Integration into Europe: Identifying a Muslim Effect1
Claire Adida – Stanford University
David Laitin – Stanford University
Marie-Anne Valfort – Paris I, Sorbonne
Part I : Motivation and Broad Results
A. Introduction
On November 11, 2009 President Nicolas Sarkozy fulfilled a campaign promise to
promote a new collective understanding of “what it means to be French.” The setting of his
passionate speech initiating a national dialogue, La Chapelle en Vercors (Drôme), was wellchosen. The Nazis had burned it down in July 1944 as punishment for being a bastion of the
French resistance, and subsequently shot sixteen of its young men whom they had taken as
hostages. Where better to raise issues of national solidarity and the treatment of minorities?
The President then designated Eric Besson, Minister of Immigration, Integration,
National Identity and Cooperative Development to initiate a “Grand Debate on National
Identity.” Besson had the perfect ambiguous biography to give complexity to what it means to be
French. He was born in Morocco, with a Lebanese mother and a French father, arrived in France
thirty-four years ago at the age of seventeen, and while now serving in a government of the Right
was a former member of the Socialist Party (1993-2007). Besson set off the debate
provocatively, insisting on a set of “shared values” of the French, and noting their republicanism,
their secularism, and their belief in universal values. His Ministry created a website inviting
popular participation in this debate, and it has already induced vibrant and highly critical
commentary by journalists, scholars, politicians and citizens.2
While the President set the agenda for defining Frenchness quite broadly, the powerful
political context of this debate concerns the ability of Europe to assimilate, integrate or even
accommodate the post-World War II migration of vast numbers of Muslims. This challenge
resonates sharply in France, the EU country with the largest Muslim population.3 Under
President Chirac, French policies to incorporate Muslims into a docile and accommodative
pressure group had at certain junctures backfired. Under then Minister of Interior Sarkozy, the
Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (CFCM) was created in 2005 as a representative body for
1
. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Muslim Integration into EU Societies:
Comparative Perspectives”, Grant SES-0819635, David Laitin, PI.
. Quotations in the paragraph are from Steven Erlanger “France Debates its Identity, But Some Question Why” The
New York Times November 29, 2009. The website: http://www.debatidentitenationale.fr/
2
3
. While there are no fully reliable census accounts, some estimates
(http://www.islamicpopulation.com/Europe/europe_islam.html) put the percentage of Muslims in France about
twice as high as the nearest EU countries, Netherlands and Germany, so it has not only the largest Muslim
population but the largest Muslim population per capita.
Muslims living in France. Yet it quickly turned into an arena of contentious politics: “Although
this council was supposed to provide an alternative to foreign interference in French Islam,” John
Bowen (2009, 26) notes, “It in fact has had the opposite effect. The Algerian, Moroccan, and
Turkish consulates saw the 2003, 2005, and 2008 council elections as opportunities to ratchet up
control over their constituents by promoting slates associated with each of the home countries,
and they did indeed mobilize these residents of France to vote for their slate.” Many in France
worry about the implications of a non-assimilating Muslim population. The Pew surveys4 show
for instance that 76 percent of the non-Muslim respondents in France expressed concern over
Muslim extremism in their country.5
The apparent failure to incorporate Muslims in France (and other EU states) compared to
earlier waves of immigrants may result from two distinct forces (each one perhaps a consequence
of the other) that leads part of the French (and other European) host populations to consider
Muslim immigrants as a threat. On one hand, the loyalty of Muslim immigrants to their adopted
countries is questioned. Using a UK-based survey, Bisin et al. (2008) show that Muslim
immigrants do not “secularize” with the time spent in the UK, or at least they seem to do so at a
much slower rate than non-Muslim immigrants.6 Moreover, they find that characteristics that are
commonly considered as factors of integration (such as high education, high job qualification,
living in neighborhoods with low unemployment rate) reverse rather than accelerate the
secularization process among Muslims. Using the German Socioeconomic Panel of 2001,
Constant et al. (2006) draw similar conclusions. They show that, while being young when
entering Germany has a positive effect on assimilation and integration and a negative effect on
separation and marginalization among Christian immigrants, this feature has no impact among
Muslim immigrants.7 Caldwell (2009) documents the apparent lower loyalty of Muslims to their
adopted countries with the low recruitment rates of Muslims into European national armies. In
France, although objective analysts such as the International Crisis Group reported no direct
connection between the riots in France’s immigrant neighborhoods in 2005 and Islam,8 it was not
lost on the general French population that “most of the rioters were of Muslim origin.”9 In
October 2008, spectators whistled derisively during the playing of La Marseillaise before a
football game pitting France against Tunisia at the Stade de France. These hisses were popularly
4
. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press is a public opinion research organization that studies
attitudes toward politics, the press and public policy issues.
5
. Pew Global Attitudes Project, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=831.
6
. Their secularization index relies on three questions from the FNSEM (Fourth National Survey of Ethnic
Minorities) that was conducted in 1993/1994: the importance of religion; the attitude towards inter-marriage; and the
importance of having members of one’s own ethnic group in their children’s schools.
. The authors give the following definitions: assimilation is “the complete adjustment to or absorption by the host
country with cutting all ties to the home country”; integration is “the adjustment to the host country with
simultaneous retention of ties to the home country; separation is the fact of “not adjusting to the host country but
withholding strong connections to the home country”; marginalization consists in “having only weak
attachments to both the host and the home country”.
7
8
Xavier Ternisien “La France et son islam, vus d’ailleurs” Le Monde, March 11, 2006.
9
Xavier Ternisien “Les ‘barbus’ dans le 9-3” Le Monde, November 17, 2006.
2
interpreted as an insult to the French nation delivered by French Muslims10 and President
Sarkozy called for an investigation.
On the other hand, the autochthonous national communities of Europe tend to display
hostile feelings against Muslim immigrants. Europe – with states defined by their historic
nationalities, all of them in the Christian tradition – has had an historically conflictual
relationship with the Islamic world going back to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans and
the Reconquest of Spain in the 15th century. Thus there is throughout the continent a myth of a
“Christian Europe” that reproduces itself despite the continent’s virtually complete secularization
in the past century. The myth manifests itself clearly in the application of Turkey into the EU (as
opposed to Bulgaria), where suspicions run high.11 It also manifests itself through political
parties (for example the Front National in France, which placed second in the presidential
elections of 2002), which have mobilized opinion to fight against what could become a Muslim
demographic predominance in parts of Europe. The Dutch Freedom Party, representing a
coalition of groups threatened by what they see as Muslim values, is gaining rapidly in the polls.
In Switzerland, a popular referendum in December 2009 banned the construction of Minarets, an
outcome that received sympathetic support from the French President.12 While France has not yet
adopted such restrictive measures, many French cities have used a variety of zoning regulations
to restrict Mosque construction, which many autochthonous residents fear would, if built, reflect
the public manifestation of a permanent Muslim presence in their country (Kepel 1987, 287312).
Despite the sound and fury, the question whether there is a special Muslim problem for
Europe in general and France in particular remains unclear. Several recent studies reveal trends
that run against the idea of a lack of loyalty among Muslim minorities to France and against a
clear hostility of French people toward them. For instance, the Pew poll of 2006 found that 91%
of French Muslims express favorable opinions of Christians, and that they are much more likely
to emphasize their national identity over their religious one than are other European Muslims.
When asked to choose between religion and nationality as their primary identity, 42% of French
Muslims said French first (this was the case of only 7% of British Muslims and 3% of Spanish
Muslims). Furthermore, the Pew report claims that “substantial majorities of Muslims living in
the European countries surveyed say that [in the two years after bombings in Spain and London,
and the Cartoon Crisis in Denmark13] they have not had any personally bad experience
10
. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/7671299.stm
11
. New York Times, September 26, 2007, reports that the EU has officially pictured Europe on its Euro currency
that includes (Christian) Belarus, Moldova, and parts of Russia, but not Turkey, which officials admit was stricken
from the map. Current French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressly opposes Turkey’s accession into the EU. See
Tony Barber. 2009. "Fears grow of Sarkozy initiative to downgrade Turkey's EU bid." The Financial Times
(October 15). Available: http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/2009/10/fears-grow-of-sarkozy-initiative-to-downgradeturkeys-eu-bid/
12
. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/08/sarkozy-sympathises-minaret-ban-switzerland
13
. Cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicted the prophet in an unflattering manner set off a wave of protests
throughout the Islamic world as well as crystallized anti-Muslim feelings, to the benefit of a new right party (the
Danish People's Party) that evokes anti-Muslim sentiments. See Dan Bilefsky “Cartoon Dispute Prompts Identity
Crisis for Liberal Denmark” International Herald Tribune (February 12, 2006).
3
attributable to their race, ethnicity or religion.”14 Following the popular referendum on the
construction of Minarets in Switzerland, a CSA survey ordered by the newspaper Le Parisien has
shown that a majority of French people (54%) think there is nothing incompatible with Islam
being practiced in the French public sphere.15 Although this rate is lower than the one received
by Catholicism (82%) and Judaism (72%), the newspaper interprets this result as a signal of a
growing acceptance of Islam among French people.
This paper, focusing on the comparative success of Muslim immigrants and their
descendants in the French labor market, relies on newly developed social science techniques to
adjudicate one element of the “Muslim integration” issue in the current French debate on
national identity. We ask: do French Muslims suffer in economic integration in France in ways
that would not be so if everything about them were the same, but they weren’t Muslim? To
answer this question, in part I, our paper demonstrates that there is an identifiable barrier to
Muslim integration. More specifically, it first shows (in Section IB) that previous experimental
and survey research on employment discrimination in France conflates the potential effects of
religion and country of origin, making it impossible to identify whether French employers
discriminate against Muslims qua Muslims. Part I then (in Section IC) introduces a strategy of
matching, replicating previous employment discrimination experiments, but in a way that
enables us to isolate a possible Muslim effect. The experimental data are unambiguous and show
that for at least one job sector, there is significant religious discrimination against Muslims. The
next section (Section ID) relies on original survey data that links job discrimination and the
economic failure of Muslims compared to matched Christians in France.
In Part II of the paper we rely mostly on data from a field experiment conducted in Paris
in March 2009 in which we examine a set of mechanisms that can explain our results. More
specifically, we find strong evidence of beliefs by French people about Muslims which feed
discrimination. We also find evidence that both the rooted French population and more recent
Muslim immigrants negatively sanction their own groups for cooperating with the other, and
thereby prevent productive cooperation with the other. Furthermore, both these groups, our
evidence shows, are less generous to the other the larger the number of members of the other
group surrounding them. Finally, we find levels of altruism among our Muslim subjects to be
lower than comparable non-Muslim immigrants, especially in their low levels of generosity and
expectations toward Muslim women. All of these factors contribute, we infer, to the comparative
failure of Muslims to successfully integrate into the French labor market. In Part III, we discuss
the implications of our findings and before concluding, address problems that remain unresolved.
