In a study published online on the 22nd of November by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford political scientist David Laitin shows that a Christian citizen with an African heritage is two-and-a-half times more likely to get called for a job interview than an equally qualified Muslim citizen with the same ethnic background.
"The French have a very strong belief that their republican institutions are blind to ethnicity and religion, and that these institutions are an antidote to discrimination," Laitin said. "We can now tell them that the results of our work show that the society is not blind to religion and that their refusal to collect data will permit this discrimination to continue. Hiding behind the veil of republicanism is not a solution to the issue of discrimination in France."
The unemployment rate among British Muslim men is around 13 per cent, which is approximately three times higher than the rate among men belonging to other faiths. Young Muslims are at even higher risk of being unemployed. Muslims aged between 16 and 24 have the highest jobless rates of any group and are more than twice as likely to be unemployed compared to Christians of the same age, with a jobless rate of 28 per cent compared with 11 per cent, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Researchers of the Stanford study created and mailed out 275 pairs of résumés to French employers advertising for jobs. Each of the paired résumés was identical in terms of job qualifications and experience except for the names of the applicants.
One of the applicants had a Christian given name, "Marie Diouf", while another had a Muslim given name, "Khadija Diouf". To emphasise the religious difference in the applicants, Maire Diouf said she worked for Catholic Relief and was a member of Christian scouts, and Khadija Diouf said she had worked for Islamic Relief and was a member of Muslim scouts.
As a scientific control, the researchers compiled a third fictional résumé in the name of "Aurelie Menard", who could be identified as a rooted French person with no assumed religion – unlike "Diouf" which in France is easily identified as a Senagalese name. Every employer received a résumé of Aurelie Menard with a résumé of either Marie Diouf or Khadija Diouf – employers may have detected a test if they received applications from both Marie and Khadija Diouf, researchers said.
Khadija Diouf received a response rate of 8 per cent while Marie Diouf's response rate was 21 per cent – a highly significant difference. "It amounts to massive discrimination. The agenda is to try to find out what is driving it," Dr Valfort said.
“What is surprising is the intensity of the discrimination. If anything we have underestimated it, partly because we made the job applicant female and we know that Muslim males face higher discrimination," she said.
source : http://www.abna.ir
