What is it about?

We use a field experiment to measure discrimination against Blacks in the Swiss labour market. By sending fictitious applications to real job openings, we establish that candidates of Swiss (ostensibly White) descent are more likely to be invited than descendants of Cameroonian descent (Blacks). Black job seekers must send around 30 per cent more applications than White candidates to be invited to a job interview. The level of discrimination is comparable to that of applications with a Kosovo-Albanian name.

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Why is it important?

Most work on hiring discrimination in Europe focuses on immigration rather than skin colour, and some pundits even suggest that discrimination against Blacks could not exist in Switzerland because the country never had official colonies.

Perspectives

When the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum in 2020, increasingly people in Western Europe started talking about racism and discrimination against Blacks: here we provide an empirical basis for this discussion.

Didier Ruedin
Universite de Neuchatel

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This page is a summary of: Hiring discrimination on the basis of skin colour? A correspondence test in Switzerland, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, November 2021, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/1369183x.2021.1999795.
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