In Brussels, a Moroccan name and being over 50: the profile most disadvantaged in hiring

To measure discrimination without relying solely on employers’ statements, researchers from the universities of Ghent, Brussels and Louvain sent 864 fictitious applications in response to 432 job offers in the Brussels region. The experiment involved 414 organizations between April 2023 and February 2024.

The candidates were all presented as having been born, educated, residing and professionally experienced in Brussels. Their nationality was Belgian and their qualifications were comparable. Only three elements varied: the name suggesting Belgian, Polish or Moroccan origin, age and sex. The detailed results are set out in the study funded by the Brussels-Capital Region.

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The finding is particularly clear for Moroccan names. They lead to a 5.8-percentage-point decrease in the probability of being invited to an interview compared with a Belgian name. For all positive responses, the gap reaches 9.5 points. No comparable statistically significant disadvantage was found for Polish names.

Age constitutes a second obstacle. Profiles aged 50 or 56 receive 5.1 fewer interview invitations than comparable candidates aged 38 or 44. The gap rises to 9.3 points when all positive reactions from employers are taken into account.

The cumulative effect of disadvantages

Men are also disadvantaged. With comparable applications, they receive 4.4 fewer interview invitations than women and 6 fewer positive responses. The profile most exposed is therefore that of an older man with a Moroccan-sounding name.

The researchers nevertheless remain cautious: their analysis does not demonstrate that these three criteria statistically reinforce one another. It does, however, establish that each produces a disadvantage separately and that their accumulation concretely places certain candidates in a particularly unfavorable situation.

Significant discrimination appears mainly in the private sector, particularly in retail, automobile repair, and administrative and support activities. In small businesses with no more than 50 employees, a Moroccan name reduces the probability of receiving a positive response by as much as 14.7 points. The public-sector sample is too limited to conclude that discrimination is absent.

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The solutions considered include raising recruiters’ awareness, providing better information about antidiscrimination laws and using anonymous CVs. The authors nevertheless advise against using these tests to single out a particular company: several repeated observations are necessary to firmly establish a discriminatory practice.