In her study “Is it ethnicity or religion? Evidence from a cross-national field experiment on labour market discrimination”, she explores ethnic penalties in the labour market based on her research in five European countries. The literature on ethnic penalties has repeatedly shown that, in Europe, Muslim minorities of Turkish, Moroccan, Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent are amongst the most disadvantaged minority groups in the labour market. Their religious identity – and not their ethnicity or immigrant background- has sometimes been seen as the main factor driving employers’ negative bias towards these minorities. Prior studies based on observational data have not been directly able to measure labour market discrimination nor to disentangle the drivers of employers’ discriminatory behaviour. The research design of this project not only makes it possible to measure the penalty associated to being religious (vs being secular), but also whether employers’ discriminatory behaviour varies across candidates with different religious affiliations.
