A new report from Timbro, the Swedish right-wing think tank, has caused some commentary. The author argues that discrimination does not explain why immigrants face challenges on the Swedish labour market. This argument rest on the observation that employers in other countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany) answer a question from World Value Survey concerning privileging native born job seekers over foreign born such more negatively than Swedish employers do.
While I have to admit that I was surprised that Canadian employers would be presenting such answers to the question, the report, in my opinion, has a fundamental methodological flaw, and that is its reliance on the World Value Survey for its conclusions. This survey is a quantitative survey of values, taken in from across the world (as the name implies). It could be argued the aggregate data of the Survey gives us some idea about cultural differences across the world (though it is possible to question that, too, to some extent - after all, how do you develop distinctly separate categories of "traditional" and "secular-rational" values?) but I'm not sure that it is a useful in a smaller sample studie like this.
More importantly, it is inherently quantative, and I'm not at all convinced that quantitative methods can reveal a whole lot about discrimination in practice. At best, the report manages to show that Swedish employers have a self-image of not being discriminatory, but from there, it's a bit of a leap to conclude that they will not act in a discriminatory fashion in practice. Indeed, unconscious discrimation, i.e. acts that are not intended as discriminatory, but result in discriminatory outcomes because of ignorare, or prejudice that is assumed to be common sense, cannot be easily probed using a questionnaire.
Qualitative methods, like in-depth interviews, participant observation and so on would be more appropriate, and every time such methods have been employed in Sweden, significant discriminatory behaviour has been observed.
