Some 21 per cent of immigrants who are entitled to work in Ireland say they have been discriminated against when looking for a job, according to a new report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). This was most common among black Africans (34.5 per cent), more than half of whom said they had also been racially harassed in a public place in the past year.
In a study of perceived racism and discrimination among asylum seekers and work permit holders in Ireland, the ESRI surveyed over 1,000 foreign nationals on their experiences in a range of social situations: in the workplace, in public places, in shops and restaurants, in commercial transactions and in contact with institutions.
It found that black Africans experienced considerably more discrimination than other groups studied, while non-EU east Europeans generally reported less discrimination than others.
Citizens of the 10 states that joined the EU in 2004 were excluded from the study, as were refugees, those on student visas and all illegal immigrants.
About 15 per cent of those questioned said they had been denied credit or a loan from a financial institution, while between 10-15 per cent of the sample reported being badly treated by healthcare or social services and being refused entry into a restaurant because of their origin.
The highly educated are significantly more likely to experience discrimination in two domains: employment and public arenas, while migrant women are less likely to feel discriminated against in public places, shops and restaurants, but are more likely to experience institutional discrimination.
The research, part of a larger study on migrants' experiences of racism and xenophobia in 12 EU member states, found that experience of racism tended to be lower in Ireland than in other countries, particularly southern European states.
For example, some 15 per cent of immigrants surveyed in Ireland felt they had been denied housing because of their ethnic or national origin but in Italy, the figure was 63 per cent. While 10 per cent of the Irish sample said they had been badly treated by the gardaí because of their ethnic or national origin, the figures for the Netherlands (19 per cent) and Greece (43 per cent) were higher.
However, the authors cautioned against drawing conclusions from such comparisons.
Dr Philip O'Connell of the ESRI, one of the report's authors, said: "One has to be careful here, because Ireland is very new to this business, and we're talking about a rapid influx of new immigrants. In many of the other European societies immigrants have been there for much longer, and many of the problems concern second-generation immigrants rather than first- generation immigrants. That means that it's quite difficult to make an exact comparison, because immigration is actually quite different from country to country."
Dr O'Connell suggested that language was the "fundamental barrier to integration" and he advised that all effort should be made to ensure good provision of English-language training for all immigrants.
This would complement advances made in employment and policing, where the authorities had shown themselves to be "ahead of the game" in developing institutions and practices to avert racism.
The report's findings are generally consistent with the one large previous Irish study specifically focusing on racism, an Amnesty International report of 2001. That research also found racist incidents on the street the most common form of racism, with 44 per cent of respondents experiencing it.