Ethnic identity positioning at work: Understanding professional career experiences

• Dominant ethnics and minority ethnics talk about ethnic identity at work.
• Dominant ethnics and minority ethnics engage in processes of othering.
• (Normalization of) othering appears at individual, interaction, institutional order.
• Normalization evokes different career experiences for dominant and minority ethnics.
• Problematization of normalization by career experiences creates room for alterity.

In our effort to uncover, understand, and make sense of career experiences of ethnic diverse employees in a professional service firm in the Netherlands, we unraveled ethnic identity construction through analyzing accounts of individual sensemaking, interaction, and institutional practices. The analysis of 26 semi-structured interviews of dominant and minority ethnic professionals shows how both dominant and minority ethnic identity construction is conflated with processes of “othering” in relation to the hegemonic norm. We illustrate and problematize the emergence of the normalization of othering by highlighting its potential consequences for individual career experiences. By opening up the discussion of identity matters in professionals’ career experiences, we suggests means to move away from normalized processes of othering by making room for alterity.