Does the size of foreign population in a city affect the level of labour-market discrimination against job applicants of migrant origin?

Abstract

Based on a correspondence experiment, this article examines if the size of population of foreign background in a city exerts any significant effect on the extent of labour-market discrimination faced by job applicants of migrant origin. The study results find neither any statistically significant relationship between the two, nor do they lend support to the group threat and group contact conceptual frameworks. Rather, they appear to corroborate the pure discrimination model, as discrimination seems to be uniformly spread over all cities and all types of jobs with different characteristics. However, the findings of this study do not exclude the possibility that there could be a threshold value in the share of foreign population after which the picture of discrimination would become richer in nuances and some of the theories would gain more explanatory power.