ABSTRACT
Inequality and injustice on the labour market are subjects increasingly occupying Scandinavian organisations concerned with corporate social responsibility. One prevalent socially responsible practice is to recruit otherwise ‘vulnerable’ groups on the labour market, such as migrants, the unskilled and the long-time unemployed. These recruitment practices are often made sense of by managers as benevolent acts of care, casting companies as ethically correct while making up for an unjust, excluding labour market. Relying on vignettes from three Danish companies concerned with recruiting migrants, it is explored how these apparent acts of care paradoxically are linked to paternalism and racialized hierarchies privileging majority (Danish) values and norms, as ‘vulnerable’ groups, such as migrants are employed in temporary training positions financed though state-subsidized inclusive labour-market schemes. As such, migrants are casted as dependent on benevolent managers to help them integrate into Danish labour market culture. Migrants are expected to demonstrate gratitude for being granted access to the labour market, while simultaneously being linked to lack and deficiency, invalidating their professional skills to the detriment of respectful interaction. In consequence, organisational practitioners are blinded to the fact that these socially responsible acts may sustain organisational and societal inequality based on race. Instead, it is suggested that sentiments of solidarity rather than care is necessary to obtain reciprocal respect and recognition among workers that avoids reducing minority members to mere representatives of (stigmatized) social groups. Following Fraser, sometimes the best way to protect these ‘diverse workers’ is to fight for better working conditions for them: to bring in social justice by not only recognizing but also adequately rewarding differences through redistributive measures of equal pay and permanent, higher-status positions.
