a Strategy: How Colour-blindness Translates into Welfare Work with Migrants

• In Event: 2384 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Race and Racialization

Abstract

In the last decade, studies have shown increasing prevalence of colour-blind racial attitudes across a number of Western societies. Unfortunately, while colour-blindness often functions as a strategy to appear unbiased, we know that colour-blindness is generally associated with prejudices toward different racial and ethnic groups (Bonilla-Silva 2006; Apfelbaum et al. 2008). However, less is known about the relationship between colour-blindness and inter- personal behaviour between majority populations and immigrants. We build on existing studies by surveying two of the main Swedish welfare organisations (N=1319), the Public Employment Agency and Swedish Social Insurance Agency, and assess the relationship between colour-blindness and the perception of difficulty in working with migrants among these workers. Results from our structural equation models show that those with greater levels of colour-blindness are simultaneously more likely to report negative attitudes toward immigrants and less likely to report difficulty in working with migrants. We close with a discussion that attempts to make sense of these findings, arguing that, among Swedish welfare workers, colour-blindness is used as a tool to appear unbiased and in line with the wider normative principles of the Swedish welfare state, but this does not mean that those who are colour-blind do not hold prejudices toward immigrants. Our study undermines research that suggests that colour-blindness eliminates prejudices and adds new empirical insights on how colour-blindness operates on interpersonal levels.

Author

• Carolin Schütze, Lund University