Discrimination Across Social Domains

Discrimination can take place in all spaces and places where people interact. However, both the forms of discrimination and how it can be measured vary across social domains, depending on whether the domain in question is based primarily on what we coin “systems of differentiation” or “systems of equality”. Social domains that involve some kind of market transaction are heavily dominated by processes of selection and differentiation. By contrast, social domains such as schools, health systems or public services should, in essence, provide all individuals with equal assistance. This chapter builds on the distinction between systems of differentiation and systems of equality, reviewing a selection of studies of discrimination in various social domains. This way of categorizing research demonstrates that there is an interesting interplay between social domains and their respective rationale (differentiation/equality), the types of methods employed and the forms of discrimination detected. The chapter concludes by a critical reflection on the ability of social science research to capture forms of discrimination that are less easy to spot.