Diversity management as a future training strategy for professionals

Frank Meyer

Oslo University College

The purpose of this article is to outline the enormous need for Diversity Management as a future training strategy for professionals on master level. My focus is on ethnical diversity. Diversity is otherwise used as a concept including all kinds of persons being discriminated against in society, for instance women, people with alternative sexual orientation, the functionally disabled, partly sick persons and the elder (Nordhaug et.al. 2004). The reason for treating ethnical diversity in particular here and to argue in favour of a master in (ethnical) Diversity Management is that although it is true that diversity is more than ethnical diversity, ethnical diversity is a key element of diversity.

In the following, I would like to give a short description of Norway as a multicultural society, and then discuss the increasing importance of ethnical minorities in working life. In my opinion there are at least four challenges worth while mentioning in this context. Ethnical diversity challenges in peculiar ways the function of the leader, the integration of the staff, various sectors in working life, and professionalism as a peculiar way of working. Thereafter I would like to underline that - despite for the enormous need for it - no relevant training programme exists by now. Finally I will mention some of the cornerstones of a possible master programme in Diversity Management.

Norway as a case in point

In what follows, Norwegian conditions will serve as a case in point. Of course, this is a pragmatic decision, but, as I hope to show, Norway may be reckoned as a relevant case for the purpose of my argument. In the wider European context Norwegian society seems to be ethnically rather homogenous. Although there has always been immigration (first and foremost from the Scandinavian neighbour countries Finland, Sweden and Denmark) to Norway, and despite the existens of an indigenous people (Samí) and, at least from around 1500 AC national, populations of Jews, Finns, rom – gypsies – and travelling people, minorities have been relatively small. Swedes and Danes have been relatively easy to integrate, and the Norwegian governments and administrations have been eager to assimilate minorities (St.mld. nr. 15, 2000-2001; Kjeldstadli 2004). If I succeed in convincing you of the need for a training programme in Diversity Management for professionals in Norway, it is logical that the need will be even more urgent for more heterogeneous societies in Europe.

Multicultural society in Norway – a sketch

The «Norwegian society» has has been «multicultural», as long as there have lived people in Norway, in other words since the end of the last Ice Age 10 000 years ago. The area, which later on was called Norway, hosted from the very beginning two very different nations.[1] Ethnical Norwegians settled in the South and the Middle, while Samí people settled in the North and the Middle of Norway.

Norway has not only always been bi-national, it has also been a poly-ethnic society at least for 800 years. From the Middle Ages Norway has participated in international trade and migration systems, and immigration became a common phenomenon in the cities. While Germans, Fins, Danes and Swedes were the largest immigrant groups until the 1960s, the new immigration from outside Europe grew constantly. At the end of the second millennium AD immigrant groups from outside Europe constitute the grat bulk of Norway’s minorities (Kjeldstadli 2003). This so-called «new immigration» is what I would like to concentrate on in the following paragraphs.

Today there are different groups of immigrants arriving in Norway, namely labour immigrants, refugees, persons granted residence on humanitarian grounds, and family members reunited with them. In the beginning of 2004 the total number of immigrants in Norway was almost 350 000, which is 7.6 percent of Norway's population in total. The largest groups are people from Pakistan (36 300), Sweden (22 900), Denmark (19 300) and Vietnam (17 300). This reflects a shift from old immigrant groups from the neighbouring countries to immigration from the South. In the end of 2003, 234 000 persons (in other words 70 percent) of the immigrant population had a background in non-western countries, and in 2004 the single largest immigrant group to arrive in Norway were people from Somalia.[2]

Immigration is most visible in the few bigger cities, above all in Oslo, which is the only city with more than half a million inhabitants in Norway. Oslo and its surroundings count for one third of the total immigrant population in Norway (114 000). One out of five of the capital's inhabitants have an immigration background. Almost 100 languages are spoken in the streets of Oslo. Almost 50 percent of all non-western immigrants live in Oslo and surrounding municipalities, in Oslo alone 37 percent. Amongst school children 35 percent belong to immigrant population, and in some schools 30 languages are represented (Bilgiç 2000: 27. Statistisk sentralbyrå 2003).

