Local Governments’ Response to Discrimination: A Temporal Framework to Analyze Local Anti-discrimination Policy and Actions

Abstract

Discrimination is widely studied, with extensive research measuring discrimination on the housing and labor markets. This study examines how local governments address this well-documented issue, by conducting content analysis on 45 policy documents and by performing semi-structured in-depth interviews with 24 alder(wo)men and diversity officers across nine Belgian cities. We introduce a temporal framework combining why, what, how, and when local anti-discrimination policy and actions are established. Such a framework is useful, as we do not approach policy as fixed, but pay attention to how actions evolve over time, even within one so-called anti-discrimination policy.This enables scholars and policymakers to identify decision-making patterns, predict changes over time, and understand contextual influences. Besides, unlike existing models rooted in integration or diversity policy, our framework captures the unique aspects of anti-discrimination policy, enabling a thorough understanding of the (non-)adoption of concrete anti-discrimination actions.