Disciplining the Danes? Revisiting the Racial Classification Model

We know from the literature that stereotypes influence frontline workers’ decision-making. This fundamentally challenges citizens’ right to equality before the law in western democracies. However, stereotypes are... [ view full abstract ]

We know from the literature that stereotypes influence frontline workers’ decision-making. This fundamentally challenges citizens’ right to equality before the law in western democracies. However, stereotypes are particularistic and thus differs depending on the context. Therefore, we should test the effect of stereotypes and discriminative behavior in different contexts rather than automatically overgeneralize results from previous studies. This article tests the Racial Classification model by experimentally examining how ethnic stereotypes affects 175 frontline workers’ decision-making in a Danish context, where the client group of interest consists of one of the most vulnerable and exposed client groups in the Danish unemployment scheme. The results show that stereotypes does indeed influence frontline workers’ decision-making. However, contrary to previous findings, caseworkers sanction ethnic Danish clients more harshly than they sanction clients with a non-western ethnicity. A qualitative analysis indicates that the caseworkers’ sanctioning behavior is a result of different perceptions of the clients’ issues. Thus, the article shows that contextual factors such as the client group at hand are important to take into account, when studying the consequences and the role of stereotypic beliefs in frontline workers’ behavior