6.1 Introduction

The extent to which children of immigrants are able to translate their educational achievements into high-status labour market positions has become a key question in research on integration and assimilation (Alba & Foner, 2015; Crul et al., 2016a; Tran et al., 2019). Although they often come from families with limited education, children of immigrants tend to have high educational ambitions, and many perform remarkably well in the education system (Heath & Brinbaum 2014; Kasinitz et al., 2008; Lee & Zhou, 2015; Shah et al., 2010). Significant numbers are entering elite educational fields and prestigious occupations. As in many other countries, the second generation in Norway is overrepresented in professions such as medicine and law (Østby & Henriksen, 2013), yet we still know little about their work trajectories and professional achievements. A pertinent question is what opportunities European labour markets offer highly ambitious second-generation individuals, and whether – and on what terms – they are granted access to elite occupations (cf. Tran et al., 2019).

Medicine and law are prime examples of elite professions, as they have challenging and highly competitive admission criteria, while yielding high levels of reward compared to other fields of higher education (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). In Norway, both professions are characterized by formal and informal occupational closure: access to these occupations is regulated formally (and institutionally) through high entry requirements for these study programmes and strict licence requirements for practicing these occupations. In addition, informal selection mechanisms produce a strong degree of social reproduction whereby students and employees from higher-class strata are overrepresented (Strømme & Hansen, 2017).

Such formal and informal occupational closure can represent obstacles for the second generation’s access to elite occupations. They face greater challenges in meeting the competitive admission criteria, as they tend to obtain lower grades than their majority peers (Alba & Foner, 2015; Cools & Schøne, 2019; Heath & Rothon, 2014; Reisel et al., 2019). Furthermore, being visible minorities and having undertaken a steep social climb means that the second generation may experience being “other” in their educational and work context, making them vulnerable to subtle processes of exclusion that might shape their work experiences and trajectories (e.g. Dinovitzer, 2011; Hansen, 2001; Konyali, 2014; Puwar, 2004; Waldring et al., 2015). Building on the Norwegian Pathways to Success study, this chapter examines the common pathways to entering the elite occupations of medicine and law for descendants of labour migrants in Norway, how these pathways are shaped by the institutional arrangements regulating access to these occupations, and how the ethnic minority status of second-generation individuals shapes their experiences within elite occupations once they have gained access.

We start by embedding the Norwegian context in the broader comparative landscape of research on how institutional opportunity structures affect second-generation incorporation. Next, we discuss two strands of theory that help to shed light on the experiences of second-generation elite professionals: theories of occupational closure and of symbolic boundaries. We draw on insights from both theoretical perspectives in our analyses, concluding that while the occupational fields of law and medicine in Norway are open to newcomers who manage to pass the high-grade requirements, processes of ethnic segmentation seem to occur after employment is secured.

6.2 The Norwegian Context

Norway is an interesting contrast to the European countries typically examined in studies of second-generation incorporation, such as Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands (cf. Alba & Foner, 2015; Crul et al., 2012, 2016a). On the one hand, Norway shares with these countries the experience of becoming a country of immigration in the late 1960s, when labour migrants from countries such as Pakistan, India, Turkey and Morocco started to arrive as part of the broader wave of post-war labour migration to Western Europe in response to recent economic growth. As elsewhere, many of these immigrants had low levels of education; they could not speak the host country language; they were culturally and religiously foreign to the majority population; and they were absorbed into the lower tiers of the labour market, often in declining industries and occupations (Brochmann & Kjeldstadli, 2008). On the other hand, Norway’s institutional structure – its egalitarian education system, redistributive welfare state system and regulated labour market – stands out in international comparisons by offering a range of institutional opportunities for upward social mobility to children of immigrants (Hermansen, 2017; Midtbøen & Nadim, 2021).

First, due to a compressed wage structure and redistributive policies, income inequality is low in Norway and relatively few children live in poverty regardless of their parents’ employment status. This is beneficial for all children, but especially for children growing up in poor families with low-educated parents. Indeed, recent comparative research has demonstrated that intergenerational upward mobility is more widespread in the Scandinavian countries than in countries such as Germany and the US (Bratberg et al., 2017).

