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The methods of ethnology are especially suited to the study of structural discrimination in official institutions in Sweden. The ethnologist can thus study, in the field, the subtle mechanisms of ordinary, day-to-day exclusion while connecting this empirical observation to more general models. Starting from a cultural programme funded by the State, the article addresses four mechanisms of exclusion: lack of knowledge and commitment; recruitment by way of networks; ambiguity and ambivalence, emphasising the difference between these two attitudes. The question then is how to communicate the results of this research to the authorities and institutions concerned, so that they may integrate its findings and modify their practices. Ethnology leads to the adoption of a procedure of learning that is based on a hermeneutical protocol, shared both by the academic discipline and by the general field of culture. The ethnologist is thus both an agent of change and an instructor in the procedures of change, who must however retain an acute awareness of the demands of reflexivity in a research project of this nature.