Esmark, Anders, & Mikkel Bech Liengaard. Does Ethnicity Affect Allocation of Unemployment-Related Benefits to Job Center Clients? A Survey-Experimental Study of Representative Bureaucracy in Denmark. (2022).

Esmark, Anders, & Mikkel Bech Liengaard. Does Ethnicity Affect Allocation of Unemployment-Related Benefits to Job Center Clients? A Survey-Experimental Study of Representative Bureaucracy in Denmark. Journal of Social Policy, 2022, 1–22.

The role of street-level bureaucracy in social policy has been taken up by two relatively distinct streams of research, based on Lipsky’s foundational work (2010). One group of literature has focused on the organizational working conditions, practices and coping mechanisms of street-level bureaucrats, their impact on the implementation of political programs and reforms, and the scope for discretion in the face of political pressures and institutional demands (Brodkin and Marston, 2013; Jessen and Tufte, 2014; Breit et al., 2016; Van Berkel et al., 2017; van Berkel, 2020). Starting from a focus on interaction with clients and the direct impact of discretionary decisions ‘on people’s lives’ (Lipsky, 2010, 8), a second group of studies has focused more on differences in allocation of benefits caused by perceived ‘deservingness’ and discrimination among street-level bureaucrats (Altreiter and Leibetseder, 2014; Terum et al., 2018; Jilke and Tummers, 2018).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279422000034

Dahl, Malte. Alike but Different: How Cultural Distinctiveness Shapes Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Access to the Labour Market. (2022)

Dahl, Malte. Alike but Different: How Cultural Distinctiveness Shapes Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Access to the Labour Market. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 23(4), 2022, 2269–2287.

Does cultural dissimilarity explain discrimination against immigrant-origin minorities in the labour market? I conducted a factorial field experiment (N = 1350) to explore how explicit group cues trigger differential treatment and whether individuating information that counters cultural-based stereotypical representations mitigate discrimination. Employers were randomly assigned a job application with a putative female ethnic majority or immigrant-origin minority alias and CV photographs portraying the minority candidate with or without a headscarf—perhaps the quintessential marker of Muslim identity. Moreover, half the job applications conveyed information intended to reduce cultural distance by indicating a liberal lifestyle and civic participation. The results demonstrate that immigrant-origin women are significantly less likely to receive an invitation to a job interview, especially if they also wear a headscarf. Contrary to expectations, the differential treatment is not moderated by the individuating information in the applications. This indicates that the differential treatment is persistent and also targets immigrant-origin minorities who have acquired soft skills and signals cultural proximity.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-021-00844-y

Caselli, Mauro & Paolo Falco. As Long as They Are Cheap: Experimental Evidence on the Demand for Migrant Workers. (2020) [PDF]

Caselli, Mauro & Paolo Falco. As Long as They Are Cheap: Experimental Evidence on the Demand for Migrant Workers, SSRN, 2020.

How does demand for migrant vs native workers change with price? We conduct an experiment with 56,000 Danish households (over 2 percent of all households in the country), who receive an advertisement from a cleaning company whose operators vary randomly across areas but meet the same quality standards and have equal customer ratings. When the operator has a migrant background, we find that demand is significantly lower than when the operator is a native. The gap, however, is highly sensitive to price, with demand for the migrant increasing steeply as the price falls. For an hourly pay close to the 25th percentile of the earnings distribution in similar occupations (24 USD per hour), demand for the migrant is one-fifth of the demand for the native. A 25 percent reduction in the price makes the gap in demand disappear.

PDF: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3685873

Thijssen, Lex, Frank van Tubergen, Marcel Coenders, Robert Hellpap, and Suzanne Jak, Discrimination of Black and Muslim Minority Groups in Western Societies: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis of Field Experiments. (2022) [PDF]

Thijssen, Lex, Frank van Tubergen, Marcel Coenders, Robert Hellpap, and Suzanne Jak, Discrimination of Black and Muslim Minority Groups in Western Societies: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis of Field Experiments, International Migration Review, 56.3 (2022), 843–80

This article examines discrimination against black and Muslim minority groups in 20 Western labor markets. We analyze the outcomes of 94 field experiments, conducted between 1973 and 2016 and representing ?240,000 fictitious job applications. Using meta-analysis, we find that black minority groups are more strongly discriminated against than non-black minority groups. The degree of discrimination of black minority groups varies cross-nationally, whereas Muslim minority groups are equally discriminated across national contexts. Unexpectedly, discrimination against black minority groups in the United States is mostly lower than in European countries. These findings suggest that racial-ethnic discrimination in hiring can be better understood by taking a multigroup and cross-country perspective.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183211045044

Pedersen, Mogens Jin, and Vibeke Lehmann Nielsen, Understanding Discrimination: Outcome-Relevant Information Does Not Mitigate Discrimination. (2022)

Pedersen, Mogens Jin, and Vibeke Lehmann Nielsen, Understanding Discrimination: Outcome-Relevant Information Does Not Mitigate Discrimination, Social Problems, 2022, spac006

