Diversity and exclusion in the work-life balance wonderland
Barriers to "hygge" persist even for expat professionals
I’ve written a few times about the striking discrepancy between the famously happy Danes and the dissatisfaction of the foreigners in their midst (most recently here). It’s clear from the annual surveys of expats and also from occasional outbursts on Facebook from transplants who lament the lack of a social life and long to tell the Danes where to shove share their Legos.
Now there’s a new study that attempts to clarify the problem. It comes with the catchy title “The Dark Side of Hygge: Acculturation of foreign workers in Denmark.” Hygge, in case anyone has missed Denmark’s leading branding theme of the past decade, is “coziness,” or a relaxed conviviality. The usual complaint is that it’s something that Danes prefer to enjoy among themselves and tend to withhold from foreigners despite needing the latter to keep the economy running at full capacity.
The tightrope across cultural tightness
The report is written by Dr. Julia Jones, an expat herself who runs an agency for cross-cultural training for both fellow expats and Danish organizations. It is described as her thesis for a Danish bachelor’s degree in psychology, which already tells you something about the systemic obstacles in this society if she had a Ph.D. but felt a need for local credentials in order to prosper here. The study is a meta-analysis of existing literature rather than original research, but it offers a synthesis to explain the conundrum.
Jones’s main finding concerns a disjunction between public and private life in Denmark. Whereas private life in Denmark exhibits a low “cultural tightness,” in the public sphere the country scores much higher on this parameter. “Tightness” is understood here as a tendency toward conformity in which deviations from the norm are sanctioned. The combination of egalitarianism and homogeneity among ethnic Danes allows them to thrive, but the same homogeneity poses a barrier by subjecting foreigners to “subtle methods of sanctioning, such as gentle withdrawal and disconnection”:
“Firstly, foreigners may interpret this behaviour as a personal rejection, leading to feelings of frustration, anger or shame. Secondly, the subtle nature of these sanctions makes it challenging for foreigners to infer cultural norms.”
The paradox of downplaying foreign identity
In keeping with their general reputation for niceness and tolerance, Danes are not hostile or openly discriminatory toward new arrivals, at least those from other Western countries; they simply ignore them or freeze them out of the social fælleskab (fellowship or community). Denmark’s top-ranking work-life balance is great for avoiding work stress, but invited guest workers also need quality downtime.
This doesn’t seem like an earth-shaking discovery, but Jones focuses on the persistence of the problem even though official Denmark has become increasingly vocal about the need to recruit foreign workers. The corporate sector has been effective in hiring them, but social conditions are less propitious for retaining them. Expats are left in doubt about how to become integrated and feel they cannot fully express themselves, compounding the problem. As Jones puts it:
“When we suppress parts of ourselves in order to conform and fit in, our ability to truly belong and connect diminishes.”
Jones puts the onus for improving this impasse on the Danes, a task that presumably occupies much of her professional work with Danish companies. Simply trying to equip expats with a social decoder as well as a guide to the labor market bureaucracy has not proved sufficient.
Folks talking about “other” folks
The report is certainly timely, with the government’s recent relaxation of work-permit requirements and a panel devoted to the topic at the annual Folkemøde on the island of Bornholm taking place this weekend. The Folkemøde (literally “people’s meeting”) is itself a characteristic egalitarian Danish institution in which politicians and cultural figures hold a wide-ranging series of discussions in an informal setting open to the public.
In follow-up interviews with the Copenhagen Post, corporate leaders from IBM and Demant, the global hearing aid firm, who are participating in the Folkemøde, took the occasion to stress their commitment to supporting their foreign employees’ social integration and urged others to do the same.
Reform yourself, reform commission
It will take more than executives’ declarations to remedy the situation, however. That is the message in a new Medium article with another provocative title, “The Danish foreign worker—A specimen of unfulfilled desires,” by expat Pratik Hariharan. Elaborating on Jones’s observations, Pratik notes, among other things, the limitations of the government reform commission’s recent report on mitigating discrimination in the workplace.
According to Mira Chandhok Skadegård, an assistant professor at Aalborg University, the report itself suffers from the discriminatory assumption that “racially minoritized Danes are presumed to be ethnic minorities or immigrants rather than Danes.” This criticism concerns Danish citizens rather than the expat professionals in Jones’s report, but it suggests the difficulty of overcoming entrenched attitudes that applies to both groups.
Note: Indulging in the local work-life balance ethic, The Happiest People will take a summer hiatus in the coming weeks. Thanks again for reading.
Excellent article