The word xenophobia it has a Greek origin and basically means aversion to the foreigner. THE xenophobia is a kind of prejudice against those who were born in a place other than their own. It is usually associated with racism and is sometimes expressed through religious intolerance or prejudices about the victim's place of origin.
Read more: The legitimization of xenophobia through ethnocentrism
What is xenophobia?
xenophobia is the prejudiced aversion to those who are foreigners. From another city, another region, another country and another culture, the foreigner can cause fear, astonishment, curiosity to those who do not know him. However, these same feelings can be expressed from disrespectful, offensive and brutal way, causing what we call xenophobia, which is prejudice against the foreigner.
Xenophobia is something that appears in our world globalized with great force and that, thanks to greater ease of reporting and greater use of social networks, cases are increasingly evident, no longer being covered up and treated as normal.
However xenophobia didn't start now. It has always existed. If we look at the way Athenians, Spartans and Persians treated each other in the Antique, we can see a xenophobic relationship. The same happened with the Jews, who suffered from xenophobia and intolerance anti-Semitic throughout his pilgrimage through Europe, Since antiquity.
The human being, when immersed in society, acquires the prejudices that social ideology imposes on everyone, and one of the great challenges of today is the release of these prejudices so that human beings can live with others in a way harmonious.
Coping with xenophobia is a challenge for our times, because, more and more, national borders are broken and citizens come to live not only with their counterparts in their homeland, but with everyone, as citizens of a cosmopolitan world.
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Examples of xenophobia
Xenophobia can be practiced verbally expressly and directly or in a more subtle and indirect way. Offenses against people provoked on account of their origin is the direct form of xenophobia. There is also the case where there is no verbal aggression, but the speech makes explicit the prejudice as to the origin of the other, when a person, for example, refuses to be seen by a doctor because he is Cuban or to be seen in a store by an African salesperson.
The indirect and subtle form is a little more difficult to detect, as it is often unintentional and does not aim to hit a victim directly. It would be the case, for example, of someone expressing generalizing comments about one's culture, how to say that most of the muslims is extremist and supports the terrorism, or to say that every Indian is indolent and that every African is hungry.
Xenophobia and racism
Often, xenophobic prejudice is side by side with racial prejudice. In fact, in these cases, it becomes impossible to separate what is racism of what is xenophobia, since the origin of a person is related, in most cases, to the color of their skin. Culture is also an important factor that causes estrangement, and cultures are also closely linked to ethnicities.
In most cases where racism and xenophobia are closely linked, what motivates xenophobic prejudice is the racial issue, that is, the attacks committed against African immigrants, for example, do not occur because they are simply from another nation, belong to another culture, but because they are black people. The number of cases involving xenophobia and racism has increased in the world on account of forced immigration by misery or forced refuge by wars in the Middle East and Africa.
See too: The fight against racism waged by the Black Movement
Xenophobia in Europe
Xenophobic attacks in Europe have intensified after the large wave of refugees from Syria and African countries who headed to European cities in search of decent living conditions. Xenophobia seemed to have been overcome after the fall of the Nazism in 1945, in Europe, however, what we have seen is a return of speeches populists, nationalists and supposedly patriotic ones who propagate a xenophobic ideology.
THE xenophobia is a problem especially in big European cities, where the flow of immigrants is greater. Due to the relatively short geographic distance, many immigrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa seek to re-establish their lives in French, German and Italian cities. Urban centers, which already face the problems of lack of infrastructure to support the population explosion, house people who often defend extremist ideals, such as the belief that the presence of foreigners deprives the native of employment opportunities.
On the one hand, European cities receive refugees and desperate citizens. On the other, representatives of an extremist and too conservative right want to close all borders for any immigrant from regions they consider not to belong to the European circle. Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, for example, is one of those far-right political leaders who fearlessly assume their xenophobic positions.
More or less in his line, follows the controversial Boris Johnson, prime minister of England who goes to great lengths to make the Brexit (word created to designate the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union) is fulfilled. One of less obvious motivations of Brexit would be the xenophobia and the difficulty of accepting that citizens who enter any country in the European Union, and obtain a visa, can go to England. The free movement of people has been part of the European Union's formation agreement since its creation in 1993.
Xenophobia in Brazil
Apparently, Brazil is a country of culture vast and plural, which receives and receives people from all over the globe, where everyone lives harmoniously and without conflicts. Yet, the xenophobic feeling is growing in our country. Despite our ancestral heritage, which encompasses the blood indigenous, African and European, with certain periods of Japanese immigration, our country has had episodes of xenophobia daily.
A phenomenon similar to what happens in Europe has interfered in the political and social functioning of our country: the growth of an extremist right-wing ideology, with racist and xenophobic traits. This factor allied to the growing number of immigrants and refugees (mainly Africans, Syrians and Venezuelans) has aroused the anger of a certain sector of the population that does not accept foreigners in its territory.
Something very striking about xenophobia here, perhaps more striking than in countries where people culturally nurture a very strong nationalist feeling, such as in France, is that the reception to foreigners varies according to the origin, the ethnicity and culture of this immigrant. Normally, Europeans, North Americans and Japanese are well received. People in the Middle East, Africa or the poorest countries in Central and South America are victims of xenophobia and racism.
by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor
