Ethnic minority professionals’ experiences with subtle discrimination in the workplace

Abstract

This qualitative study aims to explore the processes underlying subtle discrimination in the workplace. Based on 26 in-depth interviews with minority professionals of Turkish or Maghrebi descent in Flanders, we argue that subtle discrimination in the workplace is characterized by three important elements. First, subtle discrimination is ambiguous, and often involves disempowerment through apparent empowering behavior. Second, subtle discrimination is based on processes of power — normalization, legitimization of only the individual, legitimization as the Other and naturalization — which subtly, through everyday incidents, disempower minority individuals. Third, subtle discrimination in the workplace is linked to societal structures and discourses, which permeate the workplace through, and are reproduced by, workplace encounters.