14
. For full results, see Pew Global Attitudes Project, already cited. Work by Lawrence and Vaisse (2006, pp. 43-44,
58-9, 66) in France reports similar results. Muslim immigrants, they find, are not all that different from the historic
nationalities of European states. In general, they find, the degree of anti-Islamism in police recorded incidents in
France is much lower than anti-Semitic ones with a much larger relative Muslim population in France. Those who
are Islamophobic tend also to be anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant in general. They conclude, at least for France, that
there seems to be no specific anti-Islamic public feeling. See also Simon Kuper “Immigrant Muslims in Belleville”,
Financial Times, October 2 2009, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1f4cf7c4-ad5e-11de-9caf00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=a712eb94-dc2b-11da-890d-0000779e2340.html.
The question was worded as follows: “Selon vous, la pratique de ces religions est-elle compatible ou pas
compatible avec la vie en société? 1. Religion catholique ; 2. Religion juive ; 3. Religion musulmane” (Le Parisien,
December 10, 2009).
15
4
B. Previous Research on Employment Discrimination in France among
Workers from Immigrant Families
CV experiments (also called “correspondence testing”) consist of sending letters from
fictitious applicants in response to job advertisements and analyzing the response rate to these
applications. The main advantage of correspondence testing is that the experimenter can identify
the impact of a small variation in the CV on the response rate, all else held constant. The main
drawback is that it only provides a raw measure of discrimination since it focuses on response
rates, rather than on actual job offers. In other words, it may underestimate (or overestimate)
discrimination in the cases where personal interviews of individuals who were discriminated
against during the callback phase yield a lower (or higher) number of actual job offers than
personal interviews of individuals who were advantaged during the callback phase. However,
prolonging the experiment up to the stage of personal interviews (“audit testing”) would generate
further biases in the measure of discrimination because experimental controls would be severely
weakened. Even if both fictitious candidates were played by the same person during the phase of
interviews (which could be done for religion and not for race or sex), one can still never be sure
that the candidate’s performance in each role would be exactly the same.
A wide range of correspondence testing has been conducted throughout the world,
starting with the experiment of Jowell and Prescott-Clarke (1970), which tested whether
applicants from Asian backgrounds were discriminated against in the UK labor market. To our
knowledge, only two of these studies focus on discrimination against applicants from a Muslim
background in the French labor market (Amadieu (2004) and Duget et al. (2008)). Both of these
studies consist of comparing the response rate received by a CV with a Moroccan-sounding first
and last name with the response rate received by a CV with a French-sounding first and last
name, all other characteristics being equal across these CVs. Both studies conclude that
applicants from a Moroccan background are strongly discriminated against in the French labor
market, compared to those with a typically French name. For instance, Duget et al. (2008)
compute that a response rate of 100 for the candidate with a French-sounding name corresponds
to a response rate of 35 for the Moroccan candidate (and this difference is statistically significant
at the 99% confidence level).
Although these studies reveal discrimination of high magnitude against applicants of
Moroccan background, they do not allow us to isolate the source of this discrimination. Two
confounding factors are at stake: do employers discriminate against Maghrebis or against
Muslims?
The difficulties in identifying a religious effect as demonstrated in the CV experiments
performed up till now are not easily resolved, and this is all the more so in surveys. Data on
Muslims in France are hard to get. A 1978 law set prohibitions on the collection of data on the
racial, religious, or ethnic identity of its citizens, creating challenges for demographic research.
For instance, in a leading sociological study of the economic success of different immigrant
groups, researchers could not distinguish the children of Algerian migrants into France from the
children of the pieds noirs, those of European ancestry who left after Algerian independence of
5
1962 (Meurs et al., 2006, pp. 675-76). Although the law was partially relaxed in 2007, this type
of data collection has remained stringently limited.16
Equally important for the problem of statistical analysis, those available mass surveys
exempt from state oversight rarely (with Pew the partial exception) include enough Muslims to
allow for good data analysis. For example, the World Values Survey included in its first three
waves in France only 0.4 per cent Muslims, quite unrepresentative of a group that makes up an
estimated 6.3 per cent of the resident population.17
But the real killer for identifying a Muslim effect is that most Muslim immigrants to each
of the major European states come from a single country or world region. In Germany, nearly all
Muslims are from Anatolia; in the UK, the same is the case with South Asians; and in France,
nearly all Muslims are from the Maghreb. In each of these cases, it is nearly impossible to
determine conclusively whether any additional problems these immigrant populations and their
descendents have had in economic mobility beyond the problems faced by non-Muslim
immigrant families, are due to the fact that they are Muslims. For example, nearly all immigrants
to France from Portugal are Catholic and from Algeria Muslim: once they control for homeland,
statistical models cannot distinguish a religion from a country effect on outcomes. Or, to look at
the inferential problem another way, any special problems in economic advance faced by the
children of North African immigrants to France may be due to their Muslim religion, the fact that
16
. Under Article 8 of the French Data Protection & Liberties Act (Loi informatique et libertés) of 1978, the
Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) was created as an independent administrative state
authority to ensure that outside of the national statistics agency (INSEE), “personal data revealing directly or
indirectly the racial or ethnic origin of individuals” could not be processed [by government personnel, or on
government contract] without consent. For the law itself, see
http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/textes/CNIL-78-17_definitive-annotee.pdf. For more
information on data constraints in France, see the CNIL web page http://www.cnil.fr/english/news-andevents/measuringdiversity/?tx_indexedsearch[ext]=1&tx_indexedsearch[sword]=Constituional+Council&x=24&y=10. Eight
exemptions from that prohibition are listed in article 8 of the law, enabling the PRI project, to be discussed shortly,
to proceed. For the 2007 CNIL recommendations for relaxation of the 1978 law, see Commission nationale de
l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) (2007). Mesure de la diversité et protection des données personnelles, rapport,
15 mai : http://www.cnil.fr/fileadmin/documents/approfondir/dossier/diversite/RapportdiversiteVD.pdf]. In 2009,
Yazid Sabeg, the new Commissaire à la diversité et à l’égalité des chances, with the full support of the president, has
taken a new tack on the collection of data on the ethnic and religious self-designation of French citizens, which may
prove to be a major breakthrough in future sociological analysis of the population. See Le Monde 18 avril 2009,
“Horizons/Débats”, pp. 18-19, “Statistiques ethniques: pour ou contre?” In these debates, Eric Fassin, a sociologist
at the École Normale Supérieure explains that the real question is to know what use will be made of these measures.
Stéphane Jugnot, a statistician and economist, offers a polemic against Patrick Simon, the leading advocate for the
collection of state data on ethnicity, working in the INED [Institut national d’études démographiques], calling his
proposals hypocritical, in that the categories of diversity will be racial and will lead to pressures for affirmative
action that will reify racial consciousness in the population. Yazid Sabeg has promoted self-attribution. Jugnot
claims that this is also hypocritical “because self-attribution only exists if the question of the origins of identity is an
open-ended question.” But then, Jugnot predicts, the answers will be so diverse (someone could answer that he is
“somewhat Egyptian, somewhat Arab, somewhat Copt, somewhat French”) that researchers, to make any sense of
the data, will have to impose a categorization that will reify race and religion in defiance of republican ideals.
17
. The World Values Survey is a global network of social scientists who have surveyed the basic values and beliefs
of the publics of more than 80 societies, on all six inhabited continents. Their most recent wave includes 9.4%
Muslims in France, but with a sample size of 500, it remains difficult to isolate a Muslim effect with standard
controls. See their website at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/.
6
they were a colonized people where in Algeria an insurgency fought against French imperialism,
or some aspects of North African life distinct from Islam (the language, the educational systems
and the history of authoritarian political rule in the country of their ancestors).
To illustrate this inferential problem, we draw from a large-n survey of 12,010 randomly
selected households with an immigrant then (2002-2003) living in France, one of the few large-n
surveys in France where a self-reported question on religion was posed.18 The survey also
contains key information on the age, sex, education, country of origin and income of immigrant
respondents. These data were collected to study the retirement decisions of immigrants, but they
allow us to illustrate the problem of trying to infer the effects of religion on income when there is
a high correlation between homeland and religion.
Consider Table I-1 that analyzes these data, where Models (1) and (2) illustrate the
problem. Model (1) estimates the respondent’s income as a function of his or her religion,
controlling for sex, age, education and length of stay in France. With dummies for all religions
(and Christianity the omitted category, and thereby serving as the point of comparison), we find
that Muslim immigrants are significantly poorer than Christian immigrants. In Model (2), we add
home-country fixed effects, a statistical technique that allows us to control for the immigrant’s
homeland. The Muslim effect previously identified in Model (1) loses statistical significance.
Once we control for home country, we are unable to identify a Muslim effect. If the goal is to
identify an independent Muslim effect on an immigrant’s economic integration, this study (as
with the previously reviewed CV studies) yields inconclusive results. A different strategy is
needed to address our questions.
In response to the confounding effects of religion and homeland in previous studies, we
rely on a social science technique that will allow us to identify whether there exists a Muslimbased discrimination in the French labor market, holding homeland-based discrimination
constant.
C. Our Matching Strategy
Our approach – called “matching” in statistical analysis -- requires the choice of
immigrant groups that are divided religiously, with one portion of them being Muslim and
another portion, quite similar to the first culturally, economically, and in education, Christian.
Comparing the Muslims and Christians in each group allows one to measure the “Muslim effect”
without other confounding factors, such as country of origin.
18
. Wolff et al (2007) The PRI [Passage à la Retraite des Immigrés] project was carried out under the direction of
Claudine Attias-Donfut, in collaboration with Rémi Gallou and Alain Rozenkier, with funding from the Agence
nationale pour la cohésion sociale et l’égalité des chances (ACSE), the AGIRC-ARRCO, the MSA and the Caisse
des Mines. This PRI project, completed in 2003 by the Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Vieillesse and the Institut
National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (Insee), examines the factors and mechanisms that characterize
immigrants’ transition into retirement. Respondents were randomly selected from the Insee Census of 1999, from
the baseline population of households with at least one immigrant member between the ages of 45 and 70 at the time
of the survey administration. The resulting sample comprises 6,211 respondents, 46.4% women, of mean 55.8 years
and median 55 years of age. It is representative of the immigrant population residing in metropolitan France in 2003,
that is to say, of all foreign-born immigrants in the selected age range. While the data remain private, the authors
kindly provided the data permitting our analysis in Table I-1.
7
Proper matching requires that the two religious subsets of religiously-divided immigrant
groups arrive at the host country with relatively equal resources, or else the comparison would be
biased. Suppose the target population were Lebanese in Western Europe or North America, and
the comparison were between Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. Because the Maronites
start off earlier and with rich international networks of banking families, a finding that Maronites
achieve higher rates of economic and social success would tell us little about comparative
economic barriers in the West due to religion.
Careful examination of selected small immigrant groups in France, however, invites
opportunities to get a reasonable approximation to an unbiased comparison. In our case, we
identified an estimated 10,000 immigrants in France with family backgrounds as Joolas and
Serers, two distinct ethno-linguistic communities from Senegal (hereafter, the Serer and Joola
Muslims from Senegal will be called SM’s; the Serer and Joola Christians from Senegal SX’s).19
These two groups, unlike all other communities in Senegal, have a sufficiently large Christian
population to allow for intra-group comparisons.20 Moreover, contrary to what we observe for
Lebanese Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims, SX’s did not benefit from the earlier
settlement of a Senegalese Christian diaspora in France. To confirm this, we rely on a survey
administered by David Laitin with the French firm CSA, in which 511 Serers and Joolas, both
Christians and Muslims were polled on a variety of issues concerning their integration in France.
