Can interethnic marriages mitigate discrimination? Insights from a field experiment

Abstract This paper examines whether interethnic marriages between immigrants and natives can reduce hiring discrimination. Drawing on social identity theory, I study whether intermarriage—signaled through a marriage to a native Finnish spouse—affects employers’ responses to job applications. I conducted a large-scale correspondence experiment in Finland, submitting approximately 1500 fictitious applications from two equally qualified female applicants, one Finnish and one Turkish. When neither applicant provided the marriage signal, the Turkish applicant faced a 26.2-percentage-point lower callback probability. The marriage signal had little effect for Finnish applicants but substantially improved outcomes for Turkish applicants, increasing their callback probability by about 25 percentage points and reducing the ethnic gap to roughly 3 percentage points. Because all applications explicitly signaled Finnish language proficiency, the presence of a native Finnish spouse can be interpreted as reflecting employers’ perceptions of social and cultural assimilation.