The more ‘Belgian’, the better?
In Belgium, your ethnic background still weighs heavily on your labour market chances. People with a migration background are less often invited to a job interview, earn less, and progress more slowly. These inequalities are often attributed to a single salient characteristic, such as a name that suggests a migration background. Our new study shows that the story is more complex. What matters is the overall picture recruiters form of someone, rather than any single characteristic. In other words, how ‘Belgian’ the candidate appears.
A recent synthesis of Belgian research confirms that people with a migration background face systematically less favourable labour market outcomes. This shows up in lower wages, fewer opportunities for advancement, and fewer hires. In 63% of those studies, ethnic discrimination is explicitly cited as an explanation. Until now, many studies, mostly correspondence tests, have looked at one signal at a time: a name, a photo on the CV, or a hobby that evokes a specific culture. Discrimination is then attributed to that one signal. But which of these signals weighs most heavily for candidates with a migration background?
Our research starts precisely from that question. We focus on how employers combine multiple signals into one overall impression of how ‘Belgian’ someone appears. We then examine how that global impression affects the intention to invite a job candidate for an interview.
An experiment with a realistic application setting
For this research, we used a vignette experiment. Recruiters were shown realistic, carefully constructed fictitious profiles that differed in several characteristics. The profiles were presented in a digital environment that closely resembled the HR software many companies use today. This allowed us to pinpoint how recruiters respond to subtle differences between candidates while all other factors remained constant. The major advantage of this method over correspondence tests is that we can also look inside the recruiter’s head. Through additional questions, we could find out which signals, according to the recruiters, shape someone’s overall identity.
The fictitious applicants differed on three identity-related signals that earlier research mostly tested separately. The first signal was the name. A candidate could have a classic Belgian-sounding name (such as Thomas Goossens or Evi Janssens), a name reflecting another ethnic background (Moroccan, Turkish, Congolese, or Polish; think of Youness el Malahi, Fatma Celiköz, Idriss Moukoko, or Teresa Kwiencińska), or a mixed name, such as a Belgian first name combined with a foreign surname (for example, Lena El Makrini or Pieter Jaworski). The second signal was migration status: the candidate’s motivation statement mentioned whether the candidate was a first- or second-generation migrant, or left that information out. The third signal concerned hobbies: rather general ones (such as volunteering) or clearly culturally linked ones, such as taking part in a Moroccan, Turkish, Congolese, or Polish theatre company. Candidates also varied in gender and work experience.
In total, 275 Belgian recruiters took part in the research. They each assessed four candidates and indicated how likely they would be to invite each to an interview. This yielded 1,100 evaluations. We also asked recruiters whether they recognised themselves in the candidates, how pleasant they thought working together would be, for themselves, for colleagues, and for clients, and how they rated the candidates on communication, efficiency, and leadership. This lets us see not only who got more chances, but also why. We additionally used several techniques to prevent socially desirable or politically correct answers from distorting our findings. For instance, we asked recruiters not only for their own judgement but also how they thought other recruiters would answer, and then compared those answers.
What makes an applicant seem less ‘Belgian’? And what are the consequences?
Recruiters base their judgment on the set of signals as a whole rather than on any single signal. They form a broad impression of cultural proximity: the degree to which someone matches what they see as ‘the typical Belgian’. Still, some signals stand out. Having migrated oneself weighs especially heavily. Candidates who mention this are rated, on average, 1.4 points lower (on a scale from 0 to 10) for how strongly they resemble ‘the typical Belgian’. Names also play a role: both fully non-Belgian and mixed names lead to lower scores, particularly when Moroccan or Turkish names are involved. Hobbies, in turn, make no difference, not even culturally tinted ones.
That global impression of how ‘Belgian’ someone appears proves decisive in the application process. Each additional point towards the image of ‘the typical Belgian’ is associated with a 2.8 percentage-point increase in the probability of being invited to a job interview.
The effect of that same impression does not stop at the interview invitation. Recruiters also expect candidates seen as ‘more Belgian’ to be more pleasant to work with, to interact more smoothly with colleagues and clients, to communicate better, to work more efficiently, and to have more leadership potential. The expectation of how much clients would enjoy dealing with someone, together with language and social skills, correlates most strongly with this image of ‘Belgianness’. An important factor here is recognition: the more familiar a candidate feels with the recruiter, the more positive the assessment.
From insight to action
What can we do with these insights? The research shows that hiring decisions do not depend solely on degrees or experience, but also on the feeling a candidate evokes. Whoever feels familiar gets a chance sooner. This often happens without recruiters being aware. For HR professionals, this means, first of all, avoiding decisions based on a general impression. Make CV selection and job interviews as concrete and standardised as possible. Work with fixed questions and clear criteria that relate directly to the job. That way, skills and experience carry more weight than general impressions.
For policymakers, this means measures against discrimination must go beyond focusing solely on names. If planned correspondence tests in Flanders only test on names, they miss a large part of how exclusion works in practice. Discrimination often flows from a combination of signals that together evoke a particular image. In addition, policy can contribute to a broader picture of who ‘belongs’. By making people with diverse and mixed backgrounds more visible in communication, public organisations, and projects, that picture shifts on its own. What feels familiar today has been learned, and it can therefore change.
In closing
Our society is becoming ever more diverse. More and more people combine multiple languages, cultures, and identities. That no longer fits the simple distinction between ‘migrant’ and ‘non-migrant’. We cannot stop this evolution, but we can steer it well. By dealing more consciously with the impressions we form, and by organising selection procedures so that talent prevails over familiarity, we can build a labour market that is fairer and stronger.
This post also appeared via UGent @ Work, in Dutch. The study is joint work with Louise Devos, Kristen du Bois, and Stijn Baert. This page was last updated on 06 June 2026.