Seminario

Ethnic Discrimination and Segregation on the German Housing Market

A Two‐Wave Field Experiment in the Wake of the European Refugee Crisis
19 maggio 2022
Orario di inizio 
14:00
Palazzo di Sociologia - Via Verdi 26, Trento
Aula Kessler
Organizzato da: 
Doctoral School of Social Sciences
Destinatari: 
Tutti/e
Partecipazione: 
Ingresso libero
Contatti: 
school.socialsciences@unitn.it
Speaker: 
Katrin Auspurg - LMU Munich

Abstract

Migrants are often disadvantaged in the housing market and live segregated from the majority population in poorer neighborhoods. This has long been seen as a serious obstacle to their social integration. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. We conducted multifactorial field experiments to better understand possible underlying mechanisms: Does ethnic discrimination reinforce segregation, and if so, for what reasons? And does immigration, which might exacerbate interethnic conflicts but also interethnic contact, affect the level of discrimination?

We conducted a large‐scale field experiment (e‐mail correspondence test) on ethnic discrimination in the German rental housing market. In 2015, we drew a sample of ~ 5,000 housing offers from an internet platform, and applied to these offers with e‐mails that signaled a Turkish versus a German background. What is unique about our study is that we conducted our experiment all over Germany and that we used a multi‐factorial experimental design: We varied not only ethnicity but also (the amount of information on) other socio‐economic characteristics of our applicants.

We found that Turkish applicants with low status are particularly discriminated against, but less so in immigrant neighborhoods. These findings suggest that discrimination increases residential segregation: not only ethnic segregation, but also social segregation. We also used the massive influx of refugees in Europe in 2015 to see whether there is a causal effect of immigration on discrimination. We carried out the first wave of our field experiments shortly before the European ‘refugee crisis’ and repeated a second wave of experiments at the peak of the crisis.

Combining our longitudinal experimental setting with the quasi-random spatial distribution of refugees to counties in Germany allows us to identify the effect of immigration on discrimination. Our results suggest that correlations between immigration and discrimination found in previous cross-sectional studies should be interpreted with caution. Our findings also highlight the importance of longitudinal field experiments.

Discussants: