Xenophobia

Xenophobic Reactions to Immigrants

In contrast to the vast research literatures on prejudice and racism, there has been little research on xenophobia. The term is most frequently used in reference to negative reactions to immigrants. One area of recent research has been the upsurge in antiimmigrant xenophobia in western Europe during the past half century. Thomas Pettigrew reviewed this research for the Annual Review of Sociology in 1998 and described four major reactions to “new minorities” in western Europe.

One reaction was pervasively hostile attitudes or prejudice expressed either blatantly and overtly or in more subtle and covert forms. A second was discrimination, which could also be either direct, creating inequality through differential treatment and access to employment and housing, or indirect, as when inability to gain citizenship restricts opportunities, thereby perpetuating inequality. A third was political opposition, with the formation of far-right antiimmigrant political parties openly propagating racist and xenophobic policies and shifting the entire political spectrum on the issue to the right. Finally, there was increased antiimmigrant and antiforeigner violence, sometimes associated with far-right political activity but also seen in sporting contexts and individual hate crimes.

It is interesting to note that recent ecological studies of xenophobic violence and hate crimes have not supported early findings on lynching in the United States, which had suggested a link with economic hardship or unemployment. Instead, these studies, notably by Donald Green and his [Page 960]colleagues, have indicated that xenophobic violence is particularly likely when social groups feel that they are confronted by growing numbers of outsiders with different social practices in a way that seems to challenge the groups' more favorable, established position in the social hierarchy.

Extent of Xenophobia and Ethnocentrism

The idea that antiimmigrant hostility may be a direct response to the arrival of new migrants, as appears to have happened in western Europe, seems overly simplistic. Host people living in the areas most affected by new immigrants and who have most contact with them tend to be most favorable to them, whereas those living in areas least affected by new immigrants and having least contact with them are most unfavorable to them.

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