Encyclopedia of Sociology

DISCRIMINATION

industries. But these patterns are not accidental.
Planners put minorities into these industries for
cheaper labor precisely because of their decline. In
addition, these multiple factors offer insufficient
explanations for the greater unemployment of
minorities. Veenman and Roelandt (1990) found
that education, age, sex, region, and employment
level explained only a small portion of the differ-
ential unemployment rates in the Netherlands.

Indirect discrimination arises when the ina-
bility to obtain citizenship restricts the opportuni-
ties of non-European Union minorities. It limits
their ability to get suitable housing, employment,
and schooling. A visa is necessary in order to travel
to other European Union countries. In short, the
lives of Europe’s non-citizens are severely circum-
scribed (Wilpert 1993). Castles (1984) contends
that the guest-worker system that brought many of
the immigrants to Europe was itself a state-con-
trolled system of institutional discrimination. It
established the newcomers as a stigmatized ‘‘out-
group’’ suitable for low-status jobs but not citizen-
ship. Widespread indirect discrimination was in-
evitable for these victims of direct discrimination.

Anti-discrimination remediation has been large-
ly ineffective in Europe. Basic rights in Germany
are guaranteed only to citizens. So, the disadvan-
tages of non-citizenship include limited means to
combat discrimination. There is extensive Ger-
man legislation to combat anti-Semitism and Nazi
ideology, but these laws have proved difficult to
apply to non-citizens. The German constitution
explicitly forbids discrimination on the basis of
origin, race, language, beliefs, or religion—but
not citizenship. Indeed, the Federal Constitutional
Court has ruled that differential treatment based
on citizenship is constitutional if there is a reason-
able basis for it and if it is not wholly arbitrary.
Hence, a German court upheld higher taxes for
foreign bar owners than German bar owners. And
restaurants can refuse service to Turks and oth-
ers on the grounds that their entry might lead
to intergroup disturbances (Layton-Henry and
Wilpert 1994).

Few means of combatting discrimination are
available in France either. Commentators often
view discrimination as ‘‘natural,’’ as something
universally triggered when a ‘‘threshold of toler-
ance’’ (seuil de tolerance) is surpassed (MacMaster

1991). Without supporting evidence, this ration-

alization supports quotas and dispersal policies

that limit minority access to suitable housing.

The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Swe-

den have enacted anti-discrimination legislation

that specifically applies to the new immigrant mi-

norities. And the Dutch have instituted modest

affirmative action programs for women and mi-

norities (De Vries and Pettigrew 1994). Not coinci-

dentally, these countries make citizenship easier to

obtain than Germany. Yet this legislation has been

largely ineffective for two interrelated reasons.

First, European legal systems do not allow class

action suits—a forceful North American weapon

to combat discrimination. Second, European ef-

forts rely heavily on individual complaints rather

than systemic remediation. Britain’s 1976 Act gave

the Commission for Racial Equality the power to

cast a broad net, but individual complaints remain

the chief tool (MacEwen 1995).

It is a sociological truism that individual ef-

forts are unlikely to alter such systemic phenome-

na as discrimination. Mayhew (1968) showed how

individual suits and complaints are largely non-

strategic. Minorities bring few charges against the

worst discriminators, because they avoid applying

for jobs with them in the first place. Complaints

about job promotion are common, but they are

made against employers who hire minorities. Thus,

effective anti-discrimination laws must provide

broad powers to an enforcement agency to initiate

strategic, institutionwide actions that uproot the

structural foundations of discrimination. Mayhew’s

American analysis proves to be just as accurate in

Western Europe.

CONCLUSIONS

A comprehensive understanding of societal dis-

crimination in both North America and Western

Europe must encompass two propositions.

1. The long-lasting character of discrimina-
   tion means that the effects typically outlive
   the initiators of discriminatory practices.
   Apart from its importance to the law, this
   feature of modern discrimination has
   critical implications for sociological theory.
   Discrimination is fundamentally norma-
   tive; its structural web operates in large
   part independent of the dominant group’s