Hiring Discrimination Based on Skin Color in Switzerland

Job seekers of Cameroonian descent face hiring discrimination in the Swiss labor market, as they must send about 30 percent more applications than candidates of Swiss origin to be invited to an interview. The results of our study suggest that black job seekers are systematically disadvantaged in the Swiss labor market, thus providing evidence of structural racism, which we as a society need to acknowledge.  

As the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, activists and a growing number of scholars mobilized to call for the recognition of structural racism in many Western countries. Despite the growing interest in the topic, many actors in the Swiss and European public debate still fail to acknowledge this claim, partly because the unequal system is invisible to all people whose skin is considered white. That is why it is vital to produce and disseminate data on structural racism to improve the quality of public debate.

Aware of the issues at stake, a research team of the nccr –  on the move conducted a field experiment on hiring discrimination based on skin color in the Swiss labor market. The experiment consisted of responding to public job offers in the sales and electricity sectors by sending two fictitious applications with identical qualifications, which differed only in the country of origin of the applicants’ parents. The analysis measures discrimination by comparing the treatment of applications from candidates of Swiss origin (ostensibly White) with those from Swiss citizens of Cameroonian descent (ostensibly Black).

Hiring Discrimination of Black Job Seekers – a Comparative Perspective

Our study reveals the existence and extent of discrimination against Swiss citizens of Cameroonian descent in the sectors tested. Overall, we report significant discrimination against Black job seekers, who must send around 30 percent more applications than White candidates in order to be invited to a job interview. This discriminatory treatment differs according to a series of variables.

For instance, the data previously collected by the same research team allows us to compare the results for Blacks with other ethnic minorities defined by their immigration background. The level of discrimination against Blacks is similar to the one experienced by the descendants of Kosovo-Albanian immigrants, but noticeably larger than the discrimination the descendants of immigrants from Turkey and neighboring countries (France, Germany) experience. Our study thus reveals a form of ethnic hierarchy that has been documented in similar field experiments conducted in other countries (see for example Koopmans, Veit, and Yemane 2019; Heath and Di Stasio 2019).

By combining our results with data on the context, we show that the inequality of treatment is clearly higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but almost identical in the two linguistic regions. In this respect, our results contribute to the debate on the relative importance of the two divisions that structure attitudes towards immigration in Switzerland by showing that the urban-rural divide is a more appropriate reading grid than the ‘Röstigraben’, that is the Swiss German- and Swiss French-speaking cultural division, for analyzing the discriminatory treatment of black job seekers.

Hiring Discrimination as a Sign of Structural Racism

Beyond these differences, our results highlight a reality that is still poorly appreciated by Swiss society: young black people are treated unequally in the labor market, even though they hold the same passport and have the same linguistic, educational and professional qualifications as their counterparts of Swiss origin. Their access to employment is hindered by discriminatory treatment directly attributable to negative stereotypes associated with their skin color.

These stereotypes are based on race, a notion that has become taboo in European societies after the atrocities committed in its name during the Second World War, and remains discredited by a fringe of the scientific community. However, race as a classification system and a structural process of domination ‘is still ahead of us’ (Balibar 2007: 171), in Switzerland as in other immigrant societies. Our results shed light on one piece of the broader jigsaw of structural racism unveiled by the more comprehensive study conducted by the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM). This is a fact that needs to be acknowledged by politicians, employers and society at large.

Robin Stünzi is the Education, Careers and Equal Opportunities Officer of the nccr – on the move.

References:

-Fibbi, Rosita, Didier Ruedin, Robin Stünzi, and Eva Zschirnt. 2022. « Hiring Discrimination on the Basis of Skin Colour? A Correspondence Test in Switzerland ». Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48 (7): 1515–35.
-Heath, Anthony F, and Valentina Di Stasio. 2019. “Racial Discrimination in Britain, 1969–2017: a Meta-Analysis of Field Experiments on Racial Discrimination in the British Labour Market.” The British Journal of Sociology 70: 1774–1798
-Koopmans, Ruud, Susanne Veit, and Ruta Yemane. 2019. “Taste or Statistics? A Correspondence Study of Ethnic, Racial and Religious Labour Market Discrimination in Germany.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (16): 233–252.
-Zschirnt, Eva, and Rosita Fibbi. 2019. « Do Swiss Citizens of Immigrant Origin Face Hiring Discrimination in the Labour Market? ». NCCR On the Move Working Paper Series 20: 1–3