What’s in a name? Measuring access to social activities with a field experiment

Abstract

Today's societies increasingly consist of members who migrated from other countries and regions, and their functioning depends heavily on integrating their diverse members. Interactions with the local population through social activities enhance integration. Despite its relevance, however, previous research has largely overlooked the role of the local population in social integration. This paper introduces an objective method for analyzing access to social activities. Switzerland includes diverse native groups, who differ in culture and language, and a high percentage of foreigners. Applications were sent by email to amateur Swiss football clubs, asking if it is possible to join a training session. The applications differed only in the contact name. Individuals with foreign names, as well as individuals with Swiss names from some other native groups, received significantly fewer responses. The findings are relevant for governing institutions and policy-makers. Researchers who study social integration may find the novel method used here of considerable interest.

Does persistence pay off? Accessing social activities with a foreign-sounding name

“…The results show that individuals with foreignsounding names suffer from discrimination when trying to integrate. The magnitude is similar to previous research examining social integration in Switzerland (Nesseler, Gomez-Gonzalez, and Dietl 2019). Additionally, we find that a reminder email is perceived as a positive signal (Connelly et al 2011), which increases the chances of receiving a response to join a club.…”

“…Every additional digit separates the region of the previous digit in several parts. 8 The public dataset provided by Nesseler, Gomez-Gonzalez, and Dietl (2019) is available in: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10. 7910/DVN/PZLYUN.…”

“…However, this is not exclusively the case for African Americans but also for minorities in numerous other countries. For example, Turkish-sounding names receive fewer call backs in the German labour market (Kaas and Manger 2012), as do homosexual couples in the Swedish housing market (Ahmed and Hammarstedt 2009), or foreigners when trying to join a social activity in Switzerland (Nesseler, Gomez-Gonzalez, and Dietl 2019).…”

“…Misra, Stokols, and Marino (2012). For this purpose, we extend the study by Nesseler, Gomez-Gonzalez, and Dietl (2019), in which the authors measure access to social activities in Switzerland, by including the influence of persistence. Nesseler et al's study is ideal because it is recent, the data is publicly available, and social integration is especially interesting in Switzerland.…”

After the Crimea crisis: Employee discrimination in Russia and Ukraine

“…In sports, the issue of discrimination is widely discussed. Even in relatively peaceful regions and times, sports clubs do not per se treat different groups equally [ 21 ]. Previous research investigates discrimination in sports by the analysis of attendance [ 22 , 23 ] and broadcasting [ 24 ], which depend on the players’ characteristics.…”