Ethno-Racial Inequalities in Education and Employment: Colour-Blind and Colour-Conscious Policy Frames in Belgium and Germany

Over the last fifty years, growing second and later generations of migrants together with rising naturalisation rates, have considerably increased the share of people with a migrant background among the citizenry of West-European countries. However, much of the literature in the field continues to focus on integration policies for newly arriving migrants, as opposed to equality and anti-discrimination policies targeted at citizens with a migrant background. This paper uses critical frame analysis (Verloo, 2005) of policy documents to explore policy frames regarding ethno-racial inequalities in Belgian and German education and employment policy. It departs from an analytical framework that distinguishes between colour-conscious policy frames that focus on individual deficits or structural disadvantages on the one hand, and colour-blind policy frames that deny the existence of ethno-racial inequalities or replace this policy problem with a focus on socio-economic inequality, on the other hand. The aim of the paper is to show how these different framings of the policy problem and the responsible policy actor relate to the (non-)availability of ethnicity or race-conscious policies. Through within- and between case comparison, the paper also provides possible explanations for the prevalence of different colour-blind and colour-conscious policy frames and their corresponding policy responses. Thereby it does not only shed light on how ethno-racial inequalities in education and employment are conceived and framed in public policy, but also how changes in these policy frames can be explained.