Open seminar at Score
Date: Thursday 21 May 2026
Time: 10:00 - 11:30
Location: Score, Frescativägen 14 A, Stockholm University
How to Hire Skilled Immigrant Workers? Organisational Measures to Reduce Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring
Adopting an organisational lens, the paper examines ethnic discrimination in hiring alongside firms’ efforts to diversify their workforce. Focusing on discrimination bias —the disadvantageous perception of immigrant applicants by recruiters— it asks how firms can reduce the organisational 'opportunity structure for discrimination' (Petersen & Saporta, 2004) through preventive measures in recruitment and, crucially, post-hire integration.
Using a mixed-methods design and data from the European PATHS2INCLUDE project, the paper first links employers' quantitative assessments of hypothetical applications to organisational features in order to identify contexts in which discrimination is less likely to occur. It then analyses employer interviews to reveal the structures, mechanisms and company-level policies that facilitate diversity-oriented hiring. Two questions guide the analysis: Which measures help firms consider immigrants for skilled jobs during periods of labour shortage? How do these measures support the recruitment of a diverse, skilled workforce?
