Learning from Erving Goffman: Understanding the experiences of “mixed” individuals in Switzerland and Morocco as a stigma management
Learning from Erving Goffman: Understanding the experiences of “mixed” individuals in Switzerland and Morocco as a stigma management

Summary/Abstract: Although mixed origin is experienced as a resource by binational individuals, in some situations it can become a stigma. Through processes of othering, “mixed”, individuals experience a sort of stigmatization. It is a specific manifestation of stigma that develops its importance in connection with discourses and social lines of difference. Mixedness does not per se always lead to a stigma, but can become relevant in the intersection with race, ethnicity, class, gender, language, or religious affiliation and social hierarchies. The social contexts and their orders of belonging thus shape the stigma experiences of “mixed” individuals and, concomitantly, their opportunities. Based on my recent study on “mixed” individuals in Switzerland and Morocco, this article discusses how mixedness can turn into a stigma and how “mixed” individuals manage and resist these stigmatizations. I argue that mixedness can become an experience of stigmatization when processes of othering lead to the painful experience of non-belonging. This experience of discomfort stimulates continual negotiations between social perception and self-perception. In the article four varieties of stigma-management are developed: (1) attempting to unify the different origins, (2) developing an expert attitude, (3) looking for alternative spaces of belonging, (4) normalizing the “mixed” origin. The four types describe what I call subjective balances: the individual way of dealing with stigmatization, that is, with the problem that multiple belonging is not socially recognised.

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