Loyalty and Integration Among Young Adults with Minority Backgrounds in Norway

Norway is characterised by small differences, where equality appears as a core value, forced by strong personal and institutional trust. However, the Covid-19 pandemic revealed that there is great variation between different ethnic groups. This chapter asks, what can explain the difference and what does it tell us about economic versus cultural integration? Theoretically, the chapter is inspired by Arvidson and Axelsson’s (2021) distinction between vertical and horizontal loyalty. The article is based on quantitative and qualitative interviews with young people aged 25–35 with an immigrant background who live in Oslo. In Norway, a fundamental assumption is that economic and cultural integration is interrelated. When comparing the vaccination rate (cultural integration) and having a job (economic integration), it is clear that these two dimensions are not equally distributed. The empirical analysis shows how labour migrants originating from Pakistan and Poland have different kind of loyalties. While some are loyal to the message given by the authorities, others were sceptical and, perhaps more importantly, they perceive that people from their country of origin have a different opinion than the majority population and the Norwegian authorities.