Ethnical diversity is more dominant in Oslo’s eastern - and statistically poorer - parts of town. In some of the primary schools there are more than 90 percent of pupils with an immigrant background. There are no signs of a decline of diversity and a «return» to ethnical or cultural homogeneity. In the 1990s immigrants from Asia and Africa amounted for 80 percent of the demographic growth in the capital (Statistisk sentralbyrå 2003).[3]

To sum it up that far, I would like to emphasise that ethnical diversity is not a kind of interim state of emergency, which can be overcome by extraordinary measures towards minorities in the periphery of what is the respective institution's ordinary concern. Even in ethnical homogeneous Norway, ethnical diversity is the new state of society. All measures towards integration and inclusion will have to take into account the permanent character of ethnical diversity.

Minorities in work life

To an increasing degree, human relations at workplaces in Norway are characterised by ethnical diversity.[4] A survey made by the Norwegian Statistics shows that two thirds of the grown up population in Norway have contacts with immigrants, and that the workplace is the most common area for contacts (Statistisk sentralbyrå 2003).

In some labour intensive economic sectors, minorities are over-represented, for example hotels and restaurants, cleaning, transportation; here, the percentage of minority employees is three or even four times higher than in other sectors. Also health care and transportation are sectors employing a high amount of workers with a minority background, often from non-Western countries. Usually, immigrants are employed as unskilled labour. In the health and welfare sector, employees from Africa and Latin-America hold a share of 24 and 23 percent respectively.

Many ethnical Norwegian employees experience the «new» poly-ethnic situation as unusual and demanding. Social and cultural encounters of a seemingly new kind determine frames for work that has to be done. Work life is more and more characterised by change and variation, which neither employees nor leaders are prepared for by their education and professional training. On the other hand, visible minorities encounter often discrimination in public arenas and when coming into contact with public services. Also they can be exposed to public intruders into their private sphere, in other words, there are more limits to their autonomy than for ethnic Norwegians.

In general it might be said that encounters at workplaces often imply feelings of uncertainty and insecurity both for the ethnical Norwegian and immigrant employees. How should one handle and master encounters with colleagues, employees, collaborators, co-workers, associates, patients, clients and customers, when much that usually is self-evident no longer seems to be? How is it possible to direct diverse groups, organisations and institutions in an effective, efficient and inclusive way? How can we avoid discrimination and promote integration and inclusion?

This is the topic I would like to elaborate in this paper, by investigating the specific challenges for leaders, challenges for staff, and challenges for professionalism.

Leading diverse workforces

The first challenge I would like to illustrate has to do with leading diverse workforces. For all business and economic activities it is important that work is done both effectively and efficiently. Cost-efficiency has become the key word in this context. Concerning staff administration this means that a leader has to hire people with appropriate qualifications and competences. These not only consist of formal qualifications but also of social and cultural knowledge and skills. Knowledge of cultural codes diminishes the amount of friction at the work place and corroborates in this way to reach the general goal of working effectively and efficiently.

It has been argued forcefully that a diverse work force often is an advantage for both private and public enterprises. It seems that clients, customers, users and patients prefer enterprises with a staff «matching» them socially, culturally and ethnically (Nordhaug 2004). But nevertheless, diverse companies still are a minority themselves in business. All statistics available clearly show that minority employees are notably sensitive to economic cycles. Immigrant workers are the last to be “hired” and the first to be “fired”. And among immigrants, it is a child's knowledge that applicants with a minority background have to be considerably better qualified than ethnical Norwegian workers to get a position (Djuve & Hagen 1995; Rogstad 2001). Many of these applicants with higher education struggle with getting positions they formally are competent to fill (Öztürk et. al. 2001).

One of the main reasons for this is that many leaders feel insecure and uncertain when it comes to evaluation of a minority applicant’s formal and informal qualifications and competences. Although it is difficult to state the weight of this argument quantitatively, we know from qualitative research that many leaders are afraid of and seek to avoid problems amongst the members of staff and problems in relation to clients, customers or users (Næss 1997).

