Sweden is a country noted for its egalitarian culture and high levels of gender equality. It was also notable among European nations for its willingness to accept Syrian refugees during the crisis from 2011 onwards. Its stance on this matter is noticeably different to that of neighboring Denmark, which has taken a markedly hostile approach to immigration generally.
This more welcoming stance does appear to have certain limits, however, as the gap between the employment rate of native citizens and immigrants is among the widest in the OECD. With around 20% of the Swedish population born abroad this matters. Research from Stockholm University goes a small way towards explaining this situation, as it finds that people with foreign-sounding names received fewer responses to job applications than those with typically Swedish-sounding names.
Auditing correspondence
The researchers used correspondence audit to try and gain a more objective understanding of how immigrants do in recruitment. This approach requires researchers to submit various applications to openings from fictitious candidates and then record the response rate from employers.
For this study, the researchers submitted over 5,600 applications to adverts placed on the Swedish Employment Agency’s website between 2013 and 2020. The applications covered around 20 occupations in total and varied in terms of the industry and qualifications required, as well as the spread of gender and ethnic diversity.
The applications used a combination of common Swedish names and Slavic and Arabic names (with these chosen due to these communities being the largest and most visible ethnic minorities in the country). The results showed that applicants with foreign-sounding names received significantly fewer positive responses to their applications than those with typically Swedish names. Indeed, the difference was a shocking 15%.
Frozen out
To put this into perspective, an immigrant would need to send out 15 applications to get the same number of callbacks as a Swede would receive from sending just 10 applications. This was especially so for male immigrants.
Sadly, such discrimination against candidates with foreign-sounding names is well documented, with a number of studies across Scandinavia also showing that immigrant men face greater discrimination than women.
While the researchers accept that they were not examining formal offers given to candidates or ultimate hiring decisions, much less things like promotion offers or access to training opportunities, they nonetheless believe their findings are illustrative of the struggle immigrants face and how this contributes to any inequalities evident, especially for immigrant men.
