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The goal of this study is to understanding ethnic discrimination by employing a complex theoretical approach which allows for an understanding of ethnic relations and ethnic discrimination as a social process. The study includes a case study at Volvo Torslandaverken in Gothenburg, and focuses on ethnic discrimination against the background of both structural conditions and situational factors. The analysis results from studying personnel statistics and interviews with salaried employees, union elected representatives, and workers.

The study includes two technical and organizational environments. The first environment, manual systems, demands loyalty of individuals to the technical and organizational system. The other environment, integrated mechanization, has a decentralized group organizational structure. Both environments are studied with consideration taken to recruiting, leadership, and solidarity among workers.

The results show that ethnic discrimination appears to be a very complicated phenomena, the expression of which is a consequence of dynamic interplay between structure and action. New forms of work have meant that workers' professional skills are now organized to compliment one another and they work more in groups. This has resulted in an increased need for familiar cultural and social skills within the groups. Such a development risks encouraging varying degrees of negligence, aversion, and exclusion of ethnic views.