Second, Norway’s education system is characterized by a combination of a high level of standardization (i.e. low variation in school quality) and a relatively low level of stratification (i.e. a system of relatively late tracking). In Norway, the quality of education meets the same standards across the country, and tracking into vocational, professional or academic tracks does not occur until the age of 16, when students leave compulsory secondary school (after 10 years in a school for all levels of ability) and enter the high school system (Reisel et al., 2019). Compared to countries such as the US, this suggests that children of immigrants in Norway growing up in residentially segregated areas are penalized less by differences in school quality. And compared to countries with early-tracking systems, such as Germany, children of immigrants in Norway have time to catch up with their majority peers before choosing what tracks to pursue, and both they and their parents have the power to choose the direction of their future studies (Midtbøen & Nadim, 2021). Upon finishing compulsory education at the age of 16, most Norwegians, including the second generation, go on to high school (i.e. upper secondary education), which consists of academic and vocational tracks. Academic upper-secondary tracks take 3 years, while vocational upper secondary tracks take 2 years. After these 2 years, students may spend 2 years in apprenticeship training or 1 year completing general subject supplements, providing them with the basic entrance requirements for higher education. Although children of immigrants generally tend to perform less well in their final secondary school examinations, their average high school completion figures are identical to those of the majority population (Reisel et al., 2019).

Finally, the Norwegian system of higher education is predominantly public and free of charge. In striking contrast to the US, public universities in Norway offer a higher quality of education, are more competitive (and therefore attract the best students) and rank higher in status than the few existing private alternatives. In high-status fields of tertiary education, such as medicine and law, public universities are by far the best option in terms of both quality and status (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). These features of Norway’s system of higher education suggest that the threshold for ambitious second-generation individuals (who have often grown up in low-income families) to embark on a high-status educational track is comparatively low. The question is how difficult it is for them to acquire the necessary educational credentials and, having done so, to translate their educational achievements into relevant occupational positions (cf. Tran et al., 2019).

6.3 Accessing Law and Medicine in Norway: Standard and Alternative Routes

Both law and medicine degree courses are offered at selected public universities in Norway, and the public education programmes in these fields are considered the most prestigious. Access to these higher education study programmes is mainly determined by the grades obtained in the centralized, state-run high school system (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). All students have to take the same exams and in contrast to many other countries, entry into these elite study programmes requires no extra tests, personal letters, recommendations or essays, thus limiting the influence of social networks or mastery of specific forms of expression on a student’s chances of gaining admission compared to many other countries (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). At the same time, both medicine and law have highly competitive entry requirements that demand a high average grade. Medicine study programmes have the highest grade requirements of all Norwegian study programmes. The requirements for law are lower, but this was the study programme with the most applicants and the longest waiting list in 2017 (The Norwegian Universities and Colleges Admission Service, 2017).

Importantly, however, there are alternative routes if a candidate has not graduated from high school with good enough grades. It is, for instance, both possible and common to retake high school exams in special private schools in order to improve one’s grades after completing high school in the public education system. This requires the economic means to pay tuition fees and be able to spend a substantial amount of time trying to achieve better grades.

Another alternative route lies in the actual study programmes. Full law study programmes are offered at three Norwegian public universities and consist of a 5-year Master’s programme. An alternative route to a law degree is to embark on a Bachelor’s degree in law, which has lower entry requirements. This degree does not qualify students to become lawyers and generally has a low status in the labour market, but after completion, graduates can apply for direct admission to the Master’s level at the three universities offering this programme. However, the possibilities to enter at Master’s level are limited, and the three Master’s degree universities appear to be closing down this option in practice. Instead of following the ‘alternative route’ students have to apply for ordinary admission to the Master’s programme on the basis of their high school grades. If they manage to enter the programme, the relevant subjects they have already completed can be accepted, so that they will be able to continue where they had left off in their study trajectories. However, only a minority of bachelor students meet the grade requirements, meaning that they need to improve their high school grades, even after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree. Until recently, it was also possible to enrol in a private institution offering law courses and apply for transfer to a public law school at a later stage, but this route has become severely limited in recent years. In effect, the alternative routes to a law degree are becoming limited to retaking high school exams to improve one’s grades and the only limit to this alternative is a student’s willingness to spend time and money. The informants interviewed in this study had been able to choose this alternative route.

Traditionally, a law student’s grades have been more decisive to their career opportunities than is the case for other higher education programmes. Norwegian law schools are characterized by continuous competition, in which only those with good grades can continue to compete for high-earning and high-status jobs, whereas the rest have to continue with more modest ambitions, or simply leave the field (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). In order to work as a lawyer (advokat) in Norway, you must first obtain a Master’s degree in Law, and then pass a qualification as a lawyer. This entails a minimum of 2 years of legal practice, for instance as an associate lawyer (advokatfullmektig), whereby in most cases one must have tried three cases at a court, including at least one civil case. Within the field of law, the status of lawyers differs widely according to the prestige of their law firm and case portfolios. Some of the most prestigious jobs are found in the public sector (e.g. judges or lawyer in the Legislation department in the Ministry of Justice or with the Attorney General).