People experience discrimination across a variety of domains, including at work and in dealings with public institutions, but what makes some individuals discriminate against others? Two dominant scholarly approaches—“statistical” and “taste-based”—offer different explanations. Statistical discrimination models imply that discrimination occurs because of incomplete information (informational bias), whereas taste-based discrimination models emphasize more elusive and deep-rooted cognitive biases. Adding new insights into whether discrimination is “statistical” or “taste-based,” this article examines how providing information that reduces informational bias affects discrimination. Using a preregistered survey experimental design, a representative sample of Danish residents (n = 2,024) are exposed to three unique vignettes, each involving a choice of service provider (general practitioner, babysitter, and house cleaner). Relating to gender and nativity stereotypes, we manipulate the gender of the general practitioners and the babysitters, and the country of origin of the house cleaners. Moreover, we manipulate exposure to rating cues about the service providers’ task performance, thus mitigating informational bias to some extent. Contrasting the expectations of statistical discrimination models, the performance ratings cues do not mitigate discrimination. Across all three vignettes, the participants exhibit stereotypical preferences, and the performance rating cues do not affect these discriminatory biases.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac006

Gomez-Gonzalez, Carlos, Cornel Nesseler & Helmut M. Dietl, Mapping discrimination in Europe through a field experiment in amateur sport. (2021) [PDF]

Gomez-Gonzalez, Carlos, Cornel Nesseler & Helmut M. Dietl (2021). Mapping discrimination in Europe through a field experiment in amateur sport. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00773-2

Societies are increasingly multicultural and diverse, consisting of members who migrated from various other countries. However, immigrants and ethnic minorities often face discrimination in the form of fewer opportunities for labor and housing, as well as limitations on interactions in other social domains. Using mock email accounts with typical native-sounding and foreign-sounding names, we contacted 23,020 amateur football clubs in 22 European countries, asking to participate in a training session. Response rates differed across countries and were, on average, about 10% lower for foreign-sounding names. The present field experiment reveals discrimination against ethnic minority groups, uncovering organizational deficiencies in a system trusted to foster social interactions.

PDF: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00773-2

Batsaikhan et al. Daycare Choice and Ethnic Diversity: Evidence from a Randomized Survey. (2019) [PDF]

Batsaikhan, M., Gørtz, M., Kennes, J. R., Lyng, R. S., Monte, D., & Tumennasan, N. (2019). Daycare Choice and Ethnic Diversity: Evidence from a Randomized Survey. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3507520

Discrimination among individuals is very well documented in the literature, but much less is known about how discrimination is passed down through generations. By designing and conducting a randomized survey to study daycare choices and ethnic diversity, we provide evidence of how biases against ethnic minorities affect parental choices of early childhood education. We asked parents in Copenhagen to choose between two daycares — structured vs. free-play. Each daycare had testimonials from (fictive) parents whose child allegedly attended the daycare, and the survey randomized the names of the testifying parents across the sample. Another novelty of our study is that we are able to capture how discriminatory attitudes towards ethnic minorities interact with preferences for specific teaching styles. In our results we find bias against ethnic minorities among parents who prefer the structured daycare. We validate our results through data on willingness to travel to the preferred daycare, which is higher for parents who prefer the structured daycare when there was an ethnic minority name associated with the free-play daycare.

PDF: https://www.econ.ku.dk/cebi/publikationer/working-papers/CEBI_-_WP_14-19.pdf

Tygstrup, Tea Hansen, & Olsen, Asmus Leth Citizens’ Discrimination against Street-level Bureaucrats. (2019). [PDF]

Tygstrup, Tea Hansen, & Olsen, Asmus Leth (2019). Citizens’ Discrimination against Street-level Bureaucrats. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WTN3S

Extensive experimental work documents discrimination against minorities in their interaction with the state. The increased reliance on citizen choice of service provider increasing allow discrimination to run the other way: Do citizens discriminate against street-level bureaucrats? Using two discrete choice designs in a single survey (N=1,027) we study ethnic discrimination in citizens’ choice of general practioner (GP) in a Nordic welfare state. We find strong evidence of discrimination as GPs with Muslim names are chosen 14 percentage point less than Danish named GPs with similar characteristics. Choice models are often accompanied with quality performance indicators but additional analysis show that discrimination is not reduced if a performance measure for the GP is provided to citizens. The results question the effectiveness of traditional policy tools to combat discrimination in increasingly more diverse public sector with more emphasis on citizens choice.   

PDF: https://osf.io/wtn3s/

Larsen, Mikkel Haderup, and Merlin Schaeffer. ‘Healthcare Chauvinism during the COVID-19 Pandemic’. (2020) [PDF]

Larsen, Mikkel Haderup, and Merlin Schaeffer. ‘Healthcare Chauvinism during the COVID-19 Pandemic’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Routledge, Dec. 2020.

Social science research has produced evidence of welfare chauvinism whereby citizens turn against social policies that disproportionately benefit immigrants and their descendants. Some policymakers advocate welfare chauvinism as a means to incentivize fast labour market integration and assimilation into the mainstream more generally. These contested arguments about integration incentives can hardly be extended to the case of hospital treatment of an acute COVID-19 infection. On that premise we conducted a pre-registered online survey experiment among a representative sample of the Danish population about healthcare chauvinism against recent immigrants and Muslim minorities during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic of spring 2020. Our results show no evidence of blatant racism-driven healthcare chauvinism against acute COVID-19 patients with a Muslim name who were born in Denmark. However, we do find evidence of healthcare chauvinism against patients with a Danish/Nordic name who immigrated to Denmark only a year ago. Moreover, healthcare chauvinism against recently-immigrated COVID-19 patients doubles in strength if they have a Muslim name. Our findings thus suggest that there is general reciprocity-motivated welfare chauvinism against recent immigrants who have not contributed to the welfare state for long and that racism against Muslims strongly catalyses this form of welfare chauvinism.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1860742.

