A study in Norway has shown that Ethnic discrimination is common among employers resulting to immigrants not getting jobs they are qualified for.
Report has shown that Job seekers with Norwegian names stand a much better chance of getting a job than applicants with more unfamiliar names.
A recent study carried out by Arnfinn H. Midtbøen from the Institute for Social Research (ISF) and Jon Rogstad from the Institute for Labour and Social Research (Fafo), found that applicants with Pakistani names stand a 25 percent lesser chance of getting called to an interview.
According to Norwegian Equality Minister Audun Lysbakken, “the study tells me that we have a serious discrimination problem in Norwegian working life.”
The researchers wanted to scrutinize discrimination in the workplace by sending out 1,800 fabricated job applications in response to real job ads in six different lines of business.
For each ad, the researchers replied with one application using a Norwegian name and another using a Pakistani-sounding name. The fabricated applicants were given near-identical profiles in terms of age, skills and work experience.
All of the would-be applicants fulfilled them minimum criteria for the job and had perfect, native-level Norwegian language skills.
According to the researchers, the Pakistan men are more discriminated than the women, and that private sector employers reject an applicant with a Pakistan name than the public sector does.
Lysbakken said, “The report shows that we can leave behind any questions as to whether we have a discrimination problem and instead focus on what we can do about it.” He added that he was angry and concerned at what he referred to as reality’s way of allocating quotas.
The equality minister Lysbakken also said Norwegian society had failed badly in providing equality of opportunity to well-educated young people who had been born in Norway to immigrant parents.
“And there’s no more effective way of telling people they’re not part of the Norwegian community, which is why we have to do something to meet this challenge,” he said.
A new white paper on integration slated for publication this year would provide an important platform from which to tackle the problem, said Lysbakken.