Discrimination: Studying the racialized structure of disadvantage

It is commonplace to say that the intensification of migrations since the 1950s has increased the ethno-racial diversity of most societies across the world. This diversity has not only deeply transformed the structures and the imaginaries of these societies, but it has fostered pervasive ethno-racial inequalities in different domains of social life as well. The turn from blatant racism to subtler forms of selection and preferences based on ethnicity and race has fostered new theoretical and conceptual developments. New forms of racism have been coined as systemic and institutional racism, colorblind racism, aversive racism without race, racism without racists; these have been identified and call for different approaches in research and policies. It is against the background of this retreat of blatant racism that the emergence of discrimination should be understood. Discrimination refers to unfair treatment or decisions producing a disadvantage for individuals or groups grounded on ascribed categories. The paradigm of discrimination helps to uncover the structure of disadvantage in formally equalitarian societies: It offers a powerful conceptual and operational frame to evaluate, monitor, and eventually revise apparently merit-based and neutral processes of access to power, privilege, goods, and services. This chapter addresses the changes in the understanding of racism related to the use of the concept of discrimination. I will focus on three sites of scholarly and political debates: the importance given to the systemic dimension of discrimination and its consequences; the empirical assessment of discrimination through its measurement; the categories by which ethnic and racial discrimination can be outspoken and measured