Muslims in France – They experience extraordinary discrimination in the job market research finds

In these experiments, researchers create résumés for fictitious individuals, varying the religious background of those people, and then submit applications to job openings. The question is how frequently those individuals receive a callback or an e-mail from the employer.

One such experiment was conducted in France in 2013-2014, and the results have just been published. (A short summary is here.) The author is Marie-Anne Valfort. Here are four of its many important findings:

1) Relative to Catholics and Jews, Muslim applicants are much less likely to be contacted by employers.

The applicants in this experiment had the same basic biographies and qualifications. They were all French citizens of Lebanese origin, born in 1988, immigrated to France in time to attend high school and became French nationals in 2008.

But they varied in their religious backgrounds. Via several cues — the applicants’ names, the religious identity of their middle school in Lebanon, and the religious affinity of the scouting organization they had worked with in France — the applicants’ religious identity as Catholics, Jews or Muslims was clear.

And religious identity made a big difference. Here is the percentage of each group that was contacted by an employer after they applied for the job:

Source: Marie-Anne Valfort, “Religious discrimination in access to employment: a reality”

Only about 10 percent of Muslims were contacted, compared with 16 percent of Jews and 21 percent of Catholics. This shows evidence of discrimination against Jews, but even greater discrimination against Muslims.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at New research shows that French Muslims experience extraordinary discrimination in the job market – The Washington Post