Who gets to define discrimination?

While ethno-racial discrimination is formally prohibited across liberal democracies, persistent inequalities remain a fundamental societal challenge. Existing research has largely treated discrimination as an objective phenomenon that is to be identified and explained. CONTESDIS introduces a novel perspective by investigating how people in different societies negotiate and contest what counts as discrimination and how prevalent it is.

“The power to define a practice as discriminatory is a vital political step towards combating it,” says Professor Merlin Schaeffer.

Rather than viewing these disagreements simply as reactions to discrimination, the project examines them as a critical and often overlooked factor shaping contemporary social divisions. Using Denmark as an in-depth baseline case, the research team will compare developments across ten European countries to examine how different societal conditions and policy regimes shape these contestations.

“This project systematically maps competing perspectives, from individual citizens’ judgments to elite media narratives and legal definitions,” says Professor Merlin Schaeffer.

By advancing our understanding of how competing definitions of discrimination influence public debate, policymaking, and social cohesion, CONTESDIS will provide new insights into one of the defining social and political challenges facing contemporary Europe.

The ERC Advanced Grant is one of Europe’s most prestigious research funding schemes, supporting ambitious, ground-breaking projects led by established researchers.