Medicine in Norway is a 6-year programme offered at four universities. It is usually the most competitive field of study to enter and has extremely high grade requirements. Admission is mainly based on an applicant’s high school grades, but it is possible for candidates to improve their grades privately after graduating and to gain extra grade points by taking other university courses or acquiring relevant practical experience. Strømme and Hansen (2017: 172) characterize the route to gaining admission to medical school as a “long and risky process” that in many cases demands economic resources to finance the diverse strategies for gaining extra points. Once in medical school, however, the programme is characterized by low competition, as most medical schools do not give grades, but rather use a pass/fail system.Footnote 1 Unlike law students, medical students can earn their degrees in other countries and return to Norway to practice medicine, and there has been a massive increase in students using this alternative route to a medical degree.

In order to become a medical doctor, graduates have to go through a one-and-half year mandatory traineeship. Before 2012, these were allocated through a lottery that students from universities outside Norway were also allowed to enter. Nowadays, students must compete for traineeships by applying directly to relevant institutions. The new competition has fuelled charges of nepotism, whereby children of medical doctors are accused of having an unfair advantage in securing traineeships (Drange, 2020; Losvik, 2013).

6.4 Closure Mechanisms in Elite Professions: What Room Is There for the Second Generation?

A defining aspect of elite studies and professions is their exclusivity. Only a select few are granted access to the status and rewards awarded by elite positions, and elite professions protect their exclusivity by closing off opportunities to ‘outsiders’ (cf. Murphy, 1988). Access to privileged positions is typically controlled by requiring formal educational credentials. The two professions of interest in this chapter – medicine and law – are both licensed professions. This means that they are regulated by law, so that unauthorized practice is illegal and educational requirements are institutionalized and sanctioned by the State. Licensing creates a monopoly situation that raises the demand for – and reward of – their professional services, which in turn functions as an indirect institutional barrier to access (cf. Drange & Helland, 2019; Weeden, 2002). Moreover, access to the required educational credentials, which is necessary to access the professions, is also characterized by institutional barriers, as elite educational tracks have strict admission criteria.

However, elite professions are not only protected by institutionalized barriers, they can also be characterized by more informal closure mechanisms, manifested in the social composition of those recruited to these professions. It is well documented that recruitment to high-level professions such as medicine and law is characterized by selectivity, as they tend to recruit professionals from a higher stratum of society. Strømme and Hansen (2017) show that medicine and law in Norway seem to be relatively closed professions in terms of their social profile. Both disciplines have high levels of self-recruitment, whereby students in these fields often have parents with the same educational background and higher incomes compared to students in other fields of higher education. In other words, there is reason to expect that those of higher-class backgrounds have more relevant social networks and experience a better “fit” both within the educational and work context.

Law appears to have even more skewed social recruitment patterns than medicine. Strømme and Hansen (2017) argue that this is due to the type of skills required in the two fields, as well as the type of competition fostered through the two educations. While medicine is largely based on a set of technical skills, law is a ‘softer’ field requiring a vaguer body of knowledge and relying more on skills such as vocabulary, articulation and rhetoric. Furthermore, although medical schools in Norway have extremely high entry requirements, they are generally characterized by low levels of competition after entry is secured. By contrast, law schools have lower entry requirements, but are characterized by continuous competition. Thus, having parents in the same field might be particularly advantageous in law as mastering the ‘hidden curriculum’ and having field-specific cultural capital is more important in this field (Strømme & Hansen, 2017).

As the adult second generation in Norway are predominantly children of (low-skilled) labour migrants and refugees, we can expect them to be disadvantaged by the institutional and informal closure mechanisms in elite professions. On average, in Norway and elsewhere, children of immigrants obtain lower grades and test scores than their majority peers (Alba & Foner, 2015; Cools & Schøne, 2019; Heath & Rothon, 2014; Reisel et al., 2019), limiting their access to highly competitive educational fields. Furthermore, children of immigrants are ‘different’ to the students typically recruited into these professions, in the sense that they are not only often among the first visible minorities in their specific work environments, but are also often the first ones in their families to pursue an elite education. Such differences are not necessarily obstacles to studying medicine and law, but subtle processes of exclusion might shape the second generation’s access to the labour market and later work experiences and trajectories (e.g. Dinovitzer, 2011; Hansen, 2001; Konyali, 2014; Waldring et al., 2015).

However, Drange and Helland (2019) argue that occupational closure may also have a ‘sheltering effect’ on minority individuals once they have entered elite professions. They find that licensed occupations – of which medicine and law are prime examples – appear to offer protection against ethnic wage discrimination. The legal regulation of licensed occupations reduces the supply of employees and directs the demand for skills to the license holders, as others cannot legally supply the services in question (Drange & Helland, 2019). These factors may make employers and customers less inclined to practice ethnic discrimination, and thus protect second-generation individuals who have managed to secure access.