Conscious or unconscious discrimination in the processes of recruitment and appointment might also be responsible for the higher amount of self-employed with an immigration background. Amongst Pakistani, five percent of all immigrants in Oslo are self-employed, which is one third higher than the rate for the population in total (Lie 2004: 23). Many well-qualified immigrant workers are frozen out of the labour marked - either stigmatised as over- or under-qualified  -, and forced to start companies on their own. Typically these are small companies, often one-man or family enterprises, like taxi driving and cleaning agencies, corner shops and restaurants (Bilgic 2000: 26; Brochmann 2003: 216 ff).

There might be other reasons for discrimination of minorities in work life as well (Borchgrevink 1996/2000; Høgmo 1998; Brochmann 2003: 216 ff). But all in all, the leader's role is the key component in the processes of employment and dismissal, and thus the leader's insecurity and uncertainty is decisive (Rogstad 2001).

Statistically public employers are behind private employers when it comes to employment of minority members. Only one of 40 employees in the central administration has a minority background. In the local and regional administration immigrants counted for only well over five percent in the beginning of 2003. At the same time the share of minority employees in private enterprises reached almost seven percent one year earlier. Such numbers might be related to the enormous privatisation and deregulation programmes that Norwegian governments have carried out since the 1980s. Cleaning staff still perform the very same work in public areas. However, in legal terms they were civil servants before, while they work in private companies now. The radical privatisation reforms during the last 20 years have cut the state administration down to the very core functions. Applicants for new jobs in the public administration have to make certain that they master a considerable amount of technological, social and cultural competence. Competition is high among the best, and members of minorities often draw the shortest straw. To make a change here means to change attitudes, values, knowledge and skills in the steering boards.

The staff and the multicultural challenge

One point of departure for the second challenge I would like to mention can be seen in the fact that some research indicates that ethnical diversity can represent a challenge for the staff.

Statistics indicate that people who do experience encounters with immigrants are more likely to have more favourable and positive attitudes towards immigrants than people who lack such experience. As s mentioned above, most of the encounters appear to happen at work places. Further more, two out of three consider that the national economy benefits from immigrants’ work. And six out of seven think that immigrants should have the very same possibilities to work as ethnical Norwegians. On the other hand, encounters at work places will not automatically lead to sufficient integration or inclusion. The same statistics show that slightly more than half of the people think that it should be more difficult for asylum seekers and refugees to get a residence permit in Norway, and about 40 percent think that immigrants are a source to insecurity in society (Statistisk sentralbyrå 2003).

Although solidarity is a central value for many workers and employees, solidarity often is implicitly founded on a notion of cultural and ethnical homogeneity. While leaders might have a higher education, enabling them to manage and lead diversity, many workers on the floor are not prepared to the new kind of encounters (Borchgrevink 1996/2000). One of the most common problems mentioned in literature on ethnic relations on work places is the fact that immigrant workers often are interested in working as much and fast as possible as long as they keep up the idea of returning to their home country. This is rational for them, but might have the unintended consequence that it undermines the standard of piecework. Employees who in their turn have a long-term perspective on working in the same company are vitally interested in the stability of the standards of piecework (Høgmo 1998; Borchgrevink 1996/2000; Rogstad 2001).

Selected professional fields

My third point deals with the simple fact that different types of professions are challenged by ethnical diversity in different ways. I will try to illustrate some of these problems in a few paragraphs, concentrating on the school and education sector, the health care sector, the welfare and security sector, the cultural sector and the asylum and refugee sector. I also would like to mention by name some of the relevant professions in each sector.

