The Power of Diversity Discourses at Work: On the Interlocking Nature of Diversities and Occupations

Abstract

Drawing on Fairclough’s comprehensive social theory of discourse as text, social practice and discursive practice, the paper examines how discourses of diversity are implicated in the power dynamics in the Belgian branch of an international automobile company. Our analysis shows how diversity discourses are interlocked with occupations. On the one hand, speakers’ occupational practices are conditional for the emergence of multiple, occupation-distinct discourses of diversity. On the other, in their discursive practice, speakers not only construct diversity but at once deploy it as a symbolic currency to reaffirm their own occupational practices and related subject positions warranting voice in the workplace. Our study contributes to the extant critical diversity literature and the organizational scholarship on work by showing how the power dynamics of diversity cannot be adequately conceptualized without attending to occupational discursive and non-discursive practices.