This article, based on interviews from the Dutch Pathways to Success Project, investigates how Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch second-generation professionals in leadership positions experience and deal with subtle discrimination at work. We argue that subtle discrimination in organizations remains a reality for second-generation professionals in leadership positions. Because organizations are penetrated by power processes in society at large, these professionals are perceived not only on the basis of their position within the organization, but also on the basis of their marginalized ethnic group background. We show this through the existence of subtle discriminatory practices at three organizational levels-that of supervisors, same-level colleagues and subordinates-which may take place at one or more of these levels. When dealing with subtle discrimination, Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch second-generation professionals in leadership positions show an awareness of organizational power and hierarchies. This awareness amounts to various forms of "micro-emancipation" by the second generation-adapted to the organizational level (supervisors, same-level colleagues and subordinates) they are dealing with-that question and challenge subtle discrimination in organizations.
This article looks at second-generation professionals in the education sector in Sweden, France and the Netherlands, whose parents were born in Turkey. In their stories, ethnic school segregation appears as an important topic that coincides with other inequalities in society and signals educational injustice. This so-called wicked problem is used to understand how second-generation professionals assert influence in their quest for educational change. The analysis, based on semi-structured interviews, shows that influence and change are conditional. Second-generation professionals are constrained by the structural boundaries of the sector, which seem particularly fixed because of the way in which the education sector is entangled with state policies. Simultaneously, they are aware of these boundaries, and of the nation-specific change-opportunities existing within them. Using their "in-betweenness" as second-generation social climbers, with their knowledge of the education system, they apply varying practices of change focused on moderating the negative effects of ethnic school segregation.
Based on sixteen semi-structured interviews, this article examines how second-generation Turkish-Dutch education professionals experience their professional position in the ethnically homogeneous upper echelons of the Dutch education sector. The analysis shows that second-generation education professionals, being newcomers to higher-level positions in the sector, have to engage with diverse cultural repertoires at work. Instead of being stuck in-between these repertoires, second-generation education professionals actively "go-between" repertoires, employing their ability to deal with difference. In the increasingly super-diverse Dutch classrooms, this "go-between" attitude functions as a second-generation advantage and is conceptually better suited than in-betweenness to describe the position of second-generation professionals.
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