Discrimination against mobile European Union citizens before and during the first COVID-19 lockdown: Evidence from a conjoint experiment in Germany
| Author | Anita Manatschal,Christian Adam,Xavier Fernández-i-Marín,Oliver James,Carolin H Rapp |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211037208 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Discrimination against
mobile European Union
citizens before and during
the first COVID-19
lockdown: Evidence from a
conjoint experiment in
Germany
Xavier Fernández-i-Marín
Geschwister-Scholl-Institut for Political Science, LMU Munich,
Germany
Department of Political Science, Universitat de Barcelona,
Catalonia, Spain
Carolin H Rapp
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark
Christian Adam
Chair of Comparative Politics, Zeppelin University, Germany
Oliver James
Department of Politics, University of Exeter, UK
Anita Manatschal
Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies, University
of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Abstract
One of the greatest achievements of the EU is the freedom of movement between mem-
ber states offering citizens equal rights in EU member states. EU enlargement and the
Corresponding author:
Carolin H Rapp, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Email: cara@ifs.ku.dk
Article
European Union Politics
2021, Vol. 22(4) 741–761
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211037208
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
COVID-19 pandemic allow for a critical test of whether EU citizens are indeed treated
equally in practice. We test preferential treatment of EU citizens in two hypothetical
choice experiments in Germany at two different time points: in the period before
and during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Theories of responses to threat suggest
that the COVID-19 crisis should increase discrimination against mobile EU citizens.
While our findings reveal sizeable discrimination based on nationality and language pro-
ficiency of mobile EU citizens, the findings also suggest that, contrary to expectations,
discrimination did not increase in the initial COVID-19 crisis period.
Keywords
COVID-19, discrimination, mobile EU citizens, conjoint experiment, pandemic
Introduction
The unconstrained free movement of citizens between the European Union (EU) member
states provides rights to mobile EU citizens and has sparked political polarisation.
1
The
rights are both celebrated as an extraordinary achievement and derided. Brexit, heated
debates about welfare tourism, and referenda like the Swiss initiative to restrict free
movement (Begrenzungsinitiative) from September 2020 stand witness to this. In
formal terms, EU citizens enjoy access to welfare benefits and, if they reside in an EU
member state, the right to vote in local elections. However, the extent to which mobile
EU citizens can exercise their rights effectively and efficiently often depends on how
they are treated by the population, in general, and frontline bureaucrats in particular.
We put the idea of the freedom of movement and equal treatment to a twofold test. In a
first step, we analyse preferential treatment of EU citizens, i.e., discriminatory attitudes,
by asking general population survey respondents to act as bureaucrats. In our bureaucratic
work tasks that take the shape of a hypothetical choice experiment, respondents have to
decide about mobile EU citizens’applications to exercise their right to vote in local elec-
tions and receive welfare benefits. In the experiments, respondents choose between
several pairs of EU citizens applying for welfare benefits and information on local
voter registration. Mobile EU citizens are thereby characterised by nationality, language
skills, gender, age and profession.
2
In a second step, we seize the opportunity of analysing the potential effect the corona-
virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had on the differential treatment of mobile EU
citizens, based on an identical follow-up survey conducted during the German lockdown
in April 2020. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe, right-wing populist move-
ments in Europe have actively tried to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to activate nation-
alist sentiments and push for border and migration control. In Germany and Austria, the
Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Freedom Party for Austria (FPÖ), both known for
their anti-immigrant rhetoric, were the leading critiques of government action during the
pandemic. These efforts were spurred by several instances in which COVID-19 outbreaks
among migrant workers in agriculture and the meatpacking industry in Germany attracted
742 European Union Politics 22(4)
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