Thus, on the one hand, we could expect that once the second generation has achieved elite education credentials, their ethnic origin has little relevance for their further career paths. Lamont (1992) suggests that higher education can mark a more significant distinction than ethnic origin, and argues that the boundaries that the highly educated build between themselves and others “are likely to be more permanent, less crossable, and less resisted than the boundaries that exist between ethnic groups” (Lamont, 1992: 11). Although an ethnic minority origin might not become invisible, the blurring of boundaries can reduce the social and cultural distance between ethnic groups, resulting in minority individuals being seen as belonging to both the majority and minority group, or as members of one or the other depending on context (Alba, 2005; Alba & Nee, 2003). Following Drange and Helland (2019), closed elite professions might be a context that helps to blur the significance of an ethnic minority status.

Puwar (2004), on the other hand, argues that while minorities might be able to access elite professions that they were previously absent from, they are still considered outsiders as they conspicuously break the norm regarding who usually inhabits such positions. Although not all minorities will be seen to break the norm to the same extent (e.g. Indian doctors), minorities with a labour migrant background – typically associated with a low class background – can experience being seen as somewhat ‘out of place’ in elite positions. Puwar (2004) calls them ‘space invaders’ and argues that while those who usually inhabit such positions (e.g. majority men) are seen to have a natural right to belong in the elite, minorities who are more atypical in the profession (e.g. women or ethnic minorities), are not seen as having an undisputed right to occupy this space. The processes of exclusion in privileged positions can be extremely subtle (see also Neckerman et al., 1999). The professions commonly consider themselves ‘colour blind’, without recognizing that they operate according to implicit standards and norms that position minorities as different and put them “under the constant spotlight of surveillance” (Puwar, 2004: 117).

In line with Puwar’s argument, studies find that levels of self-reported discrimination are indeed higher among highly-educated ethnic minorities and among those in high-status occupations than for others (Midtbøen & Kitterød, 2019; Steinmann, 2018). This might reflect that high-achieving minorities expect that their ethnic background should be irrelevant or invisible more often than those lower in the occupational hierarchy. Furthermore, they work in settings in which they are expected to conform to white middle-class interactional styles, making ‘minority climbers’ (cf. Slootman, 2019) more likely to encounter discrimination and prejudice than their lower-class co-ethnics (Neckerman et al., 1999). In any case, the research literature suggests that educational and work achievements do not necessarily protect against experiences of exclusion (Konyali, 2017; Midtbøen, 2016; Neckerman et al., 1999; Puwar, 2004; Slootman, 2019; Waldring et al., 2015).

How children of immigrants who have gained access to high-status positions in the labour market manoeuvre in fields that traditionally have been reserved for the native majority has recently been set on the scholarly agenda in Europe (Crul et al., 2016a, b; Keskiner & Crul, 2016; Konyali, 2014; Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019, 2021; Rezai, 2016; Waldring et al., 2015). The current chapter contributes to this important line of research.

6.5 Data and Methodology

The Norwegian Pathways to Success study includes 62 in-depth interviews with children of labour migrants who arrived in Norway in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The interviews were carried out in 2016 and 2017. All of the informants had grown up in poor households in Norway, typically with a father in a working-class occupation or on welfare benefits and a mother outside the labour force. However, the second-generation informants have achieved advanced degrees in medicine, law, business and finance. Reflecting the demographic composition of the second generation in Norway, whereby children of immigrants from Pakistan constitute by far the largest group, the majority of the informants originate from Pakistan, but children of migrants from Morocco, India and Turkey are also represented in the study. Three-quarters of the informants were born in Norway, while the rest had either immigrated before school age or had arrived in Norway between the ages of 8 and 13. Given their parents’ origins, all informants had a background that was likely to make them a visible minority and, for most, to be ascribed a Muslim identity. In this chapter, we focus on the informants with degrees in medicine and law, making up 40 individuals. This sub-sample comprises 24 men and 16 women, ranging in age from 23 to 47 years, with the majority being around 30 years. As our sample is not fit for systematic comparisons between ethnic groups, we concentrate on other comparative dimensions in the analysis.

To complement the qualitative data, we also employ Norwegian registry data to provide a statistical overview of the share of second-generation and majority individuals with degrees in medicine and law, as well as the share of individuals employed as medical doctors and lawyers in 2014. The registry data comprises the total population of majority natives between the age of 26 and 35, as well as Norwegian-born children of immigrants from Pakistan, India, Morocco and Turkey in the same age group. Table 6.1 provides an overview of the informants, separated by the fields of work, gender and ethnic origin.

Table 6.1 Overview of the informants, by field of work, gender and ethnic origin
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Most of the informants within medicine were working in public hospitals, while some were working as general practitioners (GPs). Most of the lawyers were working in private firms in various fields of law, while some were working as civil servants. All informants were working in well-paid high-status occupations, but only a handful occupied top positions within influential companies. Consequently, few of the informants constitute an elite in the strict sense, but as they are still quite young, the sample might be characterized as an upcoming elite of second-generation professionals in Norway (cf. Crul et al., 2016a, b).

