If you’re part of the majority group, you really don’t see how cliquish people in minority groups are. Every time I get into a cab with another “brown” person, there is a Q&A. When they find out I’m from a muslim country, it’s all “my brother,” etc. I’ve always found it distasteful.

Yes, we have a really well recognized Spanish team lead here, yet he’s mostly hiring Spanish people (in Switzerland), oh yes and one Italian is the exception.

Also we had a German team lead hiring Germans, well surprise it is easier being with similar ones.

Diversity back in the day meant Physics, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering working together…

Because it is real, and there _is_ in fact a large difference in the propensity to do this across cultures.

This post is about Switzerland, and as said by parent a lot of this is about Germans in Switzerland.

Are Germans in Switzerland more prone to hiring another German rather than a French person, or Swiss person? I'm sure that such bias exists. But that bias is nothing compared to e.g. tendency for Indians to hire other Indians. Now of course some of this can be explained by economic opportunity. The extra benefit Germans can provide to other Germans by giving them Swiss job is smaller than for Indians.

However that only explains part of it. If that was all, then Chinese people should bias much more to hiring fellow countrymen than Japanese and Korean people, while the latter two should be similar to each other. This is definitely not the case (note that we're talking about immigrants here, not 2nd+ generation).

I'm sure there's been research on this subject, and there will be some cultural trait that proxies for how much immigrants from country X bias towards hiring others from X.

I can even give you a proxy for funsies: embassies. Look at the employees at the embassy of country X in country Y. How many of them are from country X and how many are from Y? Now compare that across embassies. You'll see a lot of similarities with what I've sketched. Sometimes you'll see that both the embassy of country X in country Y, as well as that of country Y in country X (the other direction), are both primarily staffed by people from country X! In those cases it's common that country X has a much stronger bias than Y towards hiring people from their own nationality rather than based on aptitude.

Because it's an unfalsifiable claim. If you need to bring in highly skilled people and most of them come from X Y or Z, it will be near impossible to distinguish in-group preference from a continuation of skilled immigration which for most countries that practice it, is beneficial for the economy.

Also hiring is often based on trust and networks. People refer others to their company and jobs. That trust tends to work out pretty well for companies. If people get laid off they tell their friends and their friends pass on opportunities to them or try to help them find new jobs. And people tend to make friends with others they share a culture and language with.

If you add a bunch of barriers to make companies have to hire proportional amounts of every ethnicity or culture, that slows down hiring and can be an extra regulatory burden for what reason?

I think it's pretty logical, though perhaps it is correlation rather than causation.

Say I am hiring as a native English speaker in a Chinese company (while of course still knowing enough Mandarin to survive) and I have 3 candidates, one of whom also speaks English fluently. I would definitely be biased towards the English speaker, because I would work better with them.

Now, it doesn't really matter what their ethnicity was, but there is a higher likelihood of them being of the same ethnicity. Especially if my first language is niche, the chances of hiring the same ethnicity would be higher.

I've been on the receiving end of this before, being hired in part because I spoke English due to my manager while the rest of the company was primarily Mandarin

The broader concern seems to be “outsiders taking our jobs/raising house prices/voting in elections” etc etc. Anything perceived to be done by “outsiders” is an issue.

Americans/British saying this about non-white immigrants. Switzerland about Europeans. India saying it about Bangladeshi migrants.

It’s like people dislike others who are worse off them.