Dinesen, Peter Thisted, Malte Dahl, and Mikkel Schiøler. ‘When Are Legislators Responsive to Ethnic Minorities? Testing the Role of Electoral Incentives and Candidate Selection for Mitigating Ethnocentric Responsiveness’. (2021) [PDF]

Dinesen, Peter Thisted, Malte Dahl, and Mikkel Schiøler. ‘When Are Legislators Responsive to Ethnic Minorities? Testing the Role of Electoral Incentives and Candidate Selection for Mitigating Ethnocentric Responsiveness’. American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Previous studies have documented ethnic/racial bias in politicians’ constituency service, but less is known about the circumstances under which such ethnocentric responsiveness is curbed. We propose and test two hypotheses in this regard: the electoral incentives hypothesis, predicting that incentives for (re)election crowd out politicians’ potential biases, and the candidate selection hypothesis, stipulating that minority constituents can identify responsive legislators by using candidates’ partisan affiliation and stated policy preferences as heuristics. We test these hypotheses through a field experiment on the responsiveness of incumbent local politicians in Denmark (N = 2,395), varying ethnicity, gender, and intention to vote for the candidate in the upcoming election, merged with data on their electoral performance and their stated policy preferences from a voting advice application. We observe marked ethnocentric responsiveness and find no indication that electoral incentives mitigate this behavior. However, minority voters can use parties’ and individual candidates’ stances on immigration to identify responsive politicians.

doi:10.1017/S0003055420001070.

PDF: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/when-are-legislators-responsive-to-ethnic-minorities-testing-the-role-of-electoral-incentives-and-candidate-selection-for-mitigating-ethnocentric-responsiveness/06D0BD53A0AA819DEADFC4A5F38B73FD.

Herby, Jonas, and Ulrik Haagen Nielsen. Omfanget Af Forskelsbehandling Af Nydanskere: Et Felteksperiment På Lejeboligmarkedet. (2015) [PDF]

Herby, Jonas, and Ulrik Haagen Nielsen. Omfanget Af Forskelsbehandling Af Nydanskere: Et Felteksperiment På Lejeboligmarkedet. Holte: Ankestyrelsen, 3 Nov. 2015,

Boligsøgende med mellemøstligt klingende navne skal i snit søge om 27 % flere boliger end boligsøgende med et danskklingende navn for at have ligeså gode chancer for at få tilbudt en lejebolig eller en fremvisning. Det vil sige, at når en boligsøgende med et danskklingende navn har sendt 4 ansøgninger, skal en boligsøgende med et mellemøstligt klingende navn søge om 5 boliger for at have lige så gode muligheder for at se eller få den tilbudt.

PDF: https://ast.dk/filer/ankestyrelsen-generelt/antidiskriminationsenheden/rapport-om-etnisk-diskrimination-pa-boligmarkedet.pdf.

Hjortskov, Morten, Simon Calmar Andersen, and Morten Jakobsen. ‘Encouraging Political Voices of Underrepresented Citizens through Coproduction: Evidence from a Randomized Field Trial: Encouraging Political Voices’. (2018) [PDF]

Hjortskov, Morten, Simon Calmar Andersen, and Morten Jakobsen. ‘Encouraging Political Voices of Underrepresented Citizens through Coproduction: Evidence from a Randomized Field Trial: ENCOURAGING POLITICAL VOICES’. American Journal of Political Science, vol. 62, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 597–609.

Not all citizens’ voices are heard with equal strength in the political chorus. Based on studies of policy feedback, we suggest that engaging underrepresented citizens in the production of public services (i.e., making them “coproducers”) increases their political voice. We use a field experiment to test the effect of involving ethnic minorities in the education of their children on their propensity to directly voice their preferences with the education policy through government citizen surveys and their tendency to vote in elections. Among these normally underrepresented citizens, coproduction increased their propensity to voice their preferences to politicians through citizen surveys but not their tendency to vote. The effect on voicing in government citizen surveys tends to be larger among nonvoters. The results indicate how policies involving underrepresented citizens can raise the voices of people who would not otherwise be heard.

doi:10.1111/ajps.12360.

PDF: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/encouraging-political-voices-of-underrepresented-citizens-through-coproduction-evidence-from-a-randomized-field-trial(8ab96c02-c0dd-48cf-b33a-71820152762c).html.

Juhl Jørgensen, Frederik. How to Develop Policies That Foster Refugee Integration and Are Supported by Voters. (2020) [PDF]

Juhl Jørgensen, Frederik. How to Develop Policies That Foster Refugee Integration and Are Supported by Voters. Dissertation. Aarhus University, 2020,