We employed several strategies for recruiting informants. First, relying on snowball sampling, we used our extended networks and recruited informants who, in turn, identified more individuals who met our sampling criteria. Second, we identified informants with the help of student organizations and professional networks aimed at ethnic minorities. Last, we identified individuals who met our sampling criteria by searching company websites and LinkedIn Premium, a social medium where professionals present their CVs. We conducted most interviews face-to-face and a few via telephone. Most of the face-to-face interviews took place at the informants’ workplace or at a quiet café. These interviews lasted between one and one-and-a-half hours, while the telephone interviews were slightly shorter.

We used a slightly modified version of the interview guide developed for the broader, comparative Pathways to Success/ELITES project, thus ensuring a high degree of comparability between our analyses and the other chapters in this book. All interviews were tape-recorded, fully transcribed and coded using HyperResearch. The interviews mapped the informants’ educational and work trajectories, including their pathways to their current occupational position, the choices and reflections they had made along the way, the role played by significant others and how they understand their educational and career trajectories. In the analysis, we first traced the individual pathways to their current labour market position, examining formal and informal requirements for obtaining a degree, in the transition from education to work and for career advancement. Second, we analysed the significance and salience of being an ‘ethnic other’ in the workplace, and the informants’ experiences with and responses to subtle forms of exclusion.

6.6 Institutional Barriers and Opportunities in Law and Medicine

To what extent do the fields of law and medicine represent barriers or opportunities for ambitious second-generation individuals in Norway? Do these individuals follow the standard route through the education system, or do they pursue alternative routes because of the strong admission selectivity and high grade requirements?

Figure 6.1 presents the outcome of our analysis of Norwegian registry data, showing the share of those in the second generation who have obtained either a degree in law or medicine in the age group 26 to 35 years, according to their parents’ country of origin (Pakistan, India, Morocco, and Turkey) and compared to the native-origin majority. The shares of second-generation groups who have obtained a university degree in these fields are striking; especially degrees in medicine stand out. Compared to the native majority, with the exception of Moroccan women, a larger share of all second-generation groups has obtained a medical degree. Particularly striking are the figures for the Indian group: While less than 1% of all native majority men and 1.5% of all native majority women have obtained a medical degree, the figures for second-generation Indian men and women are 14.3 and 19%, respectively. It should be noted that Indian immigrants in Norway are highly selected – their level of education by far exceeds the average in other labour migrant groups (Statistics Norway, 2010) – which probably explains their offspring’s high educational levels (cf. Feliciano & Lanuza, 2017). However, the second-generation Pakistani group is also overrepresented, especially among those with a medical degree, and this even applies to the male descendants of Turkish migrants. As these groups are less positively selected, this suggests that many children of labour migrants in Norway can access and complete these elite educational tracks.

Fig. 6.1
figure 1

Share with obtained degrees in law and medicine, age 26–35, by ethnic origin and sex. Percentage of total population in each group. 2014. (Source: Statistics Norway, own calculations)

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Figure 6.2 shows the shares of the same groups that have managed to secure jobs as lawyers and medical doctors in Norway. Once again, the numbers are quite remarkable. While 1% of native-origin men and 2% of native-origin women are employed as medical doctors, almost 12% of second-generation Indian men and almost 17% of second-generation Indian women work as doctors. The second-generation Pakistani group is also clearly overrepresented among medical doctors. Among lawyers, there are few differences between the native majority and the second-generation groups, but second-generation Moroccan and Turkish women are both slightly overrepresented in this occupation.

Fig. 6.2
figure 2

Share working as lawyers or medical doctors, age 26–35, by ethnic origin and sex. Percentage of total population in each group. 2014. (Source: Statistics Norway, own calculations)

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Importantly, the two figures cannot be compared directly, and therefore do not provide information on the share who have obtained a relevant job. In particular for the individuals holding a law degree, not all relevant jobs are captured by the work code “lawyer”. Nevertheless, the statistical data suggest that among those who have obtained a degree in medicine or law and those who are employed as medical doctors or lawyers, all second-generation groups are either participating on a par with or are outperforming the native majority. This points towards these fields of education and occupation being open to newcomers who have not traditionally been part of the recruitment base, and stand in contrast to recent findings from the US that suggest that many second-generation groups are not able to translate their educational achievements into corresponding jobs (Tran et al., 2019).

However, data on educational and occupational destinations do not say much about the trajectories towards getting there. Does the second generation follow the same paths as the majority into these positions? We build on the qualitative study of second-generation professionals’ educational and work trajectories to address this question.