Data from that survey indicate that the time elapsed since the settlement of the first migrant is 39
years for Senegalese Christian families and 39.3 years for Senegalese Muslim families. This
difference is not statistically significant.21
From this choice of Senegalese Muslims vs. Christians, David Laitin in collaboration
with the firm ISM-CORUM was able to replicate past CV experiments in a way that allows us to
identify whether there is a religious element in job discrimination.22 Keeping with the matching
strategy outlined above, in order to separate out region of origin and religion, our experimental
design demanded three comparable CVs – two of them from women with an obvious Senegalese
surname (Diouf), but one of whom had a well-known Muslim first name (Khadija) while the
19
. We include Manjaks, a closely related linguistic group, with the Joolas. See Summer Institute of Languages
Ethnologue, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=SN.
20
. From the 2002 Senegalese census, 25% of the Joolas and 11% of the Serers are Christian, while only 5% of the
Senegalese population as a whole is Christian. For the latter figure, see
http://www.adherents.com/adhloc/Wh_295.html#677.
21
. This survey was conducted in 2009 under contract by CSA France, in a project in which David Laitin, Yann
Algan, and Vincent Tiberj are principal investigators. There were 511 respondents from Serer or Joola backgrounds
(with 509 giving a clear indication whether their household is Muslim or Christian). The principal sample (n=332)
was through lists of mobile phone numbers in France associated with known Serer or Joola surnames; a secondary
sample were through face-to-face interviews (n=179) in three regions (Iles de France, Provence/Alpes/Côte d’Azur,
and Rhone Alpes) regions, relying on chain referrals. The survey had 29% Christian respondents and 71% Muslim
respondents. Descriptive statistics of the survey are in Table A-1 in the Appendix. Hereafter this survey will be
referred to as the Laitin/CSA survey.
. ISM-CORUM had already administered correspondence tests. See, for instance, “Résultats du Testing Sollicité
par le Groupe Casino : Un diagnostic partagé sur les discriminations liées à « l'origine, » Fabrice Foroni avec les
contributions de : Eric Cédiey (accompagnement scientifique), Amandine LUC (analyse statistique), Sandrine
Argant, Raphaël Bosch et Florence Marfaing (réalisation des tests) Juin 2008 (ISM-CORUM).
22
8
other had a well-known Catholic first name (Marie); the third CV was from a woman with a
typical French name, with minimal religious connotation (Aurélie Ménard). The basic
qualifications and background of the three applicants, all French citizens with two years of postsecondary education, unmarried and with three years experience on the job market to reflect
experience in the advertised job sector, were the same.23 But here we introduced two additional
reinforcing signals of religious identification. One of Khadija’s past positions was with « Secours
Islamique »; one of Marie’s was with « Secours Catholique »; while Aurélie worked solely in
secular firms. Also, Khadija did voluntary work for the Scouts Musulmans de France, while
Marie did the same for the comparable Catholic organization, Scouts et Guides de France.24
Responding to posts on the ANPE (the French national employment agency) website or
ads in newspapers, ISM-CORUM administrators sent CVs to all jobs listed for assistante de
direction (executive secretary), aide-comptable (junior accountant) or related jobs. We chose
these two general sectors because the jobs entailed some exposure to each firm’s clients and
customers, jobs in which the human resources division might be especially concerned about how
the public might react to the ethnicity or religion of its employees. Half of the firms that posted
job positions received applications from Khadija and Aurélie; the remaining half received
applications from Marie and Aurélie. For each job that received applications from Marie/Aurélie,
the ISM-CORUM team administering the tests sought the closest job offering to send
applications for Khadija/Aurélie. In the Appendix, we provide examples of the three CVs.
Using what is called a « difference-in-difference » design, our analysis compared how
well Khadija’s and Marie’s applications were received, based on how each compared to
Aurélie’s in engendering an interview from the employers who advertised for these jobs.25 In
sum, our experiment allows us to see, controlling for ethnic origins, whether there is religious
discrimination (aimed at Muslims) in the French labor market. See Table I-2a for a summary of
the results.
The results are clear. The two sets of employers were consistently favorable to Aurélie,
but strikingly more so in her match-up against Khadidja. Our test candidates, Marie and
Khadidja, fared significantly differently. Marie received call-backs at a rate of 21%; compared
to 8% for Khadidja, both in competition with Aurélie, who did equally well in competition with
both of the Diouf applications. This is more than two and a half times better. The difference in
difference test is significant at the 99.99% confidence level.
23
. The first 214 job responses had no pictures of the applicants. The next 50 had the same picture for the two
Dioufs, as a signal that they were not North Africans. There were no religious symbols in the photos. The results
were not statistically different and in this paper both sets are combined.
24
. The first two organizations are both independent NGOs in France with extensive international networks
dedicated to the eradication of poverty. Neither has an obvious religious agenda. See their websites:
http://www.secours-catholique.org/ and http://www.secours-islamique.org. As for the volunteer work, the two
organizations are listed as religiously affiliated branches of an international scouting federation. See
http://www.sgdf.fr/-Connaitre-le-mouvement-.
25
. These tests were performed from March through September 2009, during a period of grave economic crisis. Few
jobs were advertised, and the overall rate of positive response for a first call-back was only 21 percent.
9
We then analyzed the likelihood that our control (Aurélie) and our test (Marie/Khadija)
candidates received a call back based on whether the employer received the Aurélie/Marie pair
or the Aurélie/Khadija pair and controlling for additional factors such as the type of position, the
type of employment contract, the size of the recruiting firm and whether the CV included a
candidate photograph. We specified a logit regression (call back or no) with robust standard
errors (See Table I-2b). We find that when our test candidate is Khadija (vs. Marie), the
likelihood that Aurélie gets a call back increases and the likelihood that the test candidate gets a
call back decreases. This result is significant at the 95% confidence level.
Controlling for ethnicity, this experiment provides a clear indication that in at least one
sector of the French labor market, there is significant religious discrimination.
D. Consequences of Religious Discrimination
This section suggests a link between job discrimination and the economic returns for
Muslims in France. We rely on the Laitin/CSA survey to compare income levels of Senegalese
Christians (SX’s) and Senegalese Muslims (SM’s) living in France in 2009. We previously
established that these two groups immigrated into France in a single wave during the 1970s. To
ensure a fair comparison, we must also ask whether the first immigrants of respondent families to
France started out on equal footing. To address this concern, we relied on evidence from the
most recent Senegalese census. The only critical difference (that might have proven to be an
advantage for SX’s) upon the arrival to France relates to education: SX’s were slightly more
educated than SM’s: while the probability of having a secondary or a post-secondary education is
36% among SX’s, it is 27% among SM’s (this difference is significant at the 95% level).26 These
results are consistent with ethnographic accounts of Senegalese Christians’ access to better
quality education through their religious network (i.e., Catholic schools).27 A proper matching
strategy between SX’s and SM’s thus requires that we control for the first migrant’s level of
education.
We can now ask, controlling for the education level of the first migrant, whether SX’s
have been more successful in breaking through the economic glass ceiling in France than have
SM’s, and if so, why? With this procedure, we are confident that any differences found between
the two groups are the result of some aspect of their religious upbringing or practice, or the way
they are perceived by French people, since geographic origin does not vary and initial human
capital is controlled for.
26
. Data from the 2002 Senegalese census, which we will report on in a future paper, reveal precisely the same
degree of educational difference between the subset of Muslim and Christian Joolas and Serers who have a relative
living in Europe. 57% of Muslim respondents who had a relative in Europe had only a primary or middle school
education, while 42% had higher levels of education. For Christians, the figures are 53% primary or middle, and
47% more advanced. These differences are significant at the 99% level, but substantively are not radically different.
These data add confidence that the Laitin/CSA survey was representative of the two ethno-linguistic migrant groups
in France. Thanks to Chris Beauchemin for giving us access to the census data, to Susan Holmes for technical
assistance, and to Jessica Gottlieb for research assistance.
27
. We owe our interpretations of Senegalese culture and society to our field collaborator, Etienne Smith, who has
conducted extensive field research in Senegal.
10
One might ask if choosing Black Africans as the experimental targets could capture any
religious effect in France. Indeed, there is a myth in France, held particularly strongly by Arabs
that African Muslims are not really Muslims, since they don’t speak Arabic and mix freely with
non-Muslim Africans (Diop 1988). To the extent that its acceptance is widespread, however, this
myth could weaken any Muslim effect, but the bias would be against finding such an effect. Ours
is thus a more demanding test for identifying a Muslim effect.
We estimate the determinants of immigrant income in France today via an ordered probit
regression with robust standard errors, with the current monthly household income as the
dependent variable. The explanatory variables are the religious tradition of the household, the
head of household’s gender, and ethnicity and the education level and year of immigration of the
head of household’s ancestor who was the first to come to France. The results are reported in
Table I-3. (Recall there is no need to include country fixed effects, as all respondents are from
Senegal. This is the key to our matching strategy). We find that households with a Christian
religious tradition are significantly richer than households with a Muslim religious tradition
(significant at the 99% level). More precisely, the probability of having a household income
greater than the median in our regression sample (N=312) decreases by more than 25% when the
household is Muslim: this probability is equal to 52.0% when the household is Christian and to
37.9% when the household is Muslim. In sum, even controlling for the education level of the
first migrant to France, there is a significant negative Muslim effect on present day household
income. We can therefore infer that the job discrimination revealed in Section IC has broad
implications for differences in today’s household income for Muslims.
Part II: Search for Channels through Field Experiments
Part I demonstrated that controlling for country of origin, ethnicity and initial human
capital, the descendants of Muslim immigrants into France have faced higher barriers to
economic mobility. But the precise mechanisms driving these results are ambiguous and subject
to diverse interpretations. To help resolve these interpretations, we organized a set of field
experiments that we now describe. In the following section, we outline our principal findings.
A. Procedures and Protocols
We supervised eight sessions of games held in a rented private language school in the
diverse setting of Paris’ 19th district. Each session comprised a minimum of ten players, and a
theoretical maximum of 15, though in practice the largest session had 14 players. Three of the
sessions had all women players; three had all men; and two were mixed gender. In these
sessions, we conducted a set of experiments in the game theory tradition (Camerer 2003). We
elaborate on key aspects of our protocols below.
The setting. Our identification strategy required us to embed SM’s and SX’s (whom we refer to
as our target population) in a context that would seem natural to them, devoid of any signal that
we were seeking to isolate the effect of religion on behavior. We chose then to conduct the
experiments in a private language school in the heart of an ethnically diverse district of Paris, the
19th. In the 19th district (compared to the figure for all Paris), the average size of a household is
2.15 (1.87); the percentage of adults who are manual workers is 20.9 (14.5), the percentage
11
living in social housing is 40.8 (19.7), and the percentage born in France is 63.5 (82.4).28 In this
significantly immigrant district, for subjects to see a few Africans planted into their game
sessions was hardly eyebrow raising. Indeed, our solution to the hiding of our identification
strategy worked. In exit surveys, not a single subject speculated that religion had anything to do
with the purposes of the games,29 and only one of the target players out of a total 29 verbally
wondered if there was something odd about having other players in the room who were from the
same language group as they were in Senegal. This player never speculated about religion.