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of a fundamental policy challenge that refugee-receiving countries face: how to develop policies that foster integration and are supported by voters. It splits this challenge into two. On the one hand, there is the policy goal of promoting integration. This leads to research question 1: how does integration policies affect refugee integration. On the other hand, policy makers face the electoral constraint that policies need to be supported by voters. This leads to research question 2: does refugees’ integration success or failure affect public support for policy. The dissertation takes its theoretical point of departure in two contrasting theoretical paradigms that structure the debates about integration policy. One paradigm, argues that strict policies—such as limited benefits or forced placement—promote integration. The contrasting paradigm, holds that lenient policies—like equal benefits or voluntary placement—catalyze social mobility and integration. I study these contrasting expectations in the context of two Danish policy reforms: the start help policy and the forced placement policy. Combined, these policies have formed the backbone of Danish integration policy for the past two decades. The start help policy lowered refugees’ social assistance benefits by up to 50 percent for new refugees who obtained residency after July 1 2002. The forced placement policy fundamentally changed the Danish dispersal system as of January 1 1999: new refugees who obtained residency after this date were subject to forced placement, whereas refugees who arrived earlier were placed on a voluntary basis. I exploit these cutoffs in regression dis- continuity designs that just like controlled randomized experiments control for all confounding factors by design. The reforms provide rigorous research designs (i.e., natural experiments) for causal identification. My data are based on the Danish national registers and combine information about the treatments (i.e., the cutoffs) with information on relevant integration outcomes. Overall, the findings show that the start help and forced placement policy are too strict if the aim is to maximize integration. For policy design, this means that policy makers should reassess current policies: they should pro- vide refugees with equal benefits to prevent negative effects from economic deprivation and remove restrictions on relocation to leverage synergy effects between individual characteristics and place characteristics. Theoretically, the findings support the paradigm, which argues that equal benefits and voluntary placement catalyze social mobility and integration. These results align with recent studies, which show that less restrictive policies—i.e., fewer restrictions 87 on citizenship acquisition (Hainmueller et al. 2015; 2017a; 2019), faster processing of asylum applications (Hainmueller et al. 2016; Hvidtfeldt et al. 2018), protection of unauthorized immigrants (Orrenius and Zavodny 2012; Hainmueller et al. 2017b), and fewer restrictions on asylum seekers’ possibility of employment (Marbach et al. 2018)—are catalysts of integration. In spite of this evidence, we continuously experience that policy makers tighten integration policies and thereby decrease refugees’ chances of success- ful integration. One plausible reason for the mismatch between the supply of policies and the aim of maximizing integration is that domestic voters demand strict policies (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019). This constrains policy makers’ ability to deliver policies that achieve the goal of promoting integration. The last part of the dissertation moves on to study this policy constraint and explores strategies that can potentially create leeway to develop less strict policies that would promote integration. This part of the dissertation examines whether it is possible to promote citizens preferences regarding integration policy by providing them with information about refugees’ actual integration success or failure. In particular, we conduct a large-scale survey experiment that isolates the effects of correct information about non-Western immigrants’ welfare dependency rates, their crime rates, and their overall size in relation to the total population. Two opposing views structure the theoretical expectations to the impacts of this type of information. One view that draws on Bayesian learning models argues that citizens use information to update their evaluations of immigrants’ integration performance into the host society. In this logic, the provision of information may be expected to promote more positive preferences regarding policy (Sides and Citrin 2007; Nadeau et al. 1993). Another view holds that people acknowledge correct information and update their factual beliefs, but reinterpret the information in a selective fashion that justifies their existing opinions (Gaines et al. 2007). In this logic, the provision of information has little, if any, influence on citizens’ policy preferences. In line with previous work, the findings first show that citizens’ are very skeptical of non-Western immigrants and markedly exaggerate problems related to immigration. In addition, there is a strong correlation between skepticism and support for anti-immigration policies. This demonstrates that pol- icy makers indeed face pronounced electoral constraints when designing integration policy. Second, the results demonstrate that while participants update their factual beliefs in light of correct information, they remain unwilling to change their policy preferences. These findings support conclusions from ear- lier work (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019). As a novel finding, we show that the link between facts and policy beliefs breaks down because people interpret the correct information in a belief-consistent manner that al- lows them to avoid using the new information to guide their policy prefer- ences. Overall, this means policy makers seemingly cannot rely on “explaining the facts” as a strategy to promote more favorable integration policy views and thereby create leeway to develop less strict policies that would foster integra- tion.

