| Summary: | There is a broad international consensus about the importance of states recognizing Indigenous rights, and the number of them making respective policy provisions is steadily increasing. At the same time, across the world, Indigenous peoples still face considerable levels of inequality—in material, political, and social terms—in comparison to their countries’ ethnic majority populations. So how effective are states’ policies in realizing Indigenous rights, and what are the implications for the Indigenous people concerned? In my dissertation, I explore this question by analyzing the situation of the Indigenous Sámi people in Norway and Sweden. This constitutes a unique case of one Indigenous people living in two affluent welfare states renowned for their comparatively low levels of economic inequality. Furthermore, the two countries differ considerably in how their policies implement Sámi rights, as Norwegian Sámi policies are generally more advanced in this respect. In the first research article—An Efficacious Remedy for Status Inequality? Indigenous Policies in Norway and Sweden (accepted for publication in Politics, Groups, and Identities)—I ask whether these policy differences are linked to differences in social status perceptions. I argue that policies directed toward Indigenous people reflect the respect and esteem politics and society show for that group. Consequently, Indigenous people should perceive higher status inequality when policies advance their rights to a lesser extent. The empirical results show that in Sweden, significant gaps exist between the ethnic majority’s and the Sámi’s perceptions of social status. The latter have comparatively low perceptions of both their individual socioeconomic position and the Sámi’s collective cultural status in Sweden’s society. In Norway, by contrast, I find no evidence that having a Sámi identity is correlated with lower status perceptions. In the second article—Beyond the Obvious: A Nordic Tale of the Raveled Relationship Between Political Inequality and ...
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