Nordic Whiteness and Migration to the USA: A Historical Exploration of Identity

This volume explores the complex and contradictory ways in which the cultural, scientific and political myth of whiteness has influenced identities, self-perceptions and the process of integration of Nordic immigrants into multicultural and racially segregated American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In deploying central insights from whiteness studies, postcolonial feminist and intersectionality theories, it shows that Nordic immigrants - Danes, Swedes, Finns, Norwegians and Sámi - contributed to and challenged American racism and white identity. A diverse group of immigrants, they could proclaim themselves ‘hyper-white’ and ‘better citizens than anybody else’, including Anglo-Saxons, thus taking for granted the racial bias of American citizenship and ownership rights, yet there were also various, unexpected intersections of whiteness with ethnicity, regional belonging, gender, sexuality, and political views. ‘Nordic whiteness’, then, was not a monolithic notion in the USA and could be challenged by other identities, which could even turn white Nordic immigrants into marginalised figures. A fascinating study of whiteness and identity among white migrants in the USA, Nordic Whiteness will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and anthropology with interests in Scandinavian studies, migration and diaspora studies and American studies.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Whiteness in Nordic Immigrants’ Identity Formation Part 1: Whiteness as Epistemological Ignorance 1. Norwegian Migration and Displaced Indigenous Peoples: Toward an Understanding of Nordic Whiteness in the Land-taking Part 2: Not Quite White: Painful Experiences of Sámi Immigrants 2. Racialization of the Sámi in Early Twentieth Century Migration Processes: Trans-Atlantic Continuities and Divergences Part 3: White Immigrants and the Failure of Class Solidarity 3. "On Liberty and Equality": Race and Reconstruction among Scandinavian Immigrants, 1864-1868 Part 4: Nordic Superiority and the Derogatory Representations of Others 4. Atop a Hierarchy of Whiteness: Danish Americans as Portrayed by Danish Travel Writers in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century 5. Good Americans "Born of a Good People": Race, Whiteness, and Nationalism Among Norwegian Americans in the Pacific Northwest Part 5: Challenging Intersections of Whiteness and Ethnicity 6. Ideal Immigrants? Ethnic Community Building among Norwegian-Americans in the Nineteenth Century 7. In the American Matrix: Norwegians in Chicago in the Nineteenth Century Part 6: Nonconformity and Resistance to White Norms 8. Claiming Roots: Politics of Racial Ancestry in the Finnish-American Press during the 1938 New Sweden Tercentenary 9. The Nordic Mystique: Swedish Women as Sexualized "Other" in Postwar America Conclusion: Nordic Slotting into the American Ethno-Racial Hierarchy