ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the working life narratives of two men living in peripheral parts of northern rural Sweden. To explore how place, masculinity, whiteness and work interact with and complicate each other, an intersectional approach is adopted to better understand processes of peripheralization. In relation to work and masculinity norms both interviewees had experienced life crises. Experiences that did not only made the interviewees peripheralized, but had also given them an observer position from where they seemed to have developed critical perspectives on work, place and masculinity norms. Going through life crises was also affected by heteronormativity and class and the interviewees negotiated peripheralization differently. The chapter also discusses what the privileges of being Swedish and white may mean in relation to place and gender. This means that peripheralization does not automatically mean subordination, but may also be a way to gain status in certain narrative environments.