Random selection procedures. For the non-targeted players, we used a stratified (by population
density) but not fully random recruitment procedure centered on the twenty-one metro stations in
the district. In a fully random protocol, we assigned a weight to each metro station based on the
density of the area in which it is located, with the higher density stations getting more cards in
our random draw. Each recruitment team would draw a metro station for each recruitment day,
and then a number from 1 to 10 to determine which passer-by to invite as game recruit. But
because we wanted to have a large number of interactions between our targeted sample and the
rooted French population, we deviated from this protocol to assure ourselves a sufficient number
of players who would locally be considered authentically French – i.e. with four grandparents
born inside metropolitan France. In politically incorrect terms, these French are called “français
de souche”, and we shall refer to them subsequently as FdS. When potential subjects who
looked as if they were FdS walked by, recruiters were instructed to ignore the sequence of
selection, and to ask them if they were interested in participating in our experiment.
Potential subjects who were willing to hear our appeal were told that they could win up to
148 Euros for about two and a half hours of game participation, games which were designed to
learn how people from Paris and its surroundings made decisions about money. Turn-downs
were about 30 percent, introducing some biases that have no easy interpretation.30 Those who
accepted needed to register themselves during open enrollment periods at the language school.
At registration, they filled in a personal questionnaire that collected socio-demographic
information, which we used for purposes of staffing the game sessions. They also played a lowstakes altruism game advertised to them as practice for the kinds of games they would play a
couple of weeks later during the actual sessions. Just for coming to registration, players were
given 15 Euros (approximately $22 at that time) plus transport money. We enrolled sixty-three
non-targeted players; 73 percent were born in France (this is higher than the average for the
district, but lower than for Paris generally).
The targets. The protocols called for three target players (two from one religion and one from the
other) for each session. Of our 29 targets, 18 self-identified as Muslim, 10 as Christian, and one
. Data supplied by the mayor’s office at the 19th district. On foreign born in Paris, see
http://www.migrationinformation.org/dataHub/GCMM/Parisdatasheet.pdf. A good picture of the diversity in the 19th
district is offered in the French film “Entre les murs” (“The Class” in its English-language version).
28
29
. In the exit questionnaire, we asked : “Selon vous, quel était le but de cette étude?” [What was in your opinion
the goal of this study?]
30
. Orthodox Jews turned us down, not only on Saturday recruitment days when they were prohibited from writing,
but other days as well. We did not successfully recruit any Asian players, even though by observation (but not in the
town data) there were many Asians who were present in the neighborhood.
12
with neither world religion. We relied upon three separate networks to recruit these players. Two
of the networks came from the ethnographers who were conducting family histories for our
wider research project. Our ethnographers were asked to recruit subjects by merely telling them
they had heard about these experiments with a chance to earn a lot of money. No mention was to
be made about Senegalese specificity or religion having anything to do with the games. The third
network came from a Senegalese night watchman (not of the target populations) who worked at a
student dorm. He was given a quota for the targets and paid for each recruit who showed up for
inscription and participated in the games. As feasible as possible, each session combined one
target from each network, to avoid pairing up players who knew each other. When not feasible,
we relied on a local informant who advised us on which of the Senegalese were most likely not
to know each other. We asked in the exit survey if any of the players knew another player at their
session, and our analysis accounts for dyads in which players reported knowing the other
beforehand. In Appendix Table A-2, we perform a balance test that assures us that the two subsamples, SM’s and SX’s, are similar on basic socio-demographic variables, differing
significantly only in their religiosity and their stated level of trust. We therefore control for these
two variables in our analysis (this will be done in the next iteration of this paper).
At the Game Site: Based on information learned at registration, subjects were assigned to a
session that would last about two and a half hours. When they arrived, they were assigned a code
number that allowed us to organize our SX, SM, and FdS players in a way that would maximize
their interactions. They were also asked to write their first names on a label and to paste that
label on their chests. The only information players had about each other was their looks, their
manners, their dress and their first names. After check-in was completed, they were brought to
an open room with the other players, given magazines to read, and monitored in a way that
discouraged any conversation or interaction. Throughout the session, and out of sight from the
actual players, monitors kept a full account of all answers and earnings for each player. At the
end of the session, as players answered an exit survey, the winnings for each player were placed
in sealed envelopes for them to take home. None asked for, nor were any of them told, how
much they won from each of the particular games in the protocol, meaning that players never
found out how they performed in each game.
The Protocols: Organized by sequence, Table II-1 outlines key information for the seven games
(or elements of games) in our protocol. This Table should be used as a guide as we take readers
seamlessly through the variety of experimental results.
B. Hypotheses and Experimental Results
We hypothesize three channels through which the Muslim disadvantage might flow: tastes,
beliefs and technologies.31 Below are the hypotheses to be explored on each of these channels.
31
. Previous experimental work has identified three principal channels in which ethnic diversity could promote
market inefficiencies: preferences for discrimination, technologies of communication, and social sanctioning raising
the costs of in-group defection (Habyarimana et al. 2009). With a different dependent variable from theirs (ours
being relative economic success; theirs being collective community action), our theoretical conjectures called for a
different categorization. Our categorization served to help organize the patterns we observed ex post; we did not
theorize this set of channels ex ante.
13
Tastes:
H1 – The FdS have anti-Muslim tastes that lead them to pay a cost for their discriminatory
behavior
H2 – The SM’s do not have a taste to invest in cooperative relations with any societal groups
H3 – The SM’s have a taste for discrimination against their own women
H4 – The FdS feel more uncomfortable the more SM’s are around them, which is not the case for
SX’s
H5 – The SM’s feel more uncomfortable the more FdS are around them, which is not the case for
SX’s
Beliefs:
H6 – The FdS believe either that they can make better judgments about Christians than about
Muslims or that they have prejudicial beliefs about Muslims in general. In either case, they
discriminate. (This is not taste-based, but rather statistical discrimination).
H7 – The FdS believe that other FdS have a distaste for Muslims and will sanction other FdS if
they cooperate with Muslims, and therefore are less cooperative toward Muslims when there are
more FdS around them
H8 – The SM’s believe that other SM’s have a distaste for FdS, and will sanction other SM’s if
they cooperate with FdS, and therefore are less cooperative toward FdS when there are more
SM’s around them.
Technologies:
H9 – SX’s through shared networks (at Church) with FdS are better able to coordinate with FdS
than SM’s, thereby yielding higher levels of cooperation
Our strongest findings are: (1) FdS exhibit statistical discrimination against SM’s
(Hypothesis H6). Conversely, we have found no convincing evidence that this is complemented
with taste-based discrimination (H1);32 (2) SM’s do not have a taste for cooperation with
outsiders, especially when stakes are high (Hypothesis H2); (3) SM’s exhibit a taste for
discrimination against their own women (H3); (4) There is a strong sanctioning mechanism by
FdS’s against FdS’s who try to cooperate with SM’s and a strong sanctioning mechanism against
SM’s by SM’s who try to cooperate with FdS’s (Hypotheses H7 and H8) (5) There is mutual
discomfort between SM’s and FdS’s, which is not exhibited between SX’s and FdS’s
(Hypotheses H4 and H5); (6) There is no evidence for SX’s having a more efficient technology of
communication with FdS than the SM’s (Hypothesis H9).
(1) FdS exhibit statistical discrimination against SM’s (Hypothesis H6), but the data do not
reveal any pure case of taste-based discrimination (Hypothesis H1): The CV experiment
described in Part I is powerful evidence of discrimination by French organizations against
Muslim applicants, but doesn’t help discriminate between taste-based and statistical
discrimination.
Results from the trust game reinforce those we found in the CV experiment, but with the
same confound. Consider the receiver’s decision. (Recall that this game is played
32
. We are presently designing an experiment that would give clear evidence on whether there is taste-based
discrimination against SM by FdS.
14
simultaneously, meaning that Player 2’s move occurs without any knowledge of Player 1’s
decision). Table II-2 shows that FdS, in the position of Player 2, send back significantly less to
SM than to SX (with the difference of means test significant at 90%). This result is robust and
more significant (at 95%) with an OLS estimation that controls for players’ socio-demographic
characteristics and session fixed effects, and which clusters the standard errors at the individual
level. But what mechanisms does the receiver’s return capture? The receiver’s decision has an
element of taste (as there is no strategic advantage in rendering any return to the sender and any
amount sent could be seen as generosity or good will). But it also reveals (second order) beliefs
that you ought to return money to players you believe will be trusting of you. The return by
sender therefore adds confidence that there is religious-based discrimination. But from both the
CV experiment and the trust game, it is difficult to separate out whether the discrimination is a
matter of taste, or whether it is based on beliefs by FdS about the probability of successful
exchange with SM’s (given either the generalization of popular prejudices against SM’s, or
greater uncertainty about the productivity of SM’s relative to SX’s).The trust game, therefore,
doesn’t allow us to discriminate between H1 and H6.
The dictator game is the cleanest test of taste. Here we find that FdS donate no more
money to SX’s than to SM’s. There is therefore no pure evidence of taste-based discrimination
that undermines SM economic advance in France.
We capture statistical discrimination in game moves that rely predominantly on the
beliefs that players hold about their partners. In the voting game, subjects vote for a leader who
will then allocate money to them. The actual allocation has a strong altruistic element. But the
vote itself is based largely on trust, that is, on the expectation that the leader will respond with a
generous allocation to the voter. It therefore captures beliefs rather than tastes. In this voting
game, FdS players are on average less likely to vote for a SM leader (0.14) than for a SX leader
(0.27). Although this difference of means is not statistically significant (p=0.16), the OLS
coefficient on the effect of the candidate’s religious identity on an FdS’s likelihood of voting for
him or her, is statistically significant at the 90% confidence level. Here, we find some evidence
suggesting that FdS statistically discriminate against SM’s relative to SX’s.
FdS statistical discrimination reveals itself more weakly in two other instances. In the
trust game, FdS senders on average allocate 2.43 Euros to SM’s and 2.55 Euros to SX’s, showing
stronger beliefs in a higher return from SX’s. While not significant (p=0.28), this difference is
consistent with our interpretation of the voting results, that FdS trust SX’s more than they trust
SM’s.
Finally, when asked whether, in the speed chatting game, they would recommend players
they just met to an employer, FdS are less likely to recommend their SM than their SX
interlocutors. This difference of means is significant at the 90% confidence level, but the OLS
estimation does not yield significant results. [These inconsistent statistical results need to be
further analyzed]. Overall, there is consistent (though not always significant) evidence of greater
FdS trust toward SX’s than toward SM’s.
The experimental results support a statistical foundation for FdS discrimination, one
based on beliefs rather than tastes.
15
(2) The SM’s fail to establish cooperative arrangements with any groups when stakes are high
(Hypothesis H2): Cooperative arrangements, we assume, are reached when players can overcome
their rational, egoist tendencies and exhibit altruism toward others. Here we find that SM’s are
much less altruistic (keeping what they can for themselves) that SX’s when the stakes are worth
keeping.
