You know, the problem with them migrants is that they just won’t integrate. They come to our country and expect to have everything their way. They want to have their own religious schools in our suburbs, something they have no right to do even if we’ve been doing it for decades. And when they won’t integrate properly, they wonder why they get murdered or bashed. And what really cheeses me off is that they just come here and go on the dole. And them Lebanese are the worst of all. Biggest dole bludgers on the planet. I mean, what’s to stop them from applying for jobs?
Actually, there’s not much to stop them from applying, though it may not take them very far. Why? The answer might be found in a new study published by three researchers from the Economics Program of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU).
That study was based on “several large-scale field experiments to measure labour market discrimination across different migrant groups in Australia”. The main experiment involved “sending 4,000 fictional resumes to employers in response to job advertisements”. And the result?
“We found economically and statistically significant differences in callback rates, suggesting that ethnic minority candidates would need to apply for more jobs in order to receive the same number of interviews”. The findings showed a person with distinctly Chinese-sounding name had to submit 68% more applications to get the same number of interviews as a person with an Anglo-Saxon-sounding name.
In the case of a person with a Middle Eastern sounding name, the figure was 64%. The results were tabulated by gender, by city (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) and according to the nature of the job (waitstaff, data entry, customer service and sales).
The study cites the experience of one Ragda Ali from Sydney who says that she “applied for many positions where no experience in sales was needed — even though I had worked for two years as a junior sales clerk. I didn’t receive any calls so I decided to legally change my name to Gabriella Hannah. I applied for the same jobs and got a call 30 minutes later”.
After reading all this stuff, I wondered how many times in my own working career I’d been denied an interview because of an employer making assumptions about my ethnic background. Or perhaps I should have Europeanised my name? Maybe I’ll change my name to Ivan Albrechtsen-Bolt and try my luck applying for a job at, say, News Limited. Heck, at least they’ll be assured I’m not one of those people with genetic defects arising from cousin-marriage.
That such structural discrimination persists across the workforce in a nation where 1 in 4 people was born outside Australia is a disgrace. In our 21st century allegedly globalised Australian economy, people with chink and rag-head sounding names still find it much harder to get a job.
Please if you are going to base your article on statistics perhaps you could check how the same applications were treated if you came from certain suburbs, certain age groups, certain schools etc. Also how many jobs are available each day, how many applicants per job. Who was actually successful fior those positions, I imagine the article would fail if somebody else with an ethnic sounding name won the position.
When I hear about a survey with a specific target I am not surprised when the surveyor finds exactly what they were looking for. You didn’t mention the part where the researchers mentioned that their speed test indicated(note just as the above figures nothing proven just indicated) that it was subconcious
“In another experiment testing reaction speed, we found implicit discrimination against ethnic minority names, suggesting that part of the effect in the hiring experiment is likely to be subconscious.”
So what is the author trying to say? Do they believe that anything would change? It has been my experience that your name can affect your employment possibilities, so can your age, your home address and other factors.
Has the author inquired into how many discrimination cases were actioned last year, last five years etc. I keep hearing what a racist country I am a part of but never any proof or hard facts to back up the authors accusations.
Seeing as though the author mentioned Lebanon I wonder how a person with an anglo name would go getting employment in the towns there? What would be the percentage chance there? We are a disgrace because we dont discriminate when you get into the country, we have laws against discrimination, so why is my country continually called racist by people who dont do research or any type of investigation. The author even got some anti-semitism in there in disguise(click on the genetic defect link)
Is crikey now the stage for any racist to air their views as long as they are attackin australians? They represent vox pops as facts. One example, my god get canberra to adjourn a special sitting to amend the law. Oh wait the law protects Ragda Ali, all they have to do is contact the authorities and the person who discriminated against them will be investigated on evidence, not statistics or hearsay. Not good enough for the law, good enough for crikey.
When are you going to learn that globalisation died last October. It was not an advanced state of being, just a way for the elite to rip off more people more easily.
Another racist amatuer unresearched article.
Everyone is suspicious of things they don’t understand. When this suspicion is applied to a person of another race this is considered racism. This reaction to the unknown is universal amongst all races and as such racism is also universal. Usually if there is goodwill on both sides lines of communications can be opened, common ground can be discovered, trust developed and lo and behold a new and productive relationship will flourish. This has on many occasions led to children! Sometimes, however one of the “co-respondents” will have irreconcilable differences with the other that result in significant and sometimes dangerous conflict. So is this fear of the unknown racism, or is it simply an understandable and sometimes, although most probably rarely, sensible risk avoidance behaviour.
Being an “Anglo” I do not know how to pronounce “Irfan Yusuf” and I would suffer embarrassment in not being able to do so in some social situations. This embarrassment would possibly lead to avoidance behaviour on my part. Does this make me a racist?. I think not. For “What’s His Name” to take the ANU study and immediately say that Australians (whoever they are) are racist is a long bow to draw and not a particularly usefull one.
Not all Australian Nationals are tolerant of differences in race or for that matter a lot of other people such as “Greenies”, homosexuals or social comentators, however on whole Australians do not inflict institutionalised violence in the name of religion, race or sex like well publicised minorities do in other parts of the world.
The only people who do suffer from such insitutionalised violence by Australians are our indigenous people who have been the subject of the most appalling injustice since European immigration. This is out real shame and sadly one that will haunt us for many years to come.
This is not ‘another racist amateur unresearched article’. It’s a brief journalistic comment (somewhat bitterly tongue-in-cheek in places, from a person who has undoubtedly come up against some of the discrimination the paper describes) about the serious and fairly lengthy research report of a study conducted by Alison Booth, Andrew Leigh and Elena Varganova from the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. The researchers used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey which is funded by the Australian Government and collects longitudinal data on many aspects of Australian life. The research was also reported on last night’s TV news, and in today’s newspapers.
The ANU’s media release is here: http://news.anu.edu.au/?p=1317, and a copy of the research report is here: http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/AuditDiscrimination.pdf
I, too, found these results (as reported) surprising, given the multicultural nature of my own workplace. But I’m fortunate in my employer.
It’s always best to read the whole of any research report before you comment on the findings as represented in the press. I have no doubt, however, that the report contains plenty of ‘hard facts’ given the data source. A quick glance (all I’ve had time for) shows that the authors explain what information they used, how they crunched the numbers, and how they reached the conclusions they did. They also openly discuss the limitations of their findings. This is standard practice. It’s science, not opinion.
And, if you disagree, then rational, reasoned, refutation of the real authors’ (the ANU researchers’) argument is better than an antagonistic spray against the messenger (Irfan Yusuf).