Overview
- The government-funded InRa consortium, backed by €6 million, ran 23 subprojects from 2021 to 2024 across jobcenters, migration offices, police, the judiciary, and other public services using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods.
- The study concludes discrimination is detectable across individual, institutional, and structural levels, typically arising through routines, discretionary decisions, and complaint handling rather than overt hostility.
- A survey of nearly 13,000 staff at the Federal Police, Customs, Federal Employment Agency, and BAMF found no uniformly higher ethnically discriminatory attitudes than in the general population, yet 18–26% reported professional disadvantage, with racially marked groups citing origin, religion, or skin color more often.
- In a targeted online survey of 468 Muslims, 80% reported discriminatory experiences in authorities, but only 17% sought help from an anti-discrimination office, with more than half doubting complaints would have consequences.
- The researchers issued 17 recommendations, including extending the General Equal Treatment Act to authority–citizen interactions, establishing independent complaint bodies, mandating anti-racism training, increasing transparency in decisions, and targeted support for staff from discriminated groups.