Table II-3 illustrates differing levels of altruism among FdS’s, SM’s and SX’s across
games, ordered from games with low to high stakes. In the practice altruism game where the
stakes are very low (3 Euros), we do not find that SM altruism is significantly different from SX
altruism. In fact SM’s give more, though not significantly so. In the trust game, where the stakes
are bit higher (9 Euros), SM’s return a lower share to all senders than do FdS or SX, although
this is only significant relative to what the FdS return. Once we reach the two high-stakes games,
however (30 Euros), SM’s are significantly less altruistic to all players relative to both SX’s and
FdS’s, who do not differ significantly in their level of altruism.
The change in SM behavior is likely due to rising stakes rather than pre and post speedchatting interactions. Indeed, the change in SM behavior begins with the trust game, which takes
place before the speed-chatting interactions. The more convincing explanation is therefore that
generosity goes down for SM’s (but not for SX’s) when the stakes go up.33 Furthermore, we note
that the low level of altruism toward the majority group is not counterbalanced by in-group
generosity, and this might raise the barriers for group advancement.
We have evidence that this is a matter of taste, rather than a fundamental distrust of
societal others. In the Laitin/CSA survey, using the standard World Values Survey question on
trust, and controlling for ethnicity and income, we find that SM’s are no less trusting of others
than are SX’s. On the other hand, we observe in that survey, again with standard controls, that
SM’s send back more money and more often to their families in Senegal than do SX’s; and they
prefer to be buried back in Senegal far more than do SX’s. This suggests an orientation to family
rather than society, and provides the best explanation for low levels of SM altruism to all groups
(including other SM’s) compared to SX’s.
(3)The SM’s exhibit a taste for discrimination against their own women (H3): SM altruism
reaches the lowest bounds when it comes to allocations to their own women. To test the channel
of gender discrimination, we concentrate on the amount given in the dictator game for two
reasons: first, the dictator game is most likely to cleanly capture altruism; second, our number of
observations is highest in this game, allowing us to differentiate behavior by sex in both
difference of means analysis and regression analysis. Table II-4 indicates that both SM males
and SM females are significantly less generous to SM females than they are to SM males. In
comparison, SX males and females are no less generous to SX females than they are to SX
males.
Low levels of SM altruism are not significantly different across groups of players (SM’s display similarly low
levels of altruism toward SM’s, SX’s and FdS’s). However, as we shall see below, the one group that does suffer
from lower levels of SM altruism are SM females.
33
16
This finding is consistent with much other research revealing a gender bias among
Muslim respondents in the Norris/Inglehart (2003) study of World Values, and our CSA survey
as well. As shown on Tables II-5a and b, compared to SX’s, SM respondents have lower
educational hopes for their daughters, and are more likely to see the fundamental place for
women to be in the household. A potential explanation for the results in Part I of our paper is
lower SM altruism toward all groups of players (undermining useful cooperation even among
themselves) and greater SM taste for discrimination against their own women (lowering human
capital).
(4) There is a strong sanctioning mechanism by FdS’s against FdS’s who try to cooperate with
SM’s, and a strong sanctioning mechanism by SM’s against SM’s who try to cooperate with
FdS’s (Hypotheses H7 and H8): Does group sanctioning inhibit or encourage SM integration?
Here, we focus on the channel of in-group policing. Namely, we examine whether the presence
of more FdS leads any individual FdS to be less generous toward SM’s than toward SX’s, or if
the presence of more SM’s makes any individual SM less willing to be generous toward FdS’s
than would be the case for SX’s.
Tables II-6a and b, relying on data from the dictator game, where the number of SX’s,
SM’s, and FdS’s vary across sessions, present the results of our tests for these mechanisms. We
find both in-group sanctioning effects that work against inter-group generosity. The Tables
reveal, first, that SM’s give less to FdS guises in the dictator game with more of their own group
is in the room. This is not the case for SX’s, who do not significantly change their behavior with
more SX’s in the room. Additionally, FdS’s give less to SM’s (but not necessarily to SX’s) with
more FdS’s in the room. In other words, SM’s seem to sanction their own when it comes to
generosity toward FdS; and FdS seem to sanction their own when it comes to generosity toward
SM’s. We do not observe this for FdS-SX interactions. These results suggest a norm among
FdS’s to punish other FdS’s who are generous to SM’s, and a norm of SM’s to punish other
SM’s who are generous to FdS’s. Both of these norms, we surmise, hinder SM integration into
France.
We find another piece of evidence supporting H7 is in the results from the strategic
dictator game, where we can test what beliefs players hold about FdS generosity. Recall that all
players were asked to guess the allocations of three people in the dictator game: one of the FdS
players who they were told was randomly chosen from the group; and two French-looking
women, one young and the other elderly, whose pictures were broadcast on a large screen.
Players in general did not guess there would be any discrimination against the Muslim guises as
played by these three FdS models. But, as shown in Table II-7, FdS players did infer that the
elderly model would reveal anti-Muslim feelings by her allocations. (Alternatively, FdS subjects
guessed that the younger FdS model would give more to the Muslim guises). If we can assume
that elderly French women are a good proxy for traditional cultural beliefs, then all FdS, when
there is in-group policing by bastions of French traditional culture, will strategically adjust their
behavior to coincide with their anti-Muslim cultural norm.
(5) There is mutual discomfort between SM’s and FdS’s, which is not exhibited between SX’s and
FdS’s (Hypotheses H4 and H5): We call out-group salience the strong feelings of discomfort a
player might experience when surrounded by groups of “others”, the more so the larger that
17
group. Because SM’s are a double minority in France (Muslims and Africans) while SX’s are
only a minority as Africans, the salience of being an out-group may be stronger for the SM’s
than for the SX’s, and stronger for FdS’s interacting with SM’s than for FdS’s interacting with
SX’s. Such out-group salience may alter SM and FdS behavior (notably by reducing inter-group
cooperation) in such a way as to exacerbate anti-Muslim discrimination. The dictator game
provides some evidence in our experiments for this out-group salience effect, as illustrated in
Table II-8. In sessions in which there were a greater number of FdS players, SM contributions to
FdS guises went down while SX contributions to FdS guises went up. Conversely, the more SX’s
were in the room, the more FdS gave to the SX’s, but there was no change in FdS giving to SM
guises with more SM’s in the room. These results suggest that SM’s are uncomfortable around
too many FdS, while FdS are less uncomfortable around more SX’s than they are among more
SM’s. Thus the salience of the SM’s as an out-group is greater than for SX’s, with an impact on
behavior, both of SM’s and FdS players.
(6) There is no evidence for SX’s having a more efficient technology of communication with FdS
than the SM’s (Hypothesis H9 no different from null): Do SM’s suffer from a communication
disadvantage? We test this channel through the speed chatting game. In France, there is no
linguistic advantage for SX’s over SM’s (both have the same language repertoires: fluency in the
mother tongue, variable fluency in Wolof, the language of wider communication in Senegal, and
at least adequate conversational French). We are therefore examining a more subtle form of
communication advantage: whether a common religion involves “network capital”, the ability to
connect with people and infer correct things about them from greater exposure to people like
them (people in the other player’s social network). To the extent that SX’s would more likely
meet FdS’s in Church (and share at least one social network) than would SM’s meet FdS’s in the
Mosque, the SX’s in our sample may enjoy more network capital than do SM’s, facilitating their
socio-economic advancement in France.
Table II-9 displays results from our analysis of the speed chatting game and quiz. It
indicates that there is no significant communication advantage in learned characteristics shared
between SX’s and FdS’s. SX’s were no better at learning personal characteristics about their FdS
interlocutors than were the SM’s; nor were they better able to make correct guesses than SM’s
about their FdS interlocutors. FdS players were not significantly better able to learn the personal
characteristics of their SX interlocutors than they were of their SM interlocutors. Finally,
although FdS’s made significantly more correct guesses about their SM interlocutors than their
SX interlocutors, this is fully explained (as we shall shortly see) by FdS more likely guessing
that SX’s were Muslims than guessing that SM’s were Christians. In sum, there is no significant
evidence of SX’s ability to exploit network capital for strategic advantage among FdS.34
Part III: Interpretive Issues, Extensions, Summary, and Conclusion
A. An Interpretive Issue
34
. In one of our ethnographic interviews (a part of the project not developed in this paper), one SX respondent
laughed when asked if she had met many FdS at Church. She responded that there weren’t any FdS who go to
Church; she only meets those from the Antilles there!
18
One big question we raise in our interpretation of the experimental results is whether the
FdS are conditioning their behavior on our targets’ “religion”, and if not religion, what other
signals are they relying upon. We know from the speed chatting game that FdS do not easily
recognize SXs as Christians. There were 15 FdS/SX meetings in the speed chatting game; in 5 of
those cases (33.5%), the FdS thought that their SX interlocutors were Muslims while in only 3
cases (20%) did they correctly identify them as Christians. (1 was identified as an atheist and in
six cases the FdS circled “don’t know” in regard to an SX’s religion). Meanwhile, of the 22
FdS/SM meetings, 11 (or 50%) of the FdS correctly thought their interlocutor was a Muslim. (4
or 18% thought they were Christians and 7, or 32% did not know). In other words, FdS did not
correctly identify the target population’s religion 59% of the time; they were incorrect 50% of
the time for the SM’s and 80% of the time for the SX’s. Furthermore, from observation, neither
SM’s nor SX’s appeared at the game site with religious dress or jewelry. These results suggest
that our findings relating to FdS behavior toward SM’s and SX’s are not explained by a correct
reading of the target’s religion. Instead, the only clear, differentiating signal FdS’s received were
players’ first names, which they wore as a nametag throughout the session. Here, Table III-1
indicates clear differences between SM and SX first names: SX names were more recognizably
French, while SM names were more recognizably foreign. Only 4 of 17 SM names were
common Muslim names. Therefore, it seems that FdS are conditioning their behavior on the
degree of exoticness of the first names of their interlocutors, not on their religion.
B. Extensions
Although we have uncovered mechanisms that account for the variation in the behavior
of SX’s and SM’s in regard to FdS and vice versa, we have not explored whether the sources of
these differences are exogenous (having to do with the religion of the targets which in this case
would be seen as an exogenous treatment) or endogenous (having to do with the nature of the
French context in which SM’s and SX’s interact with FdS). One test for exogeneity is to use data
sources such as the World Values Survey and Afrobarometer to see if in a variety of countries
(and in particular Senegal) Muslims are more family oriented and therefore less altruistic to
others.
A good extension would therefore be to conduct similar game experiments with the
Joolas in Senegal. Coming from Casamance, all Joolas would be seen as minorities (compared to
the Wolofs) in Dakar. But here, since the majority Wolofs are Muslim, the Joola/Christians
would be the double minority (ethnic community and religion) while the Joola/Muslims would
be only a single minority (ethnic community). If the Joola/Christians in experiments conducted
in Dakar acted like the SM’s in Paris, we would have evidence that minority status drives the
results; but if the Joola/Muslims conducted themselves in Dakar as did the SM’s in Paris, we
could identify the effect as religious.
In this paper, we have made assumptions about the recognizability of names (as possibly
French or Muslim or foreign). We are in the course of developing lists of the most common
names in France, and those in Algeria (as a proxy for perceived Muslim-ness), to put our
assumptions about name recognition to test. A further extension would be to interview random
19
subjects in the district in which the experiments were held in order to get local understandings of
how the various SM and SX first names would be interpreted.