Dansk resumé Lande der modtager flygtninge står over for den fundamentale politiske ud- fordring: hvordan udvikles politikker der fremmer integrationen og som samtidig bakkes op af vælgerne. Afhandlingen bidrager til forståelsen af problemstilling, og inddeler udfordringen i to forskningsspørgsmål. På den ene side er der målet om at udvikle politikker, der fremmer integrationen, hvilket fører til forskningsspørgsmål 1: hvordan påvirker integrationspolitikker flygtninges integration. På den anden side begrænses politiske beslutningstagere af, at det er nødvendigt at politikkerne møder opbakning i befolkningen. Dette fører til forskningsspørgsmål 2: påvirker flygtninges integrationssucces eller -fiasko befolkningens opbakningen til policy. Afhandlingen tager sit teoretiske afsæt i to modsatrettede teoretiske paradigmer, som ofte strukturerer debatten omhandlende integrationspolitik. Det første paradigme argumenterer for, at strengere politikker, såsom begrænset adgang til overførselsindkomster eller tvungen placering, fremmer integrationen. Det andet paradigme argumenterer modsat for, at mindre strenge politikker, såsom lige adgang til overførselsindkomster eller frivillig placering, fremskynder social mobilitet og integration. Til at studere disse modsatrettede forventninger anvender jeg henholdsvis den danske starthjælpsreform og reformen af den danske placeringspolitik, der tilsammen har udgjort rygraden af dansk integrationspolitik de seneste to årtier. Starthjælpspolitikken nedsatte flygtninges overførselsindkomst med op til 50 procent for nye flygtninge, der opnåede opholdstilladelse efter 1. juli 2002. Den danske placeringspolitik blev fundamentalt ændret fra 1. januar 1999, hvor spredningen af flygtninge overgik fra et frivilligt til tvunget regime. Jeg udnytter disse tærskler i regressionsdiskontinuitetsdesigns, der ligesom randomiserede eksperimenter per konstruktion kontrollerer for alternative forklaringer. Reformerne udgør dermed naturlige eksperimenter og stringente forskningsdesigns for kausal inferens. Mit data er baseret på de national danske registre og kombinerer information omkring reformernes tærskelværdier med information omkring relevante integrationsvariable. Overordnet viser resultaterne, at starthjælpen og tvungen placering er for stramme, såfremt målet er, at fremme integrationen. For policy betyder det, at de politiske beslutningstagere bør genoverveje disse politikker. Konkret bør de give flygtninge ret til regulære overførselsindkomster for at forhindre de negative konsekvenser der følger af økonomiske afsavn. Endvidere bør de fjerne den tvungne placering, der forhindrer udnyttelsen af potentielle positive synergieffekter, der måtte være mellem flygtninges og deres placerings karakteristika. Teoretisk støtter resultaterne det andet paradigme, der argumenterer for, at lige overførselsindkomster og frivillig placering fremskynder social mobilitet og integration. Resultaterne flugter ned den seneste forskning, der viser, at færre begrænsninger på erhvervelsen af statsborgerskab (Hainmueller et al. 2015; 2017a; 2019), hurtigere behandling af asylansøgninger (Hainmueller et al. 2016; Hvidtfeldt et al. 2018), beskyttelse af illegale indva drer (Orrenius and Zavodny 2012; Hainmueller et al. 2017b), samt færre begrænsninger af asylansøgeres muligheder for at arbejde (Marbach et al. 2018) fremmer integrationen. På trods af disse resultater oplever vi en stadig stigende tendens til, at de politiske beslutningstagere strammer forskellige integrationspolitikker. Der- med besværliggør de faktisk flygtninges integration fremfor at hjælpe den på vej. En potentiel årsag til dette misforhold mellem målet om at fremme integrationen og politikudbuddet er, at vælgerne rent faktisk efterspørger disse politikker (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019), og dermed begrænser beslutningstagernes muligheder for at udvikle alternativer, der kan levere på målet om at fremskynde integrationen. Den sidste del af afhandlingen beskæftiger sig med disse vælgermæssige begrænsninger, og udforsker strategier, beslutningstagerne potentielt kan an- vende til at skabe sig selv spillerum til at udvikle politikker, der fremmer integrationen. Denne del af afhandlingen undersøger, om det er muligt at fremme vælgernes præferencer for integrationspolitik ved at præsentere dem for in- formation om flygtninges faktiske integration. Konkret anvender vi et survey-eksperiment til at isolere effekterne af at give vores respondenter korrekt in- formation om ikke-vestlige indvandreres afhængighed af overførselsindkomster, deres kriminalitetsrater samt størrelsen af den ikke-vestlige indvandrer- befolkning relativt til den samlede befolkning. To modsatrette perspektiver strukturerer hvordan denne type information kan forventes at påvirke respondenterne. Det første perspektiv, der baserer sig på bayesianske læringsmodeller, argumenterer for, at vælgere anvender information til at opdatere deres evalueringer af immigranternes faktiske integration. Følgeligt forventes det, at de justerer deres policy præferencer i en mere positiv retning (Sides and Citrin 2007; Nadeau et al. 1993). Det andet perspektiv anerkender at vælgerne måske anvender information til at opdatere deres faktiske overbevisninger, men argumenterer modsat for, at de fortolker information på selektiv vis således de er i stand til at retfærdiggøre deres eksisterende meninger (Gaines et al. 2007). Dermed kan det ikke forventes, at information har nogen effekt på deres policy præferencer. På linje med den eksisterende litteratur viser mine resultater for det første, at vælgerne er meget skeptiske overfor ikke-vestlige indvandrere, og markant overestimerer problemer relaterer til denne immigration. Derudover viser resultaterne, at der er en stærk korrelation mellem at være skeptisk og fore- trække stramme politikker. Samlet viser det, at beslutningstager står overfor markante elektorale begrænsninger i deres overvejelser om udformningen af integrationspolitikker. For det andet viser resultaterne, at vores respondenter er parate til at opdatere deres faktiske overbevisninger i lyset af ny information, men de forbliver modvillige i forhold til at justere deres policy præferencer. Dette underbygger konklusionerne fra tidligere studier i andre kontekster (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019). Vi viser samtidig, at linket mellem fakta og policy bryder sammen, fordi vores respondenter fortolker den nye information på en måde, der er i overensstemmelse med deres eksisterende meninger, hvilket retfærdiggør at de undgår at anvende den nye information til at guide deres policy præference. Samlet set betyder det, at beslutningstagerne tilsyneladende ikke kan regne med, at det er tilstrækkeligt at for- klare de faktiske forhold, som en strategi til at fremme mere favorable integrationspolitiske holdninger og dermed skabe sig selv et spillerum til at ud- vikle politikker, der fremskynder integrationen.

PDF: https://politica.dk/fileadmin/politica/Dokumenter/ph.d.-afhandlinger/frederik_juhl.pdf.

Pedersen, Mogens Jin, Justin M. Stritch, and Frederik Thuesen. ‘Punishment on the Frontlines of Public Service Delivery: Client Ethnicity and Caseworker Sanctioning Decisions in a Scandinavian Welfare State’. (2018) [PDF]

Pedersen, Mogens Jin, Justin M. Stritch, and Frederik Thuesen. ‘Punishment on the Frontlines of Public Service Delivery: Client Ethnicity and Caseworker Sanctioning Decisions in a Scandinavian Welfare State’. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, vol. 28, no. 3, June 2018, pp. 339–354.

