The principle of common cause and identical quantum particles

Violations of Bell's inequalities imply that joint probabilities generated by noncommuting measurements on two (non-identical) quantum particles do not have a single common cause. But joint probabilities generated for such non-identical particles via commuting measurements do have non-trivial common cause variables. We focus on commuting measurements and consider two identical quantum particles, whose density matrices and observables (hermitian operators) are necessarily permutation-symmetric. It is natural to demand that the common cause describing joint probabilities is also permutation symmetric, i.e., it acts symmetrically on both particles. Looking at various ways of defining joint probabilities from the same measurement data, we conclude that either symmetric common causes need not exist (i.e., that the particles can be hiddenly distinguishable), or that symmetric screening variables exist, but they are trivial, i.e., no single common cause can explain all single-measurement correlations.