Another extension would be to rely on the same survey outlined above, showing the
pictures of each of the players in our trust games, and asking respondents to rank them as to how
good looking each player is. We would then have a proper control (“beauty”) for how much the
sender gives in the trust game, as suggested in the work of Wilson and Eckel (2006).
A final extension would be to inquire as to why Muslims, in the face of discrimination,
do not change their exotic (to the FdS) first names to ones that would be more readable to the
FdS. We conjecture this has much to do with SM’s retaining greater connections with the home
country, and fearing reprisals there if they return home with Christian-sounding names. This
conjecture can be put to test with data on the amount of money respondents send back to their
families in Senegal, and their expressed preferences for burial in Senegal. On both of these
variables, preliminary tests relying on the Laitin/CSA survey support our conjecture.
C. Summary and Conclusions
In this paper we have shown that both public debate and previous research on the
implications of religious difference for integration into France have yielded ambiguous results.
Relying on a new matching strategy, and replicating well-understood CV experiments, we have
been able to identify a statistically and substantively strong level of religious discrimination in at
least one sector of the French labor market. Relying on that same matching strategy, but now
through a large-n survey of the descendents of Senegalese migrants into France, we are able to
show one implication of job discrimination, namely that over generations Muslims have done
less well economically than have comparable Christians. Part I of our paper established a clear,
albeit uncomfortable, finding. All other things equal, Muslims have faced barriers to economic
integration in France that are higher than they would have been if everything about them were
the same save for their religion.
Part II of the paper explored the mechanisms through which these barriers were
sustained. Here we find three channels through which our targeted group of Muslims faces
higher barriers to economic success in France than does their matched group of Christians.
Concerning tastes, we find no taste based discrimination by FdS against SM’s that is greater than
towards SX’s; however SM’s reveal a distaste for the progress of SM-women, something that is
not the case for SX’s towards SX women. Concerning beliefs, we find that FdS beliefs about
SM’s drives distrust and discrimination. Also FdS and SM beliefs about other members of their
own group limit generosity toward the other when more of their own group are observing. SM
beliefs about the low possibility of cooperation among any groups with whom they interact in
France, we infer from our data, accounts for their generalized low levels of altruism. Concerning
technologies of communication, we find no evidence that SM are less able to communicate with
FdS (and vice-versa). Overall, a range of mechanisms helps sustain religious inequality in
France.
The remedies for systematic inequality of opportunities are clearly a subject for future
research. This paper’s contribution is to have identified that religious difference is a source of
20
inequality and specified some of the channels through which religious inequality flows.
21
TABLES
Table I-1. Impact of religion and geographic origin on household’s yearly income in large-n
survey.
Variables
Female
Age
Education
Jewish
Asian religion
Atheist
Muslim
Number of years in France
Country Fixed Effects
Observations
Pseudo R-squared
Model (1)
Model (2)
coeff.
s.e.
coeff.
s.e.
-0.176**
-0.0272**
0.227**
0.339*
-0.136
-0.135
-0.342**
0.008**
0.041
0.003
0.014
0.165
0.138
0.095
0.047
0.002
-0.186**
-0.030**
0.230**
0.499*
-0.396^
-0.082
-0.173
0.008**
0.042
0.003
0.017
0.202
0.208
0.106
0.107
0.002
No
Yes
2,645
0.050
2,645
0.063
The table reports ordered probit estimates. The dependent variable is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “0”
if the yearly household income is null to “14” if the yearly household income is greater than 68,000 Euros. Female
is a binary variable, which takes the value “1” if the head of household is Female and “0” if the head of household is
Male. Age is a continuous variable equal to the actual age of the head of household. Education is an ordinal variable
ranging from the value “1” for no schooling to “6” for post-secondary education. Jewish is a binary variable, which
takes the value “1” if the head of household is Jewish and “0” otherwise. Asian religion is a binary variable, which
takes the value “1” if the head of household is Buddhist, Hindu, Shintoist or Confucianist, and “0” otherwise. Atheist
is a binary variable, which takes the value “1” if the head of household is atheist and “0” otherwise. Muslim is a
binary variable, which takes the value “1” if the head of household is Muslim and “0” otherwise. The reference
group is Christian, which is a binary variable, which takes the value “1” if the head of household is Christian and
“0” otherwise. Number of years in France is a continuous variable equal to the number of years that the head of
household has been spending in France. Coefficients in bold highlight the effect of the confound between religion
and country of origin. Standard errors are robust. Stars indicate coefficient significance levels (two-tailed): **
p<0.01, * p<0.05, ^ p<0.1.
22
Table I-2a: Results from the C.V. Experiment on Job Discrimination in France based on
Religious Cues
Marie/Khadija Diouf
Probability that candidates
0.21
gets a call back:
(n=138)
Marie/Aurélie matchup
Probability that candidates
0.08
gets a call back:
(n=133)
Khadija/Aurélie matchup
Difference in difference significant at p<.01
Aurélie Ménard
0.27
(n=138)
Difference
-0.06
0.25
(n=133)
-0.17**
Table I-2b: C.V. Results in Logit Regressions
DV: likelihood that test
candidate gets a call-back
Test candidate is Khadija
CDD contract
Small Firm
Medium Firm
(1)
(2)
(3)
-1.10**
(0.38)
0.77*
(0.38)
-0.09
(0.58)
0.27
(0.62)
-1.10**
(0.38)
0.79*
(0.38)
-0.04
(0.57)
0.27
(0.62)
-0.25
(0.46)
-1.77**
(0.62)
265
0.06
-1.76**
(0.62)
265
0.07
-1.11**
(0.39)
0.73^
(0.39)
-0.12
(0.59)
0.12
(0.62)
-0.24
(0.47)
-0.53
(0.57)
-0.76
(0.53)
-0.03
(0.44)
-1.39*
(0.66)
265
0.08
Photo included
Secretary
Executive assistant
Junior accountant
Constant
Observations
Pseudo-R2
Logit regression of the likelihood that the test candidate, Khadija or Marie Diouf, gets a call-back. Omitted
categories for variables on the right-hand side are as follows: Marie Diouf for the test candidate; CDI contract type;
Large firm size; no photo included in the CV; Accountant for the job position. Standard errors are robust. Stars
indicate significance: ^ p ≤ 0.10; * p ≤ 0.05; ** p ≤ 0.01.
23
Table I-3. Ordered probit estimates: Impact of religion on household’s monthly income.
Variable
Christian household
Head of household’s gender
Head of household’s education
Education of the first migrant
Pseudo R2
Observations
Coefficient
0.357**
0.293*
0.055*
0.022
standard error
0.127
0.120
0.025
0.035
0.017
312
The dependent variable is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” if the monthly household income is lower
than 500 Euros to “9” if the monthly household income is greater than 7,500 Euros. Christian household is a binary
variable, which takes the value “1” if the household is Christian and “0” if the household is Muslim. Head of
household’s gender is a binary variable, which takes the value “1” if the head of household is Male and “0” if the
head of household is Female. Head of household’s education controls for the level of education of the head of
household. This is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” for no schooling to “8” for post-secondary
education. The variable Education of first migrant controls for the level of education of the head of household’s
ancestor who was the first to migrate to France, and thus absorbs the differences in current family income due to
initial differences in human capital. This is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” for no schooling to “6” for
post-secondary education. Results hold when we control for the subject’s ethnicity. Results hold as well in OLS
regressions. Standard errors are robust. Stars indicate coefficient significance levels (two-tailed): ** p<0.01, *
p<0.05, ^ p<0.1.
24
Table II-1: Games, Rules, and Pay-offs35
Game
Rules
Pre-test altruism
game
1. Subjects sit in front of a computer, and view three screens
sequentially, each screen with two pictures of confederates whose
photos were taken in the district where the registration took place;
2. For each screen, subjects were given two Euros, and three
envelopes. One envelope was addressed to the first face on the
screen; one to the second; and one to the subject;
3. Subjects were told that they could not put two coins in any one
envelope, but could put the two Euros in any two of the three
envelopes; the money addressed to the faces would be donated to
them; the money subjects put in their own envelope would stay
with them to bring home;
4. Our measure of altruism was the amount (from 0-3) that the
subject put in his/her three envelopes.
1. Subjects sat quietly in a waiting room (and supervised such that
they could not communicate with one another), and were called to a
playing table in pairs, but not knowing how many times they would
be playing, nor against whom;
2. For each pair, one was assigned role of “sender” and the other
“receiver”
3. Sender had 3 Euros in his/her account, and could send any
amount {0, 1, 2, 3} to receiver by marking this amount on a sheet
that receiver would never see;
4. All subjects were told before the game began that the amount
sender sent to receiver would be tripled in value; they were also
told the game was about “trust”, such that the more the sender sent
to receiver, the greater total amount the second player would
receive, and that the sender could do better by sending more money
to the receiver if he/she trusted that receiver would return
generously;
5. Receiver simultaneously marked on his/her sheet what
percentage of the amount received would be sent back to sender [0,
1/3, 2/3, all].
6. After each play, sender and receiver return to the waiting room,
not knowing if they would be called again, nor in what role.
1. The 10 subjects for each experimental session were broken up
into two teams of 5, each following the same protocol;
2. Each player on a team knew that he/she would have a few
minutes to meet (and we emphasized, to get to know about) each
other member, thereby “speed chatting” with four other players,
sequentially, as in a speed-dating situation;
Trust
Speed Chatting
35
Maximum
Returns to a
player in
Euros
3
9
32
. All games had safeguards to meet IRB regulations; they are not part of the description here of the games.
25
3. After meeting each partner, players were given 1 minute to jot
down notes on a piece of paper.
4. After meeting all other members of their group, each player
received an answer sheet with the picture of each person they met,
and a series of eight personal questions about them (e.g. their age,
their job, whether they were married, their religion…). Players
were allowed to consult their notes;
5. For each question subjects gave their answer [answer or “don’t
know”], and circled whether they learned this information from
their chat, or just guessed the answer;
6. For each correct answer for the 8 questions on 4 other players,
subjects earned 1 Euro;
Friend and Job
1. At the end of the questionnaire for each person they met in speed
Recommendation chatting, subjects were asked to rank on a scale from 1 to 10
whether (a) they would want to befriend this person and (b)
whether they would recommend this person for a job.
Leader voting and 1. After the speed chatting, each of the two teams were tasked with
distribution
choosing a leader, one for each team;
2. Players knew that the leader would have the responsibility of
dividing 30 Euros in any way he/she wanted (including keeping it
all to her/himself)
3. Each player received a hand-out sheet with the pictures of each
of the four other players on his/her team and ranked them as to
whether they would want that person as a leader;
4. Players also indicated how much they would allocate to each of
the players on the team (including themselves) were they to be
elected the leader;
5. The player with the highest ranking in votes became the leader;
his/her allocations were distributed.
Dictator
1. All 10 players sat together in a single room in front on a large
screen;
2. They observed six distinct pictures of confederates in sequence
on that screen. Four of the confederates were pictures of people
solicited in the district where the experiment took place, two of
them apparently FdS with typical FdS names; two of them
apparently foreigners (“North African/Middle Eastern”). Finally,
two confederates were a Senegalese man and a Senegalese woman;
these people lived in other cities in France. These were our target
confederates.
