Housing, childcare, and employment: How cumulative discrimination compounds inequality

Thursday 5 March 2026, 3.45pm
Zoom and The Mawby Room, Kellogg College

Valentina Di Stasio (European University Institute), Stefanie Sprong (Universiteit Utrecht), Dan Muir and Katy Neep (Youth Futures Foundation)

Ethnic, racial and religious minorities experience discriminatory behaviour and prejudicial attitudes across multiple areas of their lives, with these experiences accumulating over the life course.

In this seminar, Valentina Di Stasio, Professor of Sociology, and Stefanie Sprong, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, will present the EqualStrength project, a Horizon Europe-funded project that aims to investigate cumulative and structural forms of discrimination through cross-national field experiments conducted in nine European countries.

The speakers will discuss the breadth of their research, ranging from analyses of setting-specific discrimination, such as hiring discrimination, to examinations of cumulative and structural discrimination that unfold simultaneously across multiple life domains, including childcare, employment, and housing, and that carry over across generations.

They will also share how the findings provide valuable insights into a potential pathway through which the effects of discrimination are passed on from one generation to the next.

Dan Muir, Senior Economist, and Katy Neep, Head of Employer Engagement and Partnerships, will close the seminar by providing insight on future research and the impact of discrimination research on policy.

COMPAS Seminar Series Hilary Term 2026

Theme: ‘The Politics of Immigration and Exclusion’

The seminars will be given at 3.45pm on Thursdays, online on Zoom and in The Hub, Kellogg College (Week 1), The Nissan Lecture Theatre at St Antony’s College (Weeks 3 and 5) and in the Mawby Room at Kellogg College (Week 7). Convened by Sanne van Oosten.

The debate and politics surrounding immigration have become increasingly polarised. Within this context, how do Western democratic societies grapple with rising nativism, exclusionary ideologies, and structural discrimination?

In this hybrid seminar series, leading scholars of political behaviour, race and ethnicity, gendered politics, and inequality will examine the causes and consequences of exclusionary politics and discriminatory structures, and discuss the interventions required to challenge them.

Over the course of the series, speakers will explore a range of topics, including:

The dilemmas facing mainstream social democratic political parties responding to pressures from the radical right, with a focus on the UK; The prevalence and political consequences of colour-blind attitudes in the UK; How gendered anti-immigration narratives gain and lose traction; How discrimination shapes opportunities across the life course, from employment and housing to childcare, and continues to reproduce inequalities across generations.

Attendance is free, and all are welcome. This series will be hybrid: there is one Zoom registration link you can use to attend one or more of the sessions. You do not need to register to join in person.