TY - JOUR

T1 - Differential discrimination against mobile EU citizens

T2 - experimental evidence from bureaucratic choice settings

AU - Adam, Christian

AU - Fernández-i-Marín, Xavier

AU - James, Oliver

AU - Manatschal, Anita

AU - Rapp, Carolin

AU - Thomann, Eva

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Accountability

KW - conjoint experiment

KW - discrimination

KW - EU citizenship

KW - street-level bureaucracy

U2 - 10.1080/13501763.2021.1912144

DO - 10.1080/13501763.2021.1912144

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85105109387

VL - 28

SP - 742

EP - 760

JO - Journal of European Public Policy

JF - Journal of European Public Policy

SN - 1350-1763

IS - 5

ER -