3. For half of the sessions, subjects viewed one of the neighborhood
foreigners and one of the target confederates with a Christian name
and the other with a Muslim name; for the other half of the
sessions, this was reversed.
4. Subjects were given 5 Euros to distribute to each confederate;
that which was not given was kept in the account of the subject to
take home.
Strategic dictator 1. After the completion of the dictator allocation, one of the
monitors explained that one of the players would be chosen at
random as the “model”. This was a lie. In fact, the model was
always one of the players who was known beforehand as an FdS.
0
30
30
30
26
2. Players were then told that they would see the same six photos
that they saw in the dictator game. Now they would be asked to
guess the amount the model allocated to each of the confederates in
the dictator game;
3. The player who guessed most closely to the actual decisions of
the model would receive a prize of 30 Euros.
Table II-2: Trust Game – Difference of Means
Variable
SM sender
0.39
(N=28)
FdS return to SM and SX
SX sender
0.51
(N=23)
Difference
0.11
H0
Rejected
(p=0.09)
Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t-tests with paired variances for the two scenarios. For H 0, means are
equal for the scenario where the receiver faces a SM sender and for the scenario where the receiver faces a SX
sender. When we run OLS regressions, which allow us to control for gender, age, education, income, whether the
players know each other, whether the players know someone who participated in previous sessions, session fixed
effects and to cluster standard errors at the player level, this result becomes significant at 95%.
Table II-3: Game Stakes and SM Altruism
FdS
Practice
Altruism
(amount
given)
Trust Return
Leader
Distribution
(amount
given per cap)
Dictator
SX
SM
P value of t-tests
Perceived
maximum
stake
3
9
2.04
1.73
2.06
p=.17 (SMSX);
p=.48 (SMFdS);
p=.21 (SXFdS)
.47
.44
.37
p=.11 (SMSX);
p=.03 (SMFdS);
p=.30 (SXFdS)
4.29
4.36
3.05
p=<.001 (SMFdS);
1.97
1.74
0.79
p<.001 (SMSX);
p=.42 (SXFdS)
p<.000 (SMSX);
p<.001 (SMFdS);
p=.12 (SXFdS)
30
30
27
Table II-4: In-group gender discrimination in the dictator game
SM
SM males
SM females
SX
SX males
SX females
Average donation to
in-group male
(max = 5 Euros)
1.38
1.33
1.40
1.86
2
1.67
Average donation to
in-group female
(max = 5 Euros)
0.2
0.14
0.33
2.5
3
2.33
Difference of
means
-1.18***
-1.19***
-1.07^
0.64
N/A36
0.66
Table II-5A. Difference in the hopes for son’s vs. daughter’s educational level
Variable
Hopes of SM’s and SX’s for son’s
vs daughter’s educational level
SM
respondent
0.02
(N=302)
SX
respondent
-0.22
(N=137)
Difference
H0
0.24
Rejected
(p=0.03)
The hopes for one’s child’s educational level is measured by a scale from 1 (“no diploma”) to 8 (“post-secondary
education”). Regarding daughters, the average hope is 7.36 among SMs and 7.55 among SX’s. Regarding sons, the
average hope is 7.38 among SM’s and 7.33 among SX’s. Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t tests with
paired variances for the two scenarios. For H0, means are equal for the scenario where the respondent is SM and for
the scenario where the respondent is SX. When we run an OLS regression, which notably allows us to control for
the gender, the age, the education level, the family income, and the time since arrival of the first migrant of the
family, this result holds (significant at 90% with a p-value equal to 0.08).
Table II-5B. Difference in the perception of the purpose of women
Variable
SM
respondent
Perception of the purpose of women
2.89
by SMs and SXs
(N=358)
SX
respondent
3.14
(N=146)
Difference
H0
-0.25
Rejected
(p=0.01)
The perception of the purpose of women is measured by a scale from 1 (“completely agree”) to 4 (“completely
disagree”) that captures the level of disagreement with the statement that the purpose of women is to have children
and to raise them. Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t-tests with paired variances for the two scenarios.
For H0, means are equal for the scenario where the respondent is SM and for the scenario where the respondent is
SX. When we run an OLS regression, which notably allows us to control for the gender, the age, the education level,
the family income, and the time since arrival of the first migrant of the family, this result holds (significant at 99%
with a p-value<0.01).
36
Difference-of-means test is not available here because our data rely on only one observation for SX male
donation to SX female.
28
Table II-6A. Difference in the amount given by SM (resp. SX dictators) to FdS in sessions
with a low number of SM (resp. SX) and in sessions with a high number of SM (resp.SX).
Variable
Donation of SM to FdS
Variable
Donation of SX to FdS
Sessions
with low
number of
SM
1.75
(N=4)
Sessions
with high
number of
SM
0.625
(N=32)
Sessions
with low
number of
SX
Sessions
with high
number of
SX
1.9
(N=10)
1.5
(N=12)
Difference
H0
1.125
Rejected
(p=0.01)
Difference
H0
0.04
Failed to
Reject
(p=0.12)
Sessions with a low number of SMs (session 1 and session 7) comprise 10% of SM’s. Sessions with a high number
of SMs encompass either 20% (sessions 2, 3, 4 and 6) or 30% (session 5 and session 8). Sessions with a low number
of SXs (sessions 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7) comprise 10% of SXs. Sessions with a high number of SXs (sessions 2, 6 and 8)
encompass 20% of SXs. Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t tests with paired variances for the two
scenarios. For H0, means are equal for the scenario where the number of SM/SX is low and for the scenario where
the number of SM/SX is high. The difference in difference is significant at 99%.
Table II-6B. Difference in the amount given by FdS dictators to SM confederates and to SX
confederates in sessions with a low number of FdS and in sessions with a high number of
FdS.
Variable
Donation of FdS to SM
Variable
Donation of FdS to SX
Sessions
with low
number of
FdS
2.82
(N=11)
Sessions
with high
number of
FdS
2.00
(N=12)
Sessions
with low
number of
FdS
Sessions
with high
number of
FdS
2.18
(N=11)
2.17
(N=12)
Difference
H0
0.82
Rejected
(p=0.10)
Difference
H0
0.01
Failed to
Reject
(p=0.49)
29
Sessions with a low number of FdS (sessions 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8) comprise 20% of FdS. Sessions with a high number of
FdS’s comprise either 30% (session 4) or 40% (session 1 and session 5) of FdS. Sessions with a high number of
SX’s (sessions 2, 6 and 8) comprise 20% of SX’s. Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t-tests with paired
variances for the two scenarios. For H0, means are equal for the scenario where the number of FdS’s is low and for
the scenario where the number of FdS is high. The difference in difference is significant at 99%.
Table II-7. Difference in the belief of FdS about other FdS’ donation to SM and to SX
Variable
Donation of the old FdS to SM/SX
Variable
Donation of A3 to SM/SX
Variable
Donation of the young FdS to SM/SX
SM
0.17
(N=6)
SX
0.63
(N=8)
Difference
SM
SX
Difference
2.54
(N=13)
2.38
(N=13)
-0.16
SM
1.4
(N=10)
SX
0.7
(N=10)
0.46
Difference
-0.70
H0
Rejected
(p=0.08)
H0
Failed to
reject
(p=0.38)
H0
Rejected
(p=0.07)
Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t- tests with paired variances for the two scenarios. For H 0, means are
equal for the scenario where the confederate is SM and for the scenario where the confederate is SX. When we run
an OLS regression, which notably allows us to control for the gender, the age, the education level, and the family
income of the FdS guessing about other FdS’s donation, these results hold.
Table II-8A. Difference in the amount given by SM dictators (resp. SX dictators) to FdS
confederates in sessions with a low number of FdS and in sessions with a high number of
FdS.
Variable
Donation of SM to FdS
Variable
Donation of SX to FdS
Sessions
with low
number of
FdS
1
(N=22)
Sessions
with high
number of
FdS
0.36
(N=14)
Sessions
with low
number of
FdS
1.75
(N=16)
Sessions
with high
number of
FdS
1.5
(N=6)
Difference
H0
0.64
Rejected
(p=0.03)
Difference
H0
0.25
Failed to
Reject
30
(p=0.26)
Sessions with a low number of FdS (sessions 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8) comprise 20% of FdS. Sessions with a high number of
FdS comprise either 30% (session 4) or 40% (session 1 and session 5) of FdS. Sessions with a high number of SXs
(sessions 2, 6 and 8) comprise 20% of SXs. Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t-tests with paired
variances for the two scenarios. For H0, means are equal for the scenario where the number of FdS is low and for the
scenario where the number of FdS is high. The difference in difference is significant at 99%.
Table II-8B. Difference in the amount given by FdS dictators to SM confederates (resp. SX
confederates) in sessions with a low number of SM (resp. SX) and in sessions with a high
number of SM (resp. SX).
Variable
Donation of FdS to SM
Variable
Donation of FdS to SX
Sessions
with low
number of
SM
Sessions
with high
number of
SM
2.83
(N=6)
2.24
(N=17)
Sessions
with low
number of
SX
1.94
(N=22)
Sessions
with high
number of
SX
2.71
(N=14)
Difference
H0
0.59
Failed to
reject
(p=0.21)
Difference
H0
-0.77
Rejected
(p=0.09)
Sessions with a low number of SMs (session 1 and session 7) comprise 10% of SMs. Sessions with a high number of
SM’s comprise either 20% (sessions 2, 3, 4 and 6) or 30% (session 5 and session 8). Sessions with a low number of
SX’s (sessions 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7) comprise 10% of SX’s. Sessions with a high number of SXs (sessions 2, 6 and 8)
comprise 20% of SX’s. Means tests were conducted using two-tailed t tests with paired variances for the two
scenarios. For H0, means are equal for the scenario where the number of SM/SX is low and for the scenario where
the number of SM/SX is high. The difference in difference is significant at 99%.
Table II-9: Speed Chatting Quiz Results
Average # correct
% correct that
was learned
% correct that
was guessed
Average # correct
% correct that
was learned
% correct that
FdS about SX
3.53 out of 8
FdS about SM
4.55 out of 8
Difference of means
-1.02*
67.02
60.44
-6.58
25.83
35.05
9.22
SX about FdS
4 out of 8
SM about FdS
4.5 out of 8
Difference of means
-0.5
35.33
34.02
-1.31
33.89
45.52
11.63
31
was guessed
32
Table III-1 Given Names and their Foreign-ness in a French Setting
[Names in Bold are “Recognizable” as Possibly French; Names in Italics are Common
Muslim Names]
MUSLIM NAMES
AMADOU
AMIE
ASTOU
AWA
CIRE
FATOUMATA
KALS
KHADY
MAMADOU LAMINE
MOUSTAPHA
NDEYE
OUSMANE
SIDY
SIRE
TAMSIR
YACINE
CHRISTIAN NAMES
CECILE
CHRISTINE
DANIEL
EPHIGENIE
GASTON
HELENE
LOUIS
MAMADOU JEAN
NINA
ROBERT ANTOINE
THERESE
33
References
Amadieu Jean-François (2004), Enquête « Testing » sur CV, Adia/ Paris I- Observatoire des
discriminations.
