The article explores immigrants' self‐directed ethnic humor in collegial relationships drawing on fieldwork in a multi‐ethnic workplace, an industrial kitchen in Denmark.
It emphasizes the bonding functions of ethnic humor and approaches ethnic humor from a symbolic interactionist perspective rather than adopting the dominant conflict approach.
The article argues that immigrants' engagement in playful behavior with ethnic stereotypes in interactions with Danes is a form of “impression management” in which they defuse ethnic stereotypes and dissociate themselves from them by building joking relationships in the workplace with Danes.
Watch a video where Henriette Frees Esholdt explains her article.
Symbolic Interaction is the journal of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.