6.7 Second-Generation Pathways to Degrees in Law

Our informants in the law sector have taken different routes to their final law exam. The first barrier that prospective second-generation lawyers must overcome is to get good enough grades from high school to secure admission into law school. While the majority of our informants – three quarters – were directly able to meet the requirements at the time, the remaining quarter of informants relied on various ‘second chance’ options.

One recent law school graduate describes a circuitous route to law school and explains that it was far from certain that he would end up as a lawyer. In his second year of high school, he simply stopped showing up to class, and dropped out of school. Many of his friends also dropped out of school and never got an education, and some even went to jail. He says that he could easily have ended up on the same path. However, 2 years later, he realized that every career path he was attracted to required a high school diploma, so he decided to take the 2 years of high school that he had missed privately. He thinks that this is actually what enabled him to enter law school as he was more mature and motivated in high school the second time round and got much better grades than he would have done if he had stayed in high school initially. For him, the possibility of going back and retaking high school, albeit privately, was decisive.

Another alternative route to law school used by our informants was to enrol in a private institution offering law courses, and apply for a transfer to law school at a later stage. Informants choosing this option did so because their grades were not good enough to study law at a public university. They attended a private school for between 1 and 4 years before transferring to university, and their credentials are from the university law school. While they point out that this route clearly has low status amongst law school students, they insist that attending a private school has more benefits than merely being a less competitive route into law school. Students at private schools have more lectures and closer supervision than at university. Furthermore, these schools have the clear goal of helping them to attain high grades, while students at the university law schools are expected to take more responsibility for their own learning and success. Informants who had attended a private school emphasize that the close supervision they received there was an important asset that helped them achieve the grades they needed to eventually transfer to university.

As mentioned above, this route via a private school to university law school has become severely limited, or even eliminated, in recent years. One of the lawyers explains that this might affect the share of minority law students:

There were more minority students at [the private school]. Now I’ve heard that there are fewer minority students [in the university], you see it in the library, because [the private school] option has been closed down.

The private route to law school is portrayed as being of lower status, as it is used by people who were not ‘good enough’ to enter law school in the regular manner. To some extent this also appears to be understood as a ‘minority strategy’, perhaps reflecting that minority students tend to have high educational aspirations irrespective of their educational achievements, and therefore must rely on this alternative route to access law school. Although second-generation students might disproportionally use alternative routes into this elite study, it is important to emphasize that most of our informants entered and followed the regular path.

6.8 Second-Generation Pathways to Degrees in Medicine

In contrast to our informants with law degrees, more than half of our informants within medicine – 13 out of 20 informants – took some sort of alternative route. The most striking example of a circuitous route to medical school is a male doctor who had been convicted and imprisoned after high school, but completed his high school diploma at a private school in addition to taking extra university courses before finally being admitted to medical school. His story echoes that of the lawyer who describes himself as having been on a pathway that could easily have led to a criminal career rather than to getting a law degree. These stories illustrate how second-chance options can be of crucial importance to young people who are on the ‘wrong track’. The practice of improving high school grades and taking university courses to gather extra points is common for prospective medical students and is also a strategy that was often employed by our informants.

The second main alternative route to medical school is to bypass the high barriers of the Norwegian system and attend medical school in an Eastern European country, before seeking to have one’s degree approved in Norway. Three of our informants have taken this route. Their main reason for studying abroad was to circumvent the barriers in Norway. As one of them states:

Since they have put the admission criteria so high [...], I had to get my grade average up. And then I would have to turn all my 5’s [second highest grade in high school system] into 6’s, and I couldn’t be bothered. I know people who have spent two and three years to manage to get admitted here in Norway. I didn’t want to spend my energy on that.

Interestingly, recent statistical data confirms that the second generation is overrepresented among those who use studies abroad as an alternative route. While around one third of the native majority obtained their medical degree abroad, more than 70% of second-generation medical doctors in Norway received their degrees from universities abroad, especially in Eastern Europe (Cools & Schøne, 2019).Footnote 2

Within both medicine and law, it is thus apparent that some of the second-generation professionals have entered their elite professions through alternative routes. The Norwegian education system, most notably because of the possibility to improve one’s high school grades, provides a second-chance option for students who do not meet the highly competitive admission criteria of elite educations. The high share of the second-generation embarking on studies abroad points in the same direction. Clearly, second chances and alternative routes are particularly important to second-generation individuals, as they are shown to have high educational aspirations despite having lower grade averages than majority students. These findings from Norway correspond with results from similar studies in Europe (see other chapters in this book).

