The field experiment began in Switzerland, a country with a diversity that includes various cultures and four official languages, in addition to a high percentage of foreign nationals. Email accounts were created with typical names of German, French and Italian origin, together with others of foreign origin. To produce the fake identities, the Department of Linguistics at the University of Zurich collaborated to find names with a high penetration that would leave no doubt regarding the individual’s origin, such as Christian Meyer, Nicolas Dubois, Marco Bernasconi and Bojan Lukic.

Using these profiles, an application was sent to the coaches of 1,188 Swiss amateur-class teams to participate in a training session. In the messages, which were identical except for the sender’s name, the fictitious player explained that he had experience in that level of the game.



Coaches’ answers were used to determine to what point differences in region or nation interfere in the possibility of accessing a social and mainstream activity such as football. Once the viability of the methodology had been confirmed, it was decided to apply it on a larger scale in a study that is being carried out in 22 European countries.

This new field experiment is not studying the acceptance of regional diversity and focuses on the integration of different immigrant profiles. In Spain, for example, contact was made with 1,410 football clubs using local names (Alejandro López and David García) or names with Arabic (Mohamed Bennani and Youssef Alami), Romanian (Ştefan Ionescu and Gabriel Popescu) and Anglo-Saxon roots (James Williams and Jack Brown).

Amateur sports teams are a tool for social integration, with a demonstrated positive influence promoted from the institutions (Duarte et al., 2012; Council of European Union, 2010). The researchers chose football because it is the most popular sport in Spain and the whole of Europe and because it has international rules, so cultural differences do not interfere when playing the sport.



Research into social integration depends on objective measures that, as usually happens with other aspects of social sciences, are often not easy to quantify. This experiment to measure how the host population treats individuals with foreign names was based on the behaviour observed, not on self-reported data, as such data can contain subjective distortions. Furthermore, taking into account the methodology, nor was there any risk of distortions due to factors such as appearance, attitude, or accent, which can sometimes generate nonconscious bias (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004).

The preliminary data from the study conducted in Spain within the framework of the European research indicate that the proportion of affirmative responses to applications from players of foreign origin was significantly lower (36%) than in the case of those of native origin (49%). Researchers classed as negative those responses those that made their refusal clearly explicit and those applications that did not obtain a response, while they classed as affirmative those that accepted the player for a test or did so with some additional consultation, for example, asking them which teams they had played for previously or what position they usually played in on the field.

These results show the same tendency as other European countries, including the study conducted in Switzerland: priority is given to applications from applicants with native names ahead of those with names of foreign origin. Furthermore, despite the fact that in Spain the rate of answers is lower than in Switzerland for any type of player, there is clearly a very much more marked preference in favour of those with local names. The difference, of thirteen points, is practically double that obtained in the Swiss study and stands above the European average.

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The following step in the research is studying whether there are significant differences in acceptance according to the applicant’s country of origin and also whether the results obtained in Spain are very different to those obtained in other European countries. In the experiment conducted in Switzerland, the researchers confirmed that applications with names of Arabic origin clearly received fewer responses than those sent with names with other origins. In Spain, initial results indicate that British names are slightly less discriminated against than Arabic or Romanian names, although these differences have yet to be carefully analysed.

Today’s societies are experiencing an increasing presence of individuals originating from other countries and regions, and their functioning depends, largely, on how this diversity is integrated into them. Interaction with the local population in social activities such as sport reinforces integration and facilitates the gradual breakdown of cultural and language barriers. Social research has demonstrated that the contact and social interactions involved reduce prejudices and improve integration (Schneider, 2008).

In general, discrimination in access to social activities is usually more pronounced for foreign nationals who do not have a good knowledge of the local language (Mattern and Shaw, 2010). Discrimination linked only to names affects both newly arrived immigrants and second- or third-generation immigrants with full language competencies.

Moreover, this type of behaviour generates a chain of prejudice for the most disadvantaged: labour economics studies have demonstrated that social inclusion has direct repercussions on economic inclusion, so a person who is better connected and integrated will have more possibilities of finding work and prospering.

This article has been adapted from the following study:

NESSELER, C., C. GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ and H. DIETL (2019): “What’s in a name? Measuring access to social activities with a field experiment”, Palgrave Communications, 5 (160).

Other references:

GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, C., NESSELER, C. and DIETL, H.M. (2021): «Mapping discrimination in Europe through a field experiment in amateur sport», Humanit Soc Sci Commun, 8 (95).

BERTRAND, M., and S. MULLAINATHAN (2004): “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination”, American Economic Review, 94(4).

COUNCIL OF EUROPEAN UNION (2010): Council conclusions of 18 November 2010 on the role of sport as a source of and a driver for active social inclusion.

DUARTE, R., D. ARAÚJO, V. CORREIA and K. DAVIDS (2012): “Sports teams as superorganisms”, Sports Medicine, 42(8).

MATTERN, K. D., and E. J. SHAW (2010): “A look beyond cognitive predictors of academic success: understanding the relationship between academic self-beliefs and outcomes”, Journal of College Student Development, 51(6).

SCHNEIDER, S. L. (2008): “Anti-immigrant attitudes in Europe: outgroup size and perceived ethnic threat”, European Sociological Review, 24(1).