Many public welfare programs give public employees discretionary authority to dispense sanc- tions when clients do not follow or comply with the policies and procedures required for receiving welfare benefits.Yet research also shows that public employees’ use of discretion in decision-mak- ing that affects clients can occasionally be marked by racial biases and disparities. Drawing on the Racial Classification Model (RCM) for a theoretical model, this article examines how client ethnicity shapes public employees’ decisions to sanction clients. Using Danish employment agencies as our empirical setting, we present findings from two complementary studies. Study 1 uses nationwide administrative data. Examining sanctioning activity at the employment agency-level, we find that agencies with a larger percentage of clients being non-Western immigrants or their descendants impose a greater overall number of sanctions and dispense them with greater frequency. Study 2 uses survey experimental data to build on this finding. Addressing concerns about internal val- idity and a need for analyses at the individual employee-level, we present survey experimental evidence that employment agency caseworkers are more likely to recommend sanctions for ethnic minority (Middle-Eastern origin) clients than for ethnic majority (Danish origin) clients. Moreover, we investigate how three caseworker characteristics—ethnicity, gender, and work experience— condition the relationship between client ethnicity and caseworkers’ decisions to sanction clients. Although we find no moderation effects for ethnicity or gender, work experience appears to dimin- ish the influence of client ethnicity on the caseworkers’ sanctioning decisions. Overall, our studies support the likelihood that ethnic minority clients will be punished more often for policy infractions than ethnic majority clients—and that caseworker work experience mitigates part of this bias.

doi:10.1093/jopart/muy018.

PDF: https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/163177993/Punishment_on_the_Frontlines_of_Public_Service_Delivery_Accepted_manuscript_2018.pdf.

Olsen, Asmus Leth, Jonas Høgh Kyhse‐Andersen, and Donald Moynihan. ‘The Unequal Distribution of Opportunity: A National Audit Study of Bureaucratic Discrimination in Primary School Access’. (2020) [PDF]

Olsen, Asmus Leth, Jonas Høgh Kyhse‐Andersen, and Donald Moynihan. ‘The Unequal Distribution of Opportunity: A National Audit Study of Bureaucratic Discrimination in Primary School Access’. American Journal of Political Science, 2020.

Administrators can use their discretion to discriminate in the provision of public services via two mechanisms. They make decisions to allocate public services, allowing them to discriminate via allocative exclusion. They can also discriminate by targeting administrative burdens toward outgroups to make bureaucratic processes more onerous. While prior audit studies only examine the use of administrative burdens, we offer evidence of both mechanisms. We sent a request to all Danish primary schools (N = 1,698) from an ingroup (a typical Danish name) and outgroup (a Muslim name) father asking if it was possible to move his child to the school. While both groups received similar response rates, we find large differences in discrimination via allocative exclusion: Danes received a clear acceptance 25% of the time, compared to 15% for Muslims. Muslims also faced greater administrative burdens in the form of additional questions.

doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12584.

PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajps.12584.

Petersen, Niels Bjørn Grund. ‘Disciplining the Strong? Discrimination of Service Users and the Moderating Role of PSM and Ability to Cope’. (2021)

Petersen, Niels Bjørn Grund. ‘Disciplining the Strong? Discrimination of Service Users and the Moderating Role of PSM and Ability to Cope’. Public Management Review, vol. 23, no. 2, Feb. 2021, pp. 168–188.

Ethnic stereotypes influence frontline workers’ decision-making, which challenges the legitimacy of public organizations. In this article, we examine how ethnic stereotypes affect caseworkers’ sanctioning behaviour in a context where the client group consists of highly vulnerable clients. Using survey experimental vignettes and qualitative interviews, we find that social caseworkers use ethnic classification in their decision-making. However, contrary to our expectations, caseworkers are less likely to sanction clients with a nonwestern ethnicity compared to ethnic Danish clients. In addition, the article finds novel evidence indicating that employee traits mitigate the use of ethnic stereotypes.

doi:10.1080/14719037.2019.1668469.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14719037.2019.1668469.

Wulff, Jesper N., and Anders R. Villadsen. ‘Are Survey Experiments as Valid as Field Experiments in Management Research? An Empirical Comparison Using the Case of Ethnic Employment Discrimination’ (2020)

Wulff, Jesper N., and Anders R. Villadsen. ‘Are Survey Experiments as Valid as Field Experiments in Management Research? An Empirical Comparison Using the Case of Ethnic Employment Discrimination’. European Management Review, vol. 17, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 347–356.

Field experiments have long been the gold standard in studies of organizational topics such as ethnic discrimination in recruitment. The recent use of survey experiments, also known as experimental vignettes, suggests that some researchers believe that survey experiments could be used as an alternative to field experiments. In this study we put this notion to the test. We perform a field experiment followed by two survey experiments on ethnic discrimination in recruitment. While the results of our field experiment are consistent with previous evidence on discrimination, one survey experiment concludes no difference between native and immigrant employees while another concludes positive discrimination. These results should invoke caution in researchers wanting to investigate organizational topics using survey experiments.

doi:10.1111/emre.12342.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/emre.12342

Guul, Thorbjørn Sejr, Anders R. Villadsen, and Jesper N. Wulff. ‘Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations’. (2019)

Guul, Thorbjørn Sejr, Anders R. Villadsen, and Jesper N. Wulff. ‘Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations’. Public Administration Review, vol. 79, no. 5, Sept. 2019, pp. 666–674.