Bisin, Alberto, Eleonora Patacchini, Thierry Verdier, and Yves Zenou (2008), « Are Muslim
immigrants different in terms of cultural integration? », Journal of the European
Economic Association, 6, 445-456.
Bowen, John (2009) Can Islam be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State
(Princeton: Princeton University Press)
Caldwell, Christopher (2009) Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and
the West (New York: Doubleday)
Constant, Amélie, Liliya Gataullina, Klaus Zimmermann and Laura Zimmermann (2006) Clash
of Cultures: Muslims and Christians in the Ethnosizing Process, IZA Discussion Paper Series
2350.
Diop, A. Moustapha “Stéréotypes et stratégies dans la Communauté Musulmane de France”, pp.
77-98, in Leveau, Rémy and Gilles Kepel, eds. (1988) Les Musulmans dans la Société Française
(Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences-Politiques)
Donselaar, Jaap van and Peter Rodrigues (December 2004), “ Monitoring Racism and the
Extreme Right” Anne Frank Stichting, Research and Documentation, Leiden University,
Amsterdam, Department of Public Administration (Fifth and Sixth Reports ).
Duguet, Emmanuel, Noam Leandri, Yannick L'Horty and Pascale Petit (2008) Are Young
French Jobseekers of Ethnic Immigrant Origin Discriminated Against? A Controlled Experiment
in the Paris Area, Working Paper.
Jowell, R. and Prescott-Clarke, P. (1970). Racial Discrimination and White-collar
Workers in Britain. Race and Class, 11; 397.
Kepel, Gilles (1987) Les Banlieues de l’Islam (Paris: Seuil)
Laurence, Jonathan and Justin Vaisse (2006) Integrating Islam: Political and Religious
Challenges in Contemporary France (Washington, DC: Brookings)
Manning, A. and S. Roy (2007), “Culture Clash or Culture Club? The Identity and Attitudes of
Immigrants in Britain.” CEP Discussion Paper No. 790, London School of Economics.
Meurs, Dominique, Ariane Pailhé, and Patrick Simon “the Persistence of Intergenerational
Inequalities linked to Immigration: Labour Market Outcomes for Immigrants and their
Descendants in France” Population (E 2006): 645-82
34
Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart (2003) “Islamic Culture and Democracy: Testing the ‘Clash
of Civilizations’ Thesis”. In Ronald Inglehart, ed. Human Values and Social Change: Findings
from the Values Surveys (Leiden: Brill), pp. 5-32
Wilson, Rick and Catherine Eckel, “Judging a Book by its Cover: Beauty and Expectations in the
Trust Game” Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2, 189-202 (2006)
Wolff, François-Charles, Seymour Spilerman, and Claudine Attias-Donfut (2007) “Transfers
from Migrants to their Children: Evidence that Altruism and Cultural Factors Matter” Review of
Income and Wealth 53(4): 619-644
35
Appendix
Table A-1. Descriptive statistics in the Laitin CSA Survey
Variable
Household monthly
income
Christian household
Head of household’s
gender
Head of household’s
education
Education of the
first migrant
Observations
461
312
509
312
439
312
400
312
397
312
Mean
5.15
5.10
0.29
0.32
0.67
0.65
4.63
4.74
3.00
3.02
S.D.
1.66
1.64
0.45
0.47
0.47
0.48
2.63
2.68
1.82
1.85
Min.
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
Max.
9
9
1
1
1
1
8
8
6
6
For each variable, the first row presents descriptive statistics over the whole sample (N=511) while the second row
presents descriptive statistics over the regression sample used in Table I-3 (n=312).
Table A-2: Balance tests between Senegalese Muslims and Senegalese Christians in Game
Experiments
SM
SX
Difference of means
(two-tailed tests assuming
unequal variances)
% Female
0.44
0.55
-0.10
Age
33.56
31.45
2.10
Education
7.59
7.63
-0.04
% Self-employed
0
0.14
-0.14
Religiosity
2.71
4.9
-2.19**
Ideology
4.73
4.43
0.30
Distrust
2.79
2.33
0.45^
% Born in France
0.06
0.09
-0.04
Play for money
5.56
4.22
1.34
Family income
3.87
4
-0.13
% Joola
0.61
0.5
0.11
% Serer
0.33
0.2
0.13
% French national
0.17
0.18
-0.02
Job skill level
2.8
2.29
0.51
% Reside in Paris
0.53
0.7
-0.17
Education is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” for no education to “9” for postsecondary education ; Religiosity is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” if the player
never attends religious services to “7” if the player attends religious services several times per
week; Ideology is thermometer measure ranging from “1” for left-most political ideology to “10”
36
for right-most ideology; Distrust is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” if the player
believes one can almost always trust people to the value “4” if the player believes one can never
be careful enough when dealing with others; Play for money is a thermometer measure ranging
from “1” for least likely to have played only for money to “10” for most likely to have played
only for money; Family income is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” for a household
monthly income below 500 Euros to “11” for a household monthly income above 7,500 Euros;
Job skill level is an ordinal variable ranging from the value “1” for high-skill to the value “5” for
unemployed.
37
Appendix: Examples of the CVs
Marie DIOUF
14 rue Gérard
75 013 Paris
Tel : 06 46 59 74 92
e-mail : diouf_marie@voila.fr
24 ans, célibataire
Nationalité française, Permis B
ASSISTANTE POLYVALENTE
Domaines de compétences
 Accueil physique et téléphonique
 Tenue d’agenda
 Secrétariat classique
 Traitement du courrier : rédaction, frappe et envoi des lettres, offres de prix, contrats
 Prise de rendez-vous et organisation des réunions et des séminaires
 Organisation des déplacements : demande de visa, réservations d’avion
 Suivi des frais généraux
 Préparation et saisie des budgets de ventes
 Suivi des budgets
 Maîtrise de l’anglais et l’allemand professionnels
Formation
2005
BTS Assistante Secrétaire Trilingue (Anglais, Allemand, Français)
Expérience Professionnelle
38
Nov. 2007 – Mars
2009
Secrétaire polyvalente
NOVOTEL Paris :
- Rédaction et frappe de courriers
- Mise à jour du registre unique du personnel
- Contact avec les administrations (sécurité sociale…)
- Demande d’affiliation complémentaire santé
- Secrétariat classique
Août 2006 – Oct.
2007
Secrétaire
SCP GAUTIER, VROOM & ASSOCIES à Saint Maur de Fossés :
- Frappe de courriers et actes divers à l’aide du dictaphone
- Accueil téléphonique de la clientèle
- Relances factures clients
- Prise de rendez-vous
- Mise sous pli
- Affranchissement du courrier
- Classement
- Télécopie
- Reliure de documents
Oct. 2005 – Juillet
2006
Assistante polyvalente
Secours Catholique à Evry :
- Traitement des appels téléphoniques
- Organisation de réunions, colloques et séminaires
- Accueil téléphonique et physique
- Rédaction, mise en forme de documents, classement et archivage
- Prise de notes et réalisation de comptes rendus
Avril 2005 – Sept.
2005
Assistante polyvalente
Secours Catholique à Evry :
- Gestion de planning
- Accueil téléphonique et physique
- Gestion de dossiers
- Organisation de réunions
Autres activités
Responsable bénévole aux Scouts et Guides de France
39
Aurélie Ménard
Célibataire
(03/07/1985)
45 Rue Tolbiac
aurel.menard@yahoo.fr
75013 PARIS
 06 48 20 74 08
Assistante polyvalente
(disponibilité immédiate)
Compétences
Accueil physique
Accueil téléphonique (Filtrage d’appels ; mise en relation avec le service adéquat)
Organisation de réunions
Tenue des agendas et prise de rendez-vous
Plannings : réunions, salles de réunion, congés, déplacements
Rédaction et mise en forme de documents, envoi de mailings, rédaction de compte
rendu
Gestion du courrier postal et électronique (Réception ; Emargement ; Diffusion ;
Mailing ; Envoi de documents commerciaux ; Facturation)
Commandes fournisseurs, commandes de fournitures, gestion du parc téléphonique
Préparation et coordination d’évènements spéciaux (salons commerciaux, portes
ouvertes, lancement de nouveaux produits)
Classement ; Archivages
Informatique: Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Office Outlook/Internet
Langues: Anglais - Allemand
Expériences professionnelles
2007 - 2009
Assistante polyvalente
CODEM TECHNOLOGIES
(Fabrication et vente de produits
électroniques de sécurité)
2007
Assistante polyvalente
ESTEL
(Etudes de marché)
2005 - 2007
Secrétaire
ORGECO
40
(Fabrication et vente de bijoux fantaisie)
Formation :
2005
Brevet de Technicien Supérieur – Assistante de Direction
 Stage de fin d’études de 4 mois à la CAF de Lille
2003
Baccalauréat Professionnel Bureautique Secrétariat
2001
Brevet d’Etudes Professionnelles Bureautique Secrétariat
-
Loisirs :
Volley-ball (6 ans)
Lecture, cinéma
Permis de conduire [it is strange for this informations to be mentioned under the “Loisirs”
heading…]
41
Khadija DIOUF
22 rue de Cotte
75012 PARIS
Tel : 06 48 20 28 29
e-mail :
khadijadiouf@ymail.com
24 ans, célibataire
Nationalité française, Permis B
ASSISTANTE POLYVALENTE
Domaines de compétences
 Accueil physique et téléphonique
 Tenue d’agenda
 Secrétariat classique
 Traitement du courrier : rédaction, frappe et envoi des lettres, offres de prix, contrats
 Prise de rendez-vous et organisation des réunions et des séminaires
 Organisation des déplacements : demande de visa, réservations d’avion
 Suivi des frais généraux
 Préparation et saisie des budgets de ventes
 Suivi des budgets
 Maîtrise de l’anglais et l’allemand professionnels
Formation
2005
BTS Assistante Secrétaire Trilingue (Anglais, Allemand, Français)
Expérience Professionnelle
42
Nov. 2007 – Mars
2009
Secrétaire polyvalente
NOVOTEL Paris :
- Rédaction et frappe de courriers
- Mise à jour du registre unique du personnel
- Contact avec les administrations (sécurité sociale…)
- Demande d’affiliation complémentaire santé
- Secrétariat classique
Août 2006 – Oct.
2007
Secrétaire
SCP GAUTIER, VROOM & ASSOCIES à Saint Maur des Fossés :
- Frappe de courriers et actes divers à l’aide du dictaphone
- Accueil téléphonique de la clientèle
- Relances factures clients
- Prise de rendez-vous
- Mise sous pli
- Affranchissement du courrier
- Classement
- Télécopie
- Reliure de documents
Oct. 2005 – Juillet
2006
Assistante polyvalente
Secours Islamique à Massy :
- Traitement des appels téléphoniques
- Organisation de réunions, colloques et séminaires
- Accueil téléphonique et physique
- Rédaction, mise en forme de documents, classement et archivage
- Prise de notes et réalisation de comptes rendus
Avril 2005 – Sept.
2005
Assistante polyvalente
Secours Islamique à Massy :
- Gestion de planning
- Accueil téléphonique et physique
- Gestion de dossiers
- Organisation de réunions
Autres activités
Responsable bénévole aux Scouts Musulmans de France
43