Diversity discourses and the articulation of discrimination: The case of public organisations

Abstract

Public organisations are contexts that particularly further a contested diversity discourse. They have a long tradition of various equal opportunity policies and are characterised by an internally differentiated structure. Based on interviews in a university and two city administrations in Austria and Germany, this study shows that the ubiquitous 'diversity turn' is not intrinsically opposed to the articulation of discriminations and social inequalities. Rather, diversity discourses in public organisations are characterised by a 'heterogeneous space', which enables the recourse to discriminations of groups of people marked as diversity-relevant as well as to instrumental benefits of diversity-related activities. As a consequence, the organisational diversity discourses and their related practices are far less driven by one-dimensional motives of marketability than commonly assumed.