Equal treatment is a key feature of modern bureaucracy. However, several studies have shown that public organizations discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities to different degrees. Which organizational features explain differences in discrimination is largely unknown. This article proposes that organizational performance relates to an organization’s likelihood of engaging in employment discrimination and argues that poor-performing organizations tend to be less open to new ideas and that decision makers in such organizations are more prone to stereotyping behavior. The study combines a field experiment in which applications were sent to real job vacancies in 71 Danish public schools with administrative data on the schools. Bayesian analyses show that minority applicants generally faced discrimination but that they experienced a higher callback rate from better-performing schools than from poorer-performing schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

doi:10.1111/puar.13094.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/puar.13094.

Fietkau, Sebastian, and Kasper M. Hansen. ‘How Perceptions of Immigrants Trigger Feelings of Economic and Cultural Threats in Two Welfare States, How Perceptions of Immigrants Trigger Feelings of Economic and Cultural Threats in Two Welfare States’. European Union Politics, vol. 19, no. 1, Mar. 2018, pp. 119–139.

Better understanding of attitudes toward immigration is crucial to avoid misperception of immigration in the public debate. Through two identical online survey experiments applying morphed faces of non-Western immigrants and textual vignettes, the authors manipulate complexion, education, family background, and gender in Denmark and Germany. For women, an additional split in which half of the women wore a headscarf is performed. In both countries, highly skilled immigrants are preferred to low-skilled immigrants. Danes are more skeptical toward non-Western immigration than Germans. Essentially, less educated Danes are very critical of accepting non-Western immigrants in their country. It is suggested that this difference is driven by a large welfare state in Denmark compared to Germany, suggesting a stronger fear in welfare societies that immigrants will exploit welfare benefits., Better understanding of attitudes toward immigration is crucial to avoid misperception of immigration in the public debate. Through two identical online survey experiments applying morphed faces of non-Western immigrants and textual vignettes, the authors manipulate complexion, education, family background, and gender in Denmark and Germany. For women, an additional split in which half of the women wore a headscarf is performed. In both countries, highly skilled immigrants are preferred to low-skilled immigrants. Danes are more skeptical toward non-Western immigration than Germans. Essentially, less educated Danes are very critical of accepting non-Western immigrants in their country. It is suggested that this difference is driven by a large welfare state in Denmark compared to Germany, suggesting a stronger fear in welfare societies that immigrants will exploit welfare benefits.

doi:10.1177/1465116517734064.

PDF: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1465116517734064.

Damm, Anna Piil. ‘Neighborhood Quality and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Quasi-Random Neighborhood Assignment of Immigrants’. (2014)

Damm, Anna Piil. ‘Neighborhood Quality and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Quasi-Random Neighborhood Assignment of Immigrants’. Journal of Urban Economics, vol. 79, Jan. 2014, pp. 139–166.

Settlement in a socially deprived neighborhood may hamper individual labor market outcomes because of lack of employed or highly skilled contacts. I investigate this hypothesis by exploiting a unique natural experiment that occurred between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to municipalities quasi-randomly, which successfully addresses the methodological problem of endogenous neighborhood selection. I show that individuals sort into neighborhoods. Taking account of location sorting, living in a socially deprived neighborhood does not affect labor market outcomes of refugee men. Their labor market outcomes are also not affected by the overall employment rate and the overall average skill level in the neighborhood. However, an increase in the average skill level of non-Western immigrant men living in the neighborhood raises their employment probability, while an increase in the employment rate of co-national men living in the neighborhood raises their real annual earnings. This provides quasi-experimental evidence that residence-based job information networks are ethnically stratified.

doi:10.1016/j.jue.2013.08.004.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119013000612

Dahl, Malte, and Niels Krog. ‘Experimental Evidence of Discrimination in the Labour Market: Intersections between Ethnicity, Gender, and Socio-Economic Status’. (2018) [PDF]

Dahl, Malte, and Niels Krog. ‘Experimental Evidence of Discrimination in the Labour Market: Intersections between Ethnicity, Gender, and Socio-Economic Status’. European Sociological Review, vol. 34, no. 4, Oxford Academic, Aug. 2018, pp. 402–417.

This article presents evidence of ethnic discrimination in the recruitment process from a field experiment conducted in the Danish labour market. In a correspondence experiment, fictitious job applications were randomly assigned either a Danish or Middle Eastern-sounding name and sent to real job openings. In addition to providing evidence on the extent of ethnic discrimination in the Danish labour market, the study offers two novel contributions to the literature more generally. First, because a majority of European correspondence experiments have relied solely on applications with male aliases, there is limited evidence on the way gender and ethnicity interact across different occupations. By randomly assigning gender and ethnicity, this study suggests that ethnic discrimination is strongly moderated by gender: minority males are consistently subject to a much larger degree of discrimin- ation than minority females across different types of occupations. Second, this study addresses a key critique of previous correspondence experiments by examining the potential confounding effect of socio-economic status related to the names used to represent distinct ethnic groups. The results support the notion that differences in callbacks are caused exclusively by the ethnic traits.

doi:10.1093/esr/jcy020.

PDF: https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/34/4/402/5047111.

