European Union minorities and discrimination survey

Objectives - Why this project and for whom?

EU-MIDIS provideed the first primary survey data collected from selected ethnic minority and immigrant persons resident in the EU Member States. This survey data will support policy-makers and other key stakeholders in developing evidence-based and targeted policies that address discriminatory, racist practices, and improve support structures for victims of discrimination and racist crime.

Details - What did the project involve?

23,500 immigrant and ethnic minority people were interviewed face-to-face in all 27 EU Member States during 2008.

In addition 5,000 people from the majority population living in the same areas as minorities were interviewed face to face in 10 Member States to allow for comparison of results concerning certain key questions.

Groups of respondents were selected for interview in each Member State on the basis of:

• Information supplied to the FRA by its Racism and Xenophobia Network (RAXEN) of 27 National Focal Points (NFPs), which provide the Agency with detailed national annual reports on different minorities' vulnerability to discrimination and victimisation in each Member State;
• Identification of the largest minority group or groups in each country, which had to reach a minimum overall size of 5% to be sufficient for random sampling in specific areas;
• Availability to be surveyed in more than one Member State, which allowed for the creation of ‘aggregate' groups - such as ‘North Africans' - for comparison of results between countries.

The results of this survey are representative for the groups surveyed in the areas where the research was undertaken.

Innovation - What's 'new' about the project?

EU-MIDIS provided the most extensive data set to date on discrimination and victimisation faced by ethnic minorities and immigrants in the EU. The survey is the first of its kind to systematically survey minority groups across the EU through face-to-face interviews using the same standard questionnaire.

Outputs - What did the project deliver?

• An ‘EU-MIDIS at a glance' report - introducing the survey and certain key findings
• A full technical report - presenting an overview of how the research was conducted
• A series of ‘Data in Focus' reports - reporting on selected themes to emerge from the research
• The research dataset allowing for further analysis of the results by interested parties
• A full results report - presenting detailed findings from the research (December 2009)

For more information about the EU-MIDIS survey and for the full list of EU-MIDIS reports, please see the Surveys and Publications tabs at the top of this page.

Related Information

While the composition of Member States' populations is becoming increasingly diverse, the FRA reports have consistently shown that there is a severe lack of data on minorities in many countries. This continued lack of (comparable) data makes it difficult for policy-makers at national and EU level to develop and target interventions to combat discrimination and victimisation against minorities. The FRA has therefore conducted this major representative survey, examining experiences of discriminatory treatment, racist crime, victimisation, awareness of rights, and reporting of complaints.

This project page was last updated on 04.04.13