This article considers the possibilities and limits of human‐capital credentials in entering the labor market for immigrants in Finland. It reports findings of a correspondence study on how employers respond to job applicants of five different backgrounds who were otherwise equivalently matched on various demographic and human‐capital characteristics. The findings strongly indicate the continuing salience of ethnicity in securing employment opportunities in the Finnish labor market. Employers significantly prefer Finnish applicants over ethnic candidates, and within ethnic applicants, they prefer candidates with a European name over a non‐European name. They further show that locally acquired human capital provides a better payoff only when the job candidate belongs to a group that is placed higher on the ethnic preference ladder. Drawing on the empirical observations, the article thus suggests that a recruitment process driven by abstract or impersonal criteria and governed by mere considerations of human capital in real‐life situations is much less prevalent than often claimed.

No abstract

Using a correspondence field experiment, the study reported in this article has investigated if immigrant job applicants with equivalent qualifications are treated differently in the Finnish labour market. The study consists of 5000 job applications that were sent out to 1000 advertised positions by five applicants of Finnish, English, Iraqi, Russian and Somali backgrounds, who differed only in their names. The findings show that applicants of immigrant origin receive significantly fewer invitations for a job interview than the native candidate, even if they possess identical language proficiency, education and vocational diplomas. However, the extent of discrimination is not equally distributed among the immigrant groups. Rather, job applicants from non-European backgrounds seem to suffer a significantly greater labour-market penalty. The findings clearly suggest that, despite anti-discrimination legislation and measures aimed at promoting equal employment opportunities, discrimination continues to remain a serious barrier to immigrants’ labour-market integration in a Nordic welfare society.

This article presents the findings of a field experiment on ethnic discrimination against second-generation immigrants in the Finnish labour market. Five job applicants of Finnish, English, Iraqi, Russian and Somali origin sent equivalent job applications to each of 1000 publicly advertised vacancies. They all had identical qualifications, but differed in one respect, that is, their name. The findings strongly suggest the existence of ethnic hierarchical orderings in the labour market. They reflect that locally gained human capital not only does not equalise employment opportunities for immigrants as such but also rewards them differentially based on their origin, with non-European applicants being the least preferred choices. The findings also reveal that discrimination did not only manifest itself in low callback rates for immigrants but also the order in which employers contacted the different applicants. In a further set of 200 job openings tested in which applicants of immigrant origin had two years more experience than the Finnish candidate, the systematic differences in patterns of callback rates remained the same. Drawing on empirical observations, the article suggests that ethnic hierarches prevailing in society can also extend to the realm of labour markets resulting in unequal employment chances for otherwise equal job applicants.

Based on employer responses to 6000 job applications, this article tests whether greater work experience lowers discrimination against job applicants of immigrant origin in the Finnish labour market. It does so by comparing the callbacks received in response to two sets of job applications: applications in which applicants of immigrant background had identical work experience as the majority applicant and those in which they had two years’ more experience than the majority candidate. The article further investigates if additional experience elicits more callbacks in jobs in which higher work experience and a vocational diploma are required and when the vacancies are high-skilled. The findings of this empirical investigation suggest the presence of deep-seated ethnic hierarchies in the Finnish labour market. They clearly demonstrate that immigrants’ chances of securing a job interview offer do not significantly change even when they possess substantially greater work experience than their majority counterparts.