6.9 Ethnicity as Burden and Resource in Law and Medicine

Although many of our informants obtained their degrees through alternative routes or by second-chance options, they all succeeded in making their way into jobs as either lawyers or doctors. However, accessing the labour market is just one obstacle, the other is making a career in these professions. How open are law and medicine to ‘ethnically other’ second-generation professionals once they have secured employment? Our analyses suggest that an ethnic minority background can function as both a burden and a resource in the working lives of the second generation.

6.9.1 Burdens of Belonging to a Minority

Although our second-generation informants have succeeded in meeting the strict admission criteria to their professions, some still describe a constant awareness of the risk of discrimination. Indeed, this perception from childhood or youth on was an important factor that motivated several of the informants to work hard at school, achieve good grades, get internships or take on extra work during higher education. In other words, they hold that it motivated them to work ‘twice as hard’ and ‘jump twice as high’ as their majority peers in order to secure access to labour market opportunities further down the road. They are aware that even when they have managed to secure a position in line with their qualifications, they are not automatically assumed to have the required competencies. Consequently, some of the informants believe that they need to make a special effort to prove themselves proficient and competent. In sum, they anticipate ─ and to some extent experience ─ being underestimated and met with a burden of doubt (cf. Puwar, 2004: 59).

In addition, the lawyers also describe a burden of representation (cf. Puwar, 2004: 62). Several of the lawyers in the study expressed concern over a series of recent high-profile cases in which ethnic minority lawyers have faced criminal charges for misconduct, threats and even human trafficking. The second-generation lawyers worry that these cases will reinforce stereotypes of ‘immigrant lawyers’ as unreliable and that these stereotypes will apply to them, potentially leading to a bad reputation and blocked career prospects. As Puwar (2004) argues, visible minorities in an elite profession are often seen to represent the capacities of ‘their group’, meaning that the actions of one individual influence how others from the same group are met and considered. This is furthermore linked to what she (2004: 61) terms super-surveillance. Some of the informants highlight that their visibility as ethnic minorities in their workplace means that any mistake or mishap is particularly noticed, and potentially seen as reflecting a lack of professionalism. They experience a heightened risk of easy judgements, where imperfections are easily picked up, amplified and subsequently applied to others seen as belonging to the same group.

The burden of doubt, the burden of representation and super-surveillance are related to the visibility of second-generation professionals as ‘ethnic others’ in their respective elite professions. These burdens of ethnicity related to the ways in which boundaries are drawn in professional fields in which ethnicity, at least sometimes and in some contexts, appears as a bright boundary (cf. Alba, 2005). Such bright ethnic boundaries may have dramatic consequences. In the field of law, experiences of blocked opportunities at mainstream firms have led some informants to create self-employment opportunities (see Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019). These lawyers describe subtle forms of occupational closure, whereby the most prestigious law firms appear to be out of reach for them. In some cases, the experience of blocked opportunities inspires ambitious lawyers to break out and start their own firms, after finishing their term as a trainee lawyer and securing their licence to practice as a lawyer in a mainstream Norwegian law firm. Some of the self-employed lawyers in our study hold that their main motivation to set up their own firm was that they did not feel they got the recognition they deserved from their employers (see also Chap. 4). Instead of lowering their ambitions, they started their own firms where they could exploit their comparative advantage – their ethnic resources – and predominantly cater to an ethnic minority market.

6.9.2 Ethnicity as a Resource

Yet, being visibly different can also be an advantage within mainstream firms. One of the lawyers, for example, describes his situation as the only ethnic minority employee in a large law firm:

The advantage I think I have had here is that everybody recognizes me, everybody knows who I am. And when I go to seminars or abroad or wherever, I am noticed. [...] If you get on an e-mail list or on a case, everybody knows who you are. So it’s easy to get known with a foreign background here. […] I see that many of those who started at the same time as me, they often get many small cases and some big. But I’ve almost only been part of the biggest projects, and I think that’s pretty fun. And it [being visible] has been an advantage.

For this lawyer, being ‘different’ means that he is noticed and stands out from the crowd in a large firm, something that has afforded him opportunities and recognition that many of his majority peers have not experienced in the same way. Thus, as long as they prove themselves as well-performing professionals the visibility of the second-generation can work to their advantage.

Indeed, the informants often consider their ethnic minority background as a resource rather than a barrier in the labour market (cf. Konyali, 2014). Typically, they emphasize their ethnicity as a resource that gives them valuable language and cultural skills, which are recognized and made use of by their employers. However, this plays out somewhat differently in the occupations studied.

The doctors in our sample describe that they can make regular use of their language and cultural skills, especially when dealing with patients, and that these specific skills are recognized as a valuable competence by their employers and colleagues. Depending on where they work, the doctors emphasise in particular the importance of language skills which enable them to communicate well with a broader segment of patients. As one doctor of Pakistani background explains:

If an Urdu-speaking patient comes in, I often go in and interpret. It’s much easier for the department and it’s much easier for the patient. A lot of patients want to come to me, of those with an immigrant background. Because they feel they can explain their problems to someone who has my background.

