Multiple Discrimination in a Multicultural Europe: Achieving Labour Market Equality Through New Governance

Abstract

This paper interrogates the extent to which, within the European Union, ‘hybrid’ approaches to combating labour market discrimination – combining ‘old governance’ regulatory mechanisms (such as the Race Directive) and alternatives to hard law, such as gender mainstreaming and diversity management – have the potential to provide a stronger framework for internalizing equality values. Before turning to the interaction between new and old governance within the EU anti-discrimination regime, the paper examines a number of background issues: the labour market situation of ethnic minority women in the European Union; the differing understandings of race and ethnicity across the various EU Member States; Member States’ divergent approaches to the management of minority populations and competing understandings of diversity. A preliminary conclusion is that the possibility of a hybrid approach at EU level, drawing on for instance both the Race Directive and mainstreaming, is constrained by competing national paradigms in discourses around race and multiculturalism, and the resultant differences in approach to the use of ‘race’ as a valid analytical category.

Keywords: European Union, labor law, equality law, intersectionality

JEL Classification: Labor law