School and education sector
School might be called the very core institution when it comes to inclusion and exclusion of young immigrants and immigrant’s children in society. From statistical surveys we learn that minority children are underrepresented in kindergartens, and those who go there do so for a shorter time than ethnical Norwegian children. In elementary and secondary school, statistics tell that only 36 percent of the minority pupils come up to the level of average performance. (In contrast 49 percent of the pupils with a majority background do.) In the lowest class of performances the number of minority pupils is almost twice as high as of majority children. This is even more surprising taken into account that both minority children and parents do have a positive attitude towards school and education. Minority pupils do not show any more signs of deviant behaviour in school than majority pupils. Nevertheless, the higher the level of education, the fewer members of minorities are to be found. At the university level, minority students are significantly underrepresented.

From the very same data we know that there is a lack of bilingual teachers in elementary schools. Many immigrant teachers lack formal competence, and many are only used for teaching in native language education. Moreover, diversity is not a predominant perspective in elementary school books and other material used for educational purposes (Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 2003).

It is quite clear that it is not only ethnicity that matters. Many immigrants belong to the lower classes, and compared with ethnical Norwegians in the same social strata, there are only minor differences between immigrants and others (Loona 1987, Øia 2003, Østbye 2001). Statistics indicate that minority pupils’ performances vary dependent on conditions at home, like for instance economic income and access to a personal computer. But nevertheless, any school’s most general task should be to prepare pupils for society in disregard of their social background. This is obviously not the case. Instead, school contributes forcefully to reproduce social differences and the predominant, excluding social structure (Bourdieu & Passeron 1990).

Health Care
There are professions like nurses, physiotherapists, Mensendieck therapists, orthopaedists, radiographers, bioengineers, ergonomists, dental technicians, pharmacists working in the health care sector. As mentioned above one fourth of all employees in this sector are immigrants with a background from non-western countries. Large work places like hospitals are typical arenas for day-to-day encounters amongst people with a different ethnical background.

But also amongst patients and users members of minorities are well represented. To a certain degree minorities challenge health care in a specific way. Professional education and training does not reflect these challenges, and thus professional vocation does not qualify students adequately for work in practice.

Professional vocation is based on the assumption that central health concepts are not independent of cultural and ethnical background. Research in social medicine and social anthropology has shown that seemingly universal notions of birth, handicap, care, pain and solicitude, death and grieve may mean very different things in different cultural settings (Hanssen 2001). This is not only theoretically interesting, but has also practical consequences. The survey «Small tooth» («Småtann») in Oslo indicated that the population of the quarters where immigrants are predominant have different attitudes to the professions of the dental hygienist and the dentist than populations in quarters where ethnical Norwegians are in a majority. Many immigrant parents consider it to be the professional’s task to prevent their children from caries (cf. Gullestad 2002).

Immigrants do not necessarily have more health problems than ethnical Norwegians (in the same social strata), but research indicates that they might have different kinds of health problems. These may represents a peculiar challenge for professionals. “The important diseases with regard to immigrants in Norway are diabetes type II, cardio-vascular disease (CVD), musculo-skeletal problems and mental health disorders.“ (Raza 2003: 7.) There is no single explanatory model for the relationship between health and immigrant status. Factors like environmental and genetic interaction, behaviour, response and interplay of different mechanisms like social class, education and cultural aspect play an important role. Work immigrants, who arrived in Norway in the 1970s in order to work in the Norwegian industry, now often suffer from musculo-skeletal problems.

Last it is important to mention that refugees and asylum seekers represent peculiar challenges for psychological and psychiatric health care. In the beginning of 2002 there were 88 000 persons with a refugee background in Norway, and every second first-generation immigrant arrived as a refugee. The escape, incidences before the escape, isolation in reception centres in Norway and more can result in depression and psychosomatic disorder. “According to FAFOs health survey on the living conditions among immigrants from Chile, Pakistan and Sri Lanka it has been reported that use of anti-anxiety medicines was more prevalent among these immigrants compared to ethnic Norwegians.“ (Raza 2003: 7.)

