Rise Of Xenophobia In Europe

The topic of immigrants has been debated for centuries, and has been an even larger topic for discussion since the attack on the two towers in 2001. Many people contemplate whether immigrants are a reason to be scared, not; and if so, then why? If one finds themselves asking this conflicting question, Jeremy Adam Smith’s article, Our Fear of Immigrants, provides an answer. Relying on research from psychologists and sociologists, Smith gives sufficient evidence for why immigrants bring such intense feelings of both hatred and compassion, and recommends a way to increase empathy toward them.

In Europe, Islamophobia emerged together with new anti-Semitism, where the targets are the new immigrants, Muslims, as well as Jews. The reason for that is in France and United Kingdom, Muslims and Jews for the past decade inhabit the poorest neighborhoods. Media, on the other hand, portrays this as an incapability of Muslim immigrants to integrate into European society and susceptibility to the imported Islamist ideologies (Silverstein, 367).

Our Fear of Immigrants by Jeremy Adam Smith uses emotional scenarios and scientific evidence to support his question of why people fear immigrants. Smith never clearly states his point in the paper, but he wants to address the issue of prejudice against immigrants. This is easy to figure out because of the content of the excerpt, and the headings that guides the reader to an additional support of the idea throughout the passage.

This source helps contribute to answering the main research question about how xenophobia effects immigrants to South Africa, by providing the struggles of an immigrant to South Africa and some of the violence they experience due to being foreign.

In the final draft I will expand on each of the issues, by looking into more specific examples of both what different European countries are doing policy wise, as well as what the sentiment is among the refugees in the different areas of Europe. To fully be able to understand the conditions the refugees are facing I will be using other scholars ethnography work; One of those works being Katerina Rozakou’s piece regarding the management of refugees in Greece. As a result of that knowledge I will be able to come to an accurate conclusion as to what course of action should be taken in Europe as a whole, to deal with this ongoing

In the attempts to “manage the immigrant crisis” several strategic mistakes have been made, which have shaken the functioning of migration policy in the European community. Particular controversy was stirred up by a plan for the relocation of 120,000 refugees suggested in September 2015. Some months later (April/May 2016), the European Commission came up with the idea of fines for those countries which would not receive the relocated refugees. The fine for one unaccepted foreigner was supposed to be €250,000. The attempt to impose a quota of immigrants on member countries together with high fines contributed to further divisions inside the EU.

I have a hard time comprehending the idea that was discussed in International Migration, which is that “New people jeopardize the sense of belonging.” This struck me as a toxic form of nationalism. Why are people so fearful of immigrants? People that are coming

Thousands and thousands of migrants have begun to flood into the European countries. With immigration numbers higher than ever, these countries have begun to search for solutions. Some countries have considered closing their borders , many are beginning to show violence to keep people out. As always, there is a much better solution other than using violence. The Europe Migration Policy needs to be adjusted to current needs and these countries need to work together to create better opportunities for the immigrants and refugees seeking safety.

To measure societal acceptance towards immigrants, attitudinal data can be utilized to better understand the effects of immigration on both societies. One way to measure the general political reaction of each country towards the influx of immigrants. Though such data is constrained by temporal boundaries, a blanket understanding can be gleamed from surveys taken in nations during different periods. Further, in both countries, support for the importance of mainstream right-wing strategies has exacerbated the politicization of the immigrant issue. A survey asking identical questions in the two countries was conducted by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia in 2000. The Swedes tend to be more positive than the Danes, but the differences are not dramatic. However, similarly to Denmark, societal attention to the issue increased in the 1980s, not least due to a considerable growth in the number of refugees from the Middle East. In both nations, there are clear trends that reveal a significant rise in negative attitudes towards immigrants; but, the levels of said societal and political attention towards immigrants and the policies enacted which affect immigrants differ greatly in Sweden and Denmark.

Deniz Genç, a socialist scientist, highlights the idea of “securitization” in response to migration in Europe. Genç says the result of securitization on migration has been that migrants are perceived by many sections of society as threats to their own survival. Ole Weaver, who coined the term securitization, says this form of security is “a practice, a specific way of framing an issue”. Weaver later is quoted defining securitization as “Taking an issue from the basket of normal politics and putting in into the basket of security”. This idea is one of the main reasons countries like Hungary have undertaken strict policies negating the movements of migrants in and around their respective borders. Securitization therefore must begin with a “speech act” for the issue to become securitized, or in other words, the general public should believe and accept that a normal political issue could ultimately become an existential threat to security and overall livelihood.

In addition to this, there has been large prejudices against the migrants due to crime accusations. The result of such events is the rise of nationalist extremist parties in Central and Eastern Europe. A prime example of this is within Hungary. Hungary has been quite vocal about its opposition to accepting refugees and other migrants. These statements were made by Hungary’s leader Viktor Orbán who has been known to have very extreme views on other social issues. The result of Hungary’s statements concerning immigration is an epidemic of other countries having similar views which will contradict the Schengen Agreement. The Schengen Agreement is one of the foundations of the European Union so removing or adapting said intuition would seriously affect the European Union. In this paper I will analyse the international system in which these foreign policy directions have been made whilst examining how Viktor Orbán’s personality and psychology has a direct influence on the decisions made by Hungary and the history of the migration laws of the European Union.

Losing a job can be devastating. Before starting the job hunt, a person’s instinct might first be to look for an explanation. Unemployment can leave the average person feeling powerless, angry, and desperate. The economic rebound following the 2009 European Crisis had varying success across the region, leaving some millions entrenched in unemployment and a level of poverty that had not been seen in these generally strong welfare states. Looking for answers to explain their sudden headlong dive into relative poverty, many individuals have turned to blaming marginalized migrants. Whereas thirty years ago most xenophobic parties failed to even pass the 5 percent minimum vote requirement that is typically necessary to enter most EU nations’ national parliaments, we now see the rise of individual xenophobic attacks against immigrants and the rise of nationalist parties. While the intuitive assumption would be that the countries hardest hit by the crisis would be those in which xenophobia is most prevalent, there are too many exceptions to accept this assumption at face value any longer. During the course of over two months I traveled to Spain, Greece and the Netherlands to explore the causes of the rise or lack of a rising xenophobic rhetoric.

Throughout the years xenophobia has been a plague that has ravaged the lives of many foreign nationals in South Africa for years. During April of 2015 the wave of brutal action again made the cover of the news as it started in KwaZulu-Natal and eventually managed to spread through to other parts of South Africa like Gauteng and Durban. In the following essay I will be doing a literature review of the meaning of and social consequences of xenophobia. I will also look at the social impact of xenophobia on both local and foreign people and to finish up my essay, I will give a detailed summarised report of my findings.

Xenophobia can be defined as a sensation of fear or phobia toward a person or a given group of people deemed strange or foreign. When such a sensation becomes collective it may lead to rejection of the “other”. By rejecting others from one’s community, one de facto denies or chooses to ignore any positive contribution from them to this community. This paper intends to demonstrate the impact of such behaviour on the wellbeing of the different communities involved. In the specific case of the African continent, misery and instability have dominated many people’s lives for decades despite the enormity of human potential and natural resources.

The root of this continuing and constantly high level of xenophobia can be found in the country’s historical legacy. As Pál Nyíri (2003) points out when talking about the possible systemic sources of xenophobia in the country, xenophobia can have economic and cultural factors, where economic the historical factors refer to previous incidents ethnic or religious conflicts (p. 30). Neményi and Takács’s (2005) findings relate to this idea: in their study they found that historical experiences can have an influencing effect on the extent of xenophobia (p. 51).