Abstract:
This study addresses methodological critiques of ethnicity research in organisations by
combining intersectionality and identity work frameworks. Additionally, it extends
intersectionality beyond its traditional focus on multiple disadvantage and
demonstrates contextual sensitivity to ethnicity. Taking an individual constructivist
stance, I examined ethnicity and its intersection with gender and seniority through an
identity work lens. The research question was: How do senior black, Asian and minority
ethnic women and men make meaning of episodes that raise the salience of their
intersecting identities at work? The study investigated how 24 senior black, Asian and
minority ethnic (BME) women and men constructed an understanding of their
multiple-identified selves in response to affirming, contradictory or ambiguous
identity-heightening work experiences. Respondents kept journals about episodes that
raised the salience of their intersecting identities. Then, in interviews, they described
the sense they made of the episodes and their responses to them. Following a
template-based analysis of 101 accounts, a typology emerged of Accommodating,
Refuting, Reconciling, Affirming and Exploratory identity work modes, describing
senior BME individuals’ identity construction in response to identity-heightening
episodes. I introduce ‘intersectional identity work’ to illustrate how individual (e.g.
cognitive effort to reconcile a paradox), relational (e.g. a sense of responsibility and
affinity for subordinate minority colleagues) and contextual (e.g. visibility resulting
from demographic distribution in one’s immediate environment) factors influence
intersecting senior, ethnic and gender constructions at work. Integrating intersectional
and identity work perspectives to examine ethnicity demonstrates the dynamic
interplay of multiple identity dimensions during meaning-making, the range of modes
adopted and the intensity of effort expended by senior BME women and men during
personal meaning-making. This approach makes a methodological contribution to
ethnicity and intersectionality research. It also makes an empirical contribution to UK
ethnicity and identity work research through the suggestive model of identity work
modes and rich insight into senior BME individuals’ experiences at the juxtaposition of
disadvantage and privilege.