Welfare and social security sector
The typical professionals working in the public welfare sector are social workers and child welfare officers. For social workers employed in welfare and social security offices the immigrant population is clearly visible amongst clients and users. One third of all first generation immigrants (277 300 persons in 2003) have lived in Norway for less than five years. Many do have considerable problems with getting approved their education and professional qualifications from abroad, getting relevant further training and – last but not least – getting employed. First generation immigrant’s employment rate is about ten percent lower than for the population in general. It is in particular immigrants from non-Western countries which are unemployed, namely 17.8, 13.0 and 11.2 percent for immigrants from Africa, Asia and Latin-America. At the end of 2000, unemployment rates for people from Africa were five times higher than for the population in general. The government has started up an «introductory program for newly arrived immigrants», which hopefully will help many to gain entry into the labour marked. Nevertheless employment rates for immigrants will probably not fall to the level of Norwegian job-seeking.

There are also obvious problems in the field of child welfare care. Forms of upbringing at home can differ a lot. Child welfare officers might feel uncertain and insecure when encountering a different or even deviant form for upbringing in immigrant families. Officers are often drawn between, on the one hand cultural relativism (“Just keep on beating since you are from….”), and on the other cultural universalism (“There is only one standard for upbringing children – the Norwegian!”) (Thomsen, K. M. & B. Rød Larsen 1994; Skytte 2001).

As mentioned above, the social security and welfare sector is a large arena for multiethnic encounters; non-Western employees come to 23 percent of the work force in this sector.

Cultural sector
The cultural sector can be said to consist of professionals in archives, libraries and museums as well as professionals working in the media. Besides archivists, librarians and curators, journalists and photo-journalists are some of the most typical professions in this sector.

Journalism is probably one of the major discriminating powers in society. Far from being enlightening, newspapers, radio- and TV-programmes have a tendency to broadcast and strengthen prejudices and stereotypes of “the other”, both inside Norway and abroad. It is quite evident that, when it comes to terms, professional ethical guidelines seem not to be worth a straw. “A reporter or editor in a profit-maximizing media firm who subordinates marked standards to those of journalism may be tolerated about as long as a counter clerk at McDonald’s who refused to sell fried food.” (McManus 1994: 203.) Journalists are dependent on producing so-called scoops to attain attention, and very often these scoops are produced in the simple way of stigmatising minority groups (Bourdieu 1998). As a reaction to this, tendencies to establish minority media (on TV, Internet, newspapers and magazines) can be identified (Aldridge, M. & J. Evetts 2003).

By contrast, professions in what might be called the cultural heritage sector are apparently on their way to leave the discriminatory past behind them. Museums, libraries and record offices played a role in the process of nation building that is difficult to overestimate. In school and public libraries, a national literary canon was collected and made available for pupils, students and common women and men (Vaagan 2003). The national and municipal record offices collected and conserved what was considered to be the collective memory of the nation. Thereby they paved the ground for national history writing, which in turn worked with standardising the national consciousness and identity (Meyer 2000, 2004). Museums showed visitors a selection of artefacts, canonising these as the typical national art and handicraft.

Lately, results of a different attitude can be seen. Particularly museums and libraries have redefined their general policies, and many have ended up with aiming at the integration and inclusion of the multicultural society.

Asylum and refugee sector
One of the most common – if not the most common – place for ethnical encounters between ethnical Norwegians and ”the others” are the municipal reception centres for asylum seekers. In 2003 15 600 asylum seekers arrived in Norway, which was 11 percent below the number in 2002. Judging from governmental measures to reduce the amount of asylum seekers, and from other recent political tendencies, the number of asylum seekers will not be higher than 10 000 in 2004. This implies that a plenty of the reception centres will be closed down in the course of the year. Nevertheless the number of asylum seekers is likely to stabilize, even if it was on a lower level than today. In 2003 asylum seekers arrived from 114 countries, 57 percent of which came from Asia and Africa. Thus it’s a truism that the reception centres are the most poly-ethnic work places in Norway.
 
Up to the present date there does not exist any overview over the kind of professions working in the reception centres. From some examples we know that teachers, social workers and economists are employed there. Asylum seekers also may claim services from health care personnel, child welfare workers, translators and the local administration in general. Very few of these professionals are formally trained to poly-ethnic encounters.

