Employer discrimination and the immutability of ethnic hierarchies

Kåre Vernby () and Rafaela Dancygier ()
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Kåre Vernby: Stockholms universitet, Postal: Stockholms universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, SE-106 91 Stockholm, https://karevernby.wordpress.com
Rafaela Dancygier: Princeton university, Postal: Princeton University, Department of politics, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, 245 Corwin Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, https://scholar.princeton.edu/rdancygi/home

No 2018:17, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: How pervasive is labor market discrimination against immigrants and what options do policymakers and migrants have to reduce it? To answer these questions, we conducted a field experiment on employer discrimination in Sweden. Going beyond existing work, we test for a large range of applicant characteristics using a factorial design. We examine whether migrants can affect their employment chances – by adopting citizenship, acquiring work experience, or signaling religious practice – or whether fixed traits such as country of birth or gender are more consequential. We find no evidence that immigrants can affect their employment chances by any of the tested means. Rather, ethnic hierarchies are critical: callback rates decline precipitously with the degree of ethno-cultural distance, leaving Iraqis and Somalis, especially if they are male, with much reduced employment chances. These findings highlight that immigrants have few tools at their disposal to escape ethnic penalties and that efforts to reduce discrimination must address employer prejudice.

Keywords: country of birth; citizenship; gender; work-experience; religion; discrimination; field experiment; labor market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2018-11-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2018_017

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