Representation at the Margins: Bureaucratic Discrimination and Welfare Access for Mobile EU Workers

Discriminatory practices in public administration undermine equal access to welfare benefits and pose critical challenges to social cohesion within the European Union (EU). While representative bureaucracy theory emphasizes the importance of the parity between the composition of bureaucrats and the population they serve as a framework to address social inequality, existing research overlooks how bureaucrats’ own identity—particularly their own experiences with discrimination—intersect with their professional roles in shaping decision-making processes. This paper investigates the interplay of intersectional representation and personally experienced discrimination in influencing bureaucratic behaviour towards mobile EU workers seeking welfare benefits. Using quantitative conjoint survey experiments with over 2,400 public workers, the study analyzes biases in policy implementation across four European contexts: Spain, Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland. Discrimination is assessed based on EU citizens’ origin, gender or age, but also effort-based characteristics such as stay duration, or the number of job applications written. Findings reveal that bureaucrats with personal experiences of discrimination demonstrate greater sensitivity to inclusion, favoring applicants from marginalized groups. In contrast, bureaucrats without such experiences exhibit more exclusionary tendencies, reflecting biases shaped by administrative and societal contexts. By integrating theories of representative bureaucracy and discrimination, this study provides new insights into how shared social identities among public sector actors shape bureaucratic decision-making and policy implementation. These findings contribute to understanding the drivers of representation, offering practical implications for designing interventions that mitigate discrimination and promote equity in public administration. The study ultimately advances knowledge on how representation can transform public policies to foster more inclusive governance across diverse EU contexts.