As mentioned above, the Norwegian migration authorities have started up a so-called introductory programme for newly arrived immigrants, mostly refugees and persons granted residence on humanitarian grounds, as well as for family members reunited with them. It is the aim of the programme to include refugees and others in working life or the educational system as soon as possible, in order to gain economical independency.

Finally, this is only an overview of different sectors for professional work and the peculiar multicultural challenges for some different groups of professionals. There are other types of professionals not mentioned here with an obvious need for competence and skills to manage ethnical diversity, e.g. police officers and prison officers.

Professionalism and the multicultural challenge

While professions are challenged by multiculturalism in a peculiar way, there also exists a challenge to professionalism as an overarching concept. This is my fourth point here.

A professional might be characterised by a certain competence, usually acquired by higher education or vocational training on the college or university level, which puts the professional into a position to act autonomously in properly defined contexts. Often, professionals deal with risk managing activities. It is characteristic for professional work that it implies a social relation, between the professional on the one hand and the client, customer, user, pupil or student on the other. Professionalism relies on trust in the professional’s competence and responsibility from the professional’s counterpart.

As a rule, professional vocation is based on inherent notions of cultural and ethnical homogeneity. For example, journalists write about immigrants and immigration as if there were only ethnical Norwegian consumers of their products. Nurses’ and health care workers’ routines are based on the needs of nuclear Western families. But it is not yet clear in which way the notions of cultural homogeneity are introduced and reinforced in professional vocation, for instance in curriculums, reading lists and forms of assessment. What can be done to prepare professionals properly for autonomous professional work in the multicultural and poly-ethnic society? How can professionals build and maintain mutual trust towards clients, customers, user and pupils with a different ethnical and cultural background? What is the meaning of professional work, built on openness, responsibility and respect? (Evetts 2003.)

Existing master degrees

I hope that all of the above has made clear that there is a tremendous need for more pluralistic attitudes, more solid knowledge and better practical skills in many professions, when it comes to diversity management. This need is also described in many public documents, e.g. different Reports from the Norwegian Government to the Norwegian Parliament (St.meld. nr. 27 2000-2001; St.meld. nr. 17 1996-97; and St.meld. nr. 17 2000-2001.[5]

Up to the present date no higher education exists exploring and thematising the field of ethnical and cultural diversity and working life systematically in Scandinavia. There do exist several supplementary training and advanced courses offers arranged by different public and private institutions, but no offer of education on master level.  Nevertheless, I would like to name some related education offers from different Scandinavian institutions:

·        Master of Multicultural and International Education is a degree from the master programme at the OsloUniversityCollege, Faculty of Education. The target group of this programme are teachers from primary and secondary school, seeking to study either the multicultural school in Norway or school systems in the South. The master programme does not appeal to a wide range of professionals.

·        Master in Indigenous Studies at the University of Tromsø aims at recruiting Sámi, Norwegian and international students. The master programme is designed to equip students with comparative perspectives on indigenous issues. The master programme is a scientific or academic study, and neither professional work nor immigration is subjects to it.

·        The same can be made as an objection to the Master of social anthropology at the Universities of Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim and Tromsø. These masters do not take into account the particular practical kind of knowledge and experience which is so typical for professionals. Instead it stresses theory and methodological knowledge.

·        Master in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the Centre of Human Rights, University of Oslo, overlaps partly with a master in Diversity Management, but it is an academic degree which does not have professionals as a particular target group.

·        Master in Cultural Studies at the TelemarkUniversityCollege includes a minor course on migration and cultural encounters, but is not aimed at professionals in particular.

If we take a look at education offers abroad, the following might be related to the subjects sketched above.

·        The European Master in Migration, Mental Health and Social Care at the Universities of Kent, Utrecht, European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) is aimed at professionals in the health and welfare care sector, and thus it is pretty much an adequate education offer to solve the problems mentioned above. In my opinion it is a disadvantage that the European Master is a one-year-programme only, not giving time to thorough reflection and writing of a comprehensive master thesis.