Dahl, Malte. Detecting Discrimination: How Group-Based Biases Shape Economic and Political Interactions : Five Empirical Contributions. (2019) [PDF]

Dahl, Malte. Detecting Discrimination: How Group-Based Biases Shape Economic and Political Interactions : Five Empirical Contributions. Cph: Dissertation. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, 2019.

In this dissertation, I explore how group-based biases shape economic and political interactions between salient social groups. Specifically, I test if, when and how some individuals are treated differently because of their descriptive characteristics such as ethnicity or gender. I employ a series of experiments to uncover these questions. I apply a theoretical framework asserting that discrimination can be due to both personal preferences and strategic behaviour and draw upon insights from political behaviour and social psychology to better understand the theoretical underpinnings of discrimination. Specifically, I incorporate insights from a social cognition perspective, which offers a way to understand the cognitive processes by which people place others into social groups and how this shapes behaviour. From these perspectives, I lay out some propositions that I test in two empirical tracks across five research articles that all build on field or survey experiments. In the first track, I explore how social group categories shape citizens’ encounters with public managers and private employers during the hiring process in the Danish labour market. In two correspondence experiments in which equivalent job applications and cover letters with randomly assigned aliases were sent in response to job openings, I uncover differential treatment in hiring decisions. The experiments leave no doubt that immigrant-origin minorities are targets of significant discrimination. This differential treatment is startling considering the fact that applicants were highly qualified for the jobs they applied for. Going beyond existing work, I show that this is especially true when minorities are male or when female applicants wear a headscarf which suggests the importance of the intersection of ethnicity, gender and cues of cultural distinctiveness. Moreover, I find little evidence to indicate that immigrant-origin minorities can reduce this discrimination by indicating adherence to cultural norms. In the second track, I study the effect of group-based biases on the political representation of underrepresented groups. The research articles present compelling evidence that immigrant-origin minorities face significant barriers in obtaining substantive and descriptive political representation. In a field experiment, the third research article indicates the significant bias of incumbents in their direct communication with ethnic out-group constituents. This manifests itself directly in the legislator-constituent relationship: when constituents contact their local incumbents to retrieve information on the location of their polling station, minority voters are significantly less likely to receive a reply, and they receive replies of lower quality. Although the overall level of responsive- ness increases when politicians face strong electoral incentives, the bias persists. One important contribution is the discovery that immigrant-origin voters can identify more responsive politicians by paying attention to two types of heuristics regarding legislators: their partisan affiliation cues and their stated preferences on immigration policies. Departing from the finding that descriptive representation impacts substantive representation, the fourth research article explores reasons for the gap in political representation. Specifically, it investigates whether local political candidates with immigrant-origin names face barriers due to negative voter preferences. Building on a conjoint experiment, the article presents evidence indicat- ing that the electoral prospects of political candidates with immigrant-origin names are hampered because voters prefer ethnic in-group candidates. Strikingly, this is true in a high-information set- ting where voters are informed about candidates’ political experience, policy positions and party membership. Moreover, there is no evidence for a pro-male bias. Finally, in the last research article, I study the validity of the candidate conjoint experimental design. Specifically, I examine to what extent social desirability bias threatens validity and which tactics researchers can pursue to obtain reliable answers. The results indicate that social desirability bias may be a more minimal concern than what is often assumed. Taken together, the evidence from the five research articles provides insight into a deeply challenging social issue. There are often strong legal or normative arguments emphasizing why, in many socio-political interactions, individuals’ immutable group categories should be invisible. Inadequate representation and opportunities can have serious consequences and downstream electoral effects on a number of societal outcomes and have negative spill-over effects across social domains and time. The research articles indicate that discrimination appears to be hard to mitigate and immigrant- origin minorities have few tools at their disposal to reduce discrimination, which points to the need for institutional actions to eliminate barriers that inhibit individuals from attaining equal access.

PDF: https://menneskeret.dk/sites/menneskeret.dk/files/media/dokumenter/malte_dahl_forskning.pdf

Andersen, Simon Calmar, and Thorbjørn Sejr Guul. ‘Reducing Minority Discrimination at the Front Line—Combined Survey and Field Experimental Evidence’. (2019) [PDF]

Andersen, Simon Calmar, and Thorbjørn Sejr Guul. ‘Reducing Minority Discrimination at the Front Line—Combined Survey and Field Experimental Evidence’. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2019.

Despite laws of universalistic treatment, bureaucrats have been shown to discriminate against minorities. A crucial question for public administration is how bureaucracies can be organized in ways that minimize illegitimate discrimination. Especially, since theories suggest that prejudices happen unintentionally and particularly under high workload, bureaucrats’ working conditions may be important. Four randomized experiments support the notion that bureaucrats discriminate as a way of coping with high workload. Most notably, a field experiment randomly assigned teachers to reduced workloads by giving them resources to have more time with the same group of students. In a subsequent survey experiment—using a fictitious future scenario unrelated to the resources provided in the field experiment—discrimination was minimized in the field treatment group, but persisted in the control group.The results thereby support the notion that even though discrimination among bureaucrats does not (only) occur in a reflective manner it can be reduced by altering the way bureaucrats’ work is organized.

doi:10.1093/jopart/muy083.

PDF: https://childresearch.au.dk/fileadmin/childresearch/dokumenter/Publikationer/Reducing_Minority_Discrimination_on_the_Front_Line_-_Combined_Survey_and_Field_Experimental_Evidence.pdf.