Differential discrimination against mobile EU citizens: experimental evidence from bureaucratic choice settings

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Christian Adam
  • Xavier Fernández-i-Marín
  • Oliver James
  • Anita Manatschal
  • Rapp, Carolin Hjort
  • Eva Thomann

EU citizens have rights when living in a member state other than their own. Bureaucratic discrimination undermines the operation of these rights. We go beyond extant research on bureaucratic discrimination in two ways. First, we move beyond considering mobile EU citizens as homogenous immigrant minority to assess whether EU citizens from certain countries face greater discrimination than others. Second, we analyse whether discrimination patterns vary between the general population and public administrators regarding attributes triggering discrimination and whether accountability prevents discrimination. In a pre-registered design, we conduct a population-based conjoint experiment in Germany including a sub-sample of public administrators. We find that (1) Dutch and fluent German speakers are preferred, i.e., positively discriminated, over Romanians and EU citizens with broken language skills, that (2) our way of holding people accountable was ineffective, and that (3) in all these regards discriminatory behaviour of public administrators is similar to behaviour of the general population.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of European Public Policy
Volume28
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)742-760
Number of pages19
ISSN1350-1763
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

    Research areas

  • Accountability, conjoint experiment, discrimination, EU citizenship, street-level bureaucracy

ID: 261769345