·        The same is the true for the one-year-programme Master in Globalisation and Integration at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. The master aims at establishing knowledge about migration processes, but not about ethnic relations in working life.

·        Master of Human Geography Programme - Northern and Eastern Europe in a Global Context at the University of Joensuu, Finland, deals with environment, economy, politics and man in Northern and Eastern Europe. Neither is it an education offer for professionals, but for academics, nor does it deal with ethnic relations in working life.

OUCs responisbility and future plans

The Oslo University College (OUC) has seen possibilities for establishing a master programme filling this gap in education offers, and feels a particular responsibility to help professionals developing knowledge, skills and attitudes with regard to ethnic encounters at work places.

The particular responsibility can be seen in the facts that OUC is located in the most urban region where the number of immigrants is highest, and that OUC is the largest educational institution for professional vocation in Norway, offering more than 30 bachelor degree studies in addition to nine master degree studies in various subjects. Professionals trained at the OUC will encounter immigrants as colleagues, users, patients, clients and pupils in day-to-day working life. The master programme in Diversity Management can be seen as a higher education offer for professionals holding a bachelor in for instance nursing, social work, business an so on, as well as it offers optional courses to students in master programmes like for instance social work, journalism and clinical nursing.

Finally, I would like to give an indication of the target groups and the objects of the master programme at OUC.

The master programme’s target group

The program would be designed to qualify graduates for

• working at all levels in private or public enterprises with where interest for and knowledge of diversity management is needed.
• research and development work in organisations and institutions on a graduate level.

Possible objectives of a master in Diversity Management

The main purpose of the envisaged master in Diversity Management would be that graduates shall demonstrate that they have acquired basic knowledge and skills which enable them to work at multicultural work places and with multicultural problems. In detail, graduates shall demonstrate that they

• are able to work scientifically.
• have developed a solid understanding of the causes of migration and the patterns of immigration, professional work and the multicultural challenge, identity and multicultural society.
• can analyse a practical problem by means of the theoretical knowledge they have established.
• are able to use different strategies to counteract marginalisation and discrimination and encourage ethnical diversity, inclusion and respect for being different.
• have developed communicative skills to introduce their knowledge and skills back into their professional field of origin.
• are able to reflect upon good ethical professional work. The graduate’s attitudes shall be deeply rooted in human rights and principles of democracy, in other words equality and respect. He or she shall be able to handle conflicts of values which e.g. can happen to appear between tolerance for diversity and human rights.

The programme’s target group would be professionals at all levels, both in public and private sector. The general requirement for admission into the programme would be the completition of three years of college or university level education in a relevant professional field. In addition applicants should have two years prior work experience from a relevant position.

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The author:

Frank Meyer, b. 1964, works as a professor of multicultural studies at the Oslo University College, Oslo, Norway. Meyer is historian by training and holds both a PhD from Germany and Norway. Among his recent works are Schreiben für die Fremde. Politische und kulturelle Publizistik des deutschen Exis in Skandinavien 1933-1940 (Essen 2000), Dansken, svensken og nordmannen… Skandinaviske habitusforskjeller sett i lys av kulturmøtet med tyske flyktninger 1933-1940. En komparativ studie (Oslo 2001), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century (Oslo 2000) and Digitalisering av kulturarvmateriale (Oslo: 2003).

[1]Here and later on I use the term «nation» in Will Kymlicka’s sense (Kymlicka 1995: 10-33).

[2] About 46 percent of the immigrant population hold Norwegian citizenship, topped by the Vietnamese (90 percent Norwegian citizenship). Differences between different groups are in some cases bigger than differences between one group and ethnical Norwegians.

[3] In Norway, Oslo is the largest city of the Samí people, in other words about 2 000 persons. To be sure Samí people are not visible minority as long as they don't wish to be.

[4]It might be relevant that the demographic decline of the ethnical Norwegian population will make it impossible to base working life on ethnical homogeneity. Nordhaug et al. 2004.

[5] The Norwegian Ministry of Local Gorvernment and Regional Development will present a report on immigration in the course of 2004.