The doctors claim that they save their employers a lot of time and money by reducing the need to call in interpreters, and they are often allocated patients with poor Norwegian language skills or called in to interpret for their co-workers. Cultural competence beyond language skills also aids in the communication with patients. For instance, one doctor argued that her background enables her to better understand ethnic minority patients who might have a different understanding of disease and health than is common in Norway. Thus, the doctors regularly experience and use their ethnic background as a resource, and their background is recognized and used as a resource by their employers and co-workers. At the same time, being summoned to interpret for co-workers means continuous interruptions and distractions from their own patients and tasks, and the informants describe feeling an ambivalence between having their cultural competence recognized and being distracted from their own work (see Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019 for a detailed analysis of this ambivalence and Chap. 3 for similar experiences in other countries and professions).

Many of the lawyers also described their ethnic background as an asset. Like the doctors, several of the lawyers pointed out the importance of having a cultural competence that enables them to understand and communicate with their clients in a way that native Norwegians cannot. One lawyer of Pakistani background explains:

If an Arab comes to me, I don’t speak the language, but I have an understanding of the culture and I can understand. He can act quite irrationally and for a Norwegian it’ll be completely incomprehensible why this person is acting irrationally, but I can perhaps understand why he is doing it. I would never defend an irrational action, but I can more easily understand why this person is acting irrationally and can support and back him so he can perhaps get on the right track. So, I think they feel safer around that. And I think that a lot of them think: “Yes, but he’s one of our own, so I can tell him everything”, right?

Besides the obvious advantages of being able to communicate with some clients in their mother tongue, this lawyer argues that his cultural competence generally puts him in a better position than Norwegian colleagues to understand the actions of ethnic minority clients, thus enabling him to offer these clients better support and guidance.

Several of the lawyers also emphasize that their ethnic background helps to attract a broader segment of clients. As the ethnic minority population is potentially a big market, these lawyers stressed that they are better positioned to tap into this market than their majority Norwegian colleagues. As one of the lawyers in a medium-size law firm puts it: ‘You attract other clients who would never use someone like [names a native Norwegian lawyer]. It’s as simple as that’.

However, the potential of the ‘ethnic market’ varies greatly between different fields of law; ethnicity as a resource is mostly relevant for those working with private clients, for instance within criminal, immigration and family law, while it is less relevant within corporate law or for those working as civil servants (Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019). Thus, especially among the lawyers working with private clients, having an ethnic minority background is described as an explicit resource, which attracts ethnic minority clients, and they often work on cases where they can make direct use of their language and cultural skills.

6.10 Conclusion

This chapter has shown that second-generation professionals in Norway have gained striking access to both law and medicine, two traditionally rather closed, elite occupational fields with high formal and informal institutional barriers. In fact, children of labour immigrants, especially those originating from India and Pakistan, are overrepresented in both fields. This stands in contrast to previous studies of occupational closure, which suggest that elite fields are especially prone to social reproduction (Strømme & Hansen, 2017).

However, both the statistical data and qualitative interviews used in this chapter show that the second generation makes frequent use of alternative pathways to access these occupational fields. In law, many second-generation individuals overcome the high grade requirements by taking extra exams after high school, while in medicine more than 70% of all second-generation individuals with a medical degree have received it from a university abroad. In both cases, the second generation benefits from second-chance options offered by the Norwegian education system that allow them to enter elite occupational fields through alternative pathways.

At the same time, being provided access to a field is not equivalent to being accepted on the same terms as their majority peers after employment has been secured. Many of the informants in our study – regardless of their pathways into the professions – describe how they experience a ‘burden of doubt’ concerning their capacities and competence, as well as a ‘burden of representation’ where the actions and competence of one individual are seen as indicative of the entire ‘group’ (cf. Puwar, 2004). Yet the very same visibility that creates these burdens can be an advantage that allows second-generation professionals to stand out from the crowd – provided that they are considered sufficiently competent in the first place.

As such, second-generation professionals in Norway can best be considered as both insiders and outsiders. They have been able to access elite professions in which representatives of their ‘own group’ had been virtually absent. This makes them the ‘pioneers’ that are the subject of this volume. Furthermore, the high entry requirements of the elite professions and their merit-based recognition might provide some protection against discrimination, as professional boundaries might become more important than ethnic boundaries (cf. Drange & Helland, 2019). At the same time, second generation professionals from lower-class backgrounds are still, as Puwar (2004) has pointed out, ‘space invaders’. Formally having the same access to employment and earnings does not necessarily protect them against subtle acts or processes of exclusion, and the ‘otherness’ of the second generation might be lurking under the surface, waiting to become sharply visible.