Understanding the mechanisms of ethnic discrimination: a field experiment on discrimination against Turks, Syrians and Americans in the Berlin shared housing market

This article focusses on the scope and causes of ethnic discrimination against applicants with different ethnic backgrounds in the German housing market. Whereas ethnic discrimination is a well-documented phenomenon in the commercial housing market, little is known about the shared housing market. I conducted a field experiment in the German shared housing market for students, sending out fictitious enquiries with names signalling a Turkish, a Syrian or an US background to advertisers of shared livings in Berlin, Germany. The results show that ethnic discrimination against Turks and Syrians is widespread, whereas the US applicant is not discriminated against substantially. Discrimination against the Syrian applicant is furthermore mediated by the language used in the enquiries. The results show that patterns of discrimination differ between permanent and temporary contracts.