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Overcoming Bureaucratic Discrimination Against Mobile EU Citizens

Project Title
Overcoming Bureaucratic Discrimination Against Mobile EU Citizens
Description
Bureaucratic discrimination, consisting of departures from formal laws and rules that systematically advantage or disadvantage individual clients or client groups based on criteria such as ethnicity, race, nationality, or gender, constitutes an important obstacle to equality before the law and democracy, with far-reaching societal consequences. Based on the German case, this pilot project examines to what extent bureaucrats share discriminatory attitudes with the population, and how to prevent bureaucratic discrimination against mobile EU citizens.
Principal Investigator
Status
Completed
Start Date
1 November 2019
End Date
31 May 2020
Investigators
Thomann, Eva
James, Oliver
Rapp, Carolin
Adam, Christian
Organisations
Internal ID
40517
Identifier
https://libra.unine.ch/handle/123456789/2135
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  • Publication
    Open Access
    Differential Discrimination against Mobile EU Citizens: Experimental Evidence from Bureaucratic Choice Settings
    (2021-4-23)
    Adam, Christian
    ;
    Fernández-i-Marín, Xavier
    ;
    James, Oliver
    ;
    Manatschal, Anita 
    ;
    Rapp, Carolin
    ;
    Thomann, Eva
    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 the general population.
  • Publication
    Open Access
    Discrimination against mobile European Union citizens before and during the first COVID-19 lockdown: Evidence from a conjoint experiment in Germany
    (2021-10-1)
    Fernández-i-Marín, Xavier
    ;
    Rapp, Carolin
    ;
    Adam, Christian
    ;
    James, Oliver
    ;
    Manatschal, Anita 
    One of the greatest achievements of the EU is the freedom of movement between member states offering citizens equal rights in EU member states. EU enlargement and the COVID-19 pandemic allow for a critical test of whether EU citizens are indeed treated equally in practice. We test preferential treatment of EU citizens in two hypothetical choice experiments in Germany at two different time points: in the period before and during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Theories of responses to threat suggest that the COVID-19 crisis should increase discrimination against mobile EU citizens. While our findings reveal sizeable discrimination based on nationality and language proficiency of mobile EU citizens, the findings also suggest that, contrary to expectations, discrimination did not increase in the initial COVID-19 crisis period.