Research has repeatedly shown that many young people of minority background refer to themselves as «foreigners». This article examines how the (re)production of the categories «foreigner» and «Norwegian» is played out in school, and if this can be understood as an expression of racialization. Here, racialization is understood as a process including discourse and social practice in which tacit ideas of race naturalize the link between whiteness and Norwegianness. The study is based on participant observation and interviews both with newly arrived students and with minority students who have grown up in Norway, and their teachers. The article explores how separate language-training classes might affect the minority students’ understanding of themselves. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s definition of «the stranger», I examine situations in which minority students’ experience being positioned as «the Other». The analysis shows that the minority students measure themselves against a normative «Norwegianness» where whiteness and the pure Norwegian language are prominent. In the article this is interpreted as one reason for why the minority students turn to each other for confirmation and support. The article argues that the category «foreigner» is produced through a racialization process where spatial separation, skin color and language are central components. The article concludes that young people’s use of the categories «foreigner» and «Norwegian» also needs to be understood in light of such racialization processes, and not only as something they do amongst themselves.
