Purpose:
The Barcelona Discrimination Observatory works, since 2018, to make visible any situations of discrimination in the city, and to contribute to the scale and design of the actions required to address such situations.
Stimulus/Rationale:
The observatory is a partnership initiative involving:
- the Office for Non-Discrimination of the Barcelona City Council, which monitors, investigates, and reports on cases of discrimination, providing psycho-social care, legal advice, and conciliation and mediation;
- the Human Rights Resource Centre of the Barcelona City Council, which gathers resources on human rights, organises training on discrimination and human rights, advises on human rights from a municipality perspective; and oversees compliance with human rights protocols; and
- the Board of Organisations for the Assistance of Victims of Discrimination which is currently made up of 26 social entities that assist victims of discrimination, which functions to better coordinate the response of public institutions and social entities to discrimination, and as a space for training and the dissemination of the problems that are worked on.
Process:
The observatory publishes an annual report on discrimination, with a specific topic in particular focus in each edition, such as, most recently, discrimination in housing. It addresses: Who is being discriminated against? Who discriminates? Where does this discrimination take place? On what ground is this discrimination? How has the discrimination been expressed? What rights have been violated? What response has been given to the victims and with what result?
The report covers ten grounds: racism and xenophobia, disability, language, religion, health, age, gender, ideology, aporophobia, and LGBTI phobia, including an intersectional perspective. It addresses discrimination by individuals, private organisations/companies, public authorities, and police forces. It encompasses both direct and indirect discrimination, though the main focus to date has been on direct discrimination which includes: differential treatment, verbal assaults, physical assaults, discriminatory and hate speech, and vandalism.
The report draws from the data held by, and the reflections of, the Office for Non- Discrimination and the member organisations of the Board of Organisations for the Assistance of Victims of Discrimination. It combines quantitative and qualitative data. This information is complemented by other reports and resources, such as the Barcelona Metropolitan Area Neighbourhood Relations and Coexistence Survey, carried out randomly among 1,325 people living in the city. The aim is to find out their perceptions and experiences of discrimination in the city.
The report is published in the press, on social media and through the City Council's mailing list, highlighting the highlights of the report. This email is sent to all City Council employees, as well as to citizens and key stakeholders.
Impact:
According to the work conducted by the Barcelona Discrimination Observatory, one of the sources of discrimination detected in the city of Barcelona concerns access to the rental housing market. Faced with this evidence, Barcelona City Council’s Directorate for Citizen Rights Services carried out a study over the last few months aimed at making a thorough examination of the issue and objectively assessing the scale of such discrimination.
The study ‘The key could be the name’ involved sending over 1,000 applications in response to 500 housing adverts published in property portals, for the purposes of making a statistical assessment of the replies to these requests depending on the applicant. Half of the applications were therefore sent under an Arab name and the other half under an indigenous name.
The results of the study shed light on the existence of differences between applications sent under Arab and indigenous names: for every 10 applications sent, those with indigenous names received six replies and those with Arab names four.
All that provides objective evidence of discrimination in access to the rental housing market in the city of Barcelona.
In addition, the city of Barcelona carried out a second sociological study aimed at detecting discriminatory practices in housing. Entitled “A la carte discrimination” the study was based on the field assessment of the practice of real estate agencies operating in the city. Over 350 phone calls were made by the city on behalf of a fictitious property owner that expressly declares willing to exclude migrant customers from the selection process. The calls to real estate agents revealed a condescending behaviour towards discrimination.
In particular the study revealed:
- Acceptance of discrimination: in 62% of cases, the agent accepts the discriminatory claim, leaving the indicated profile out of the selection process.
- Enabling indirect discrimination: in 24% of cases the acceptance of discrimination is not direct but several practices are detected that also result in the indicated group being excluded from access to the home.
- No ethnic discrimination: in 10% of cases the agent refused to accept the discriminatory proposal.
- Eluding response: in 4% of cases the agent avoids responding to the request.
The aim of the study was to identify and quantify the extent of discrimination in accessing housing, as well as to learn how much these discriminatory practices are standardised by the economic sector studied. The goal of the whole action is to understand how cooperation with agents and real estate agencies can be built, with the view to eradicate discrimination.
Key reference documents:
