Study: Immigrant Children in Spain Face 36% Lower Hiring Rates, Moroccan Youth Among Most Affected

The children of Spaniards have 36% more chances than immigrants to be selected at the end of a recruitment process, indicates the study carried out by the Ortega y Gasset Research Institute, with the support of the Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia (Oberaxe) under the Ministry of Inclusion, based on the submission of applications from the children of Spaniards and immigrants of Moroccan, Chinese, Peruvian and Dominican nationality to 1,002 job offers.

The experiment confirms that discrimination against the profiles of the children of immigrants is one of the factors that influence the process of accepting or rejecting an application, which contributes to significantly increasing inequality in access to the labor market for these young people, explains sociologist Rosa Aparicio to EFE, on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, commemorated on March 21.

For the researcher, prejudices continue to exist about the origins of the children of immigrants, some more negative than others, and "for certain professions, ethnic capital can be a positive factor when it comes to being selected for a job." The study also shows that there are differences in the level of discrimination against immigrants, with the children of Moroccans being 50% more likely to be rejected compared to 30% for the children of Peruvians and 31.7% for the children of Chinese.

Gender also influences employers’ choices regarding the children of immigrants, the study reveals, specifying that men and women of Dominican and Moroccan origin are the most affected by discrimination, with 16.3% of men against 5.1% of women among Dominican children and 14.7% of women against 9.6% of men among Moroccan children.