RACIST VIOLENCE IN 15 EU MEMBER STATES - Cospe

RACIST VIOLENCE IN 15 EU MEMBER STATES - A Comparative Overview of Findings from the RAXEN NFP Reports 2001-2004
20.1.2. Insecurity and Hostility towards ‘Outsiders’
Negative political and media responses to particular groups can serve to enhance
majority populations’ hostile attitudes towards minorities. Too often, minorities are
linked to increased crime rates and the threat of terrorism on the basis of pure
speculation rather than ‘fact’. As a consequence, people’s negative attitudes
towards the presence of minorities in their country are based frequently on
perceived threats. In turn, these negative perceptions are affected by a combination
of factors that enhance people’s feelings of personal insecurity. As an illustration
of this, findings from EUMC-commissioned research on majorities’ attitudes
towards minorities, which is based on a statistical analysis of data taken from
recent Eurobarometer and European Social Surveys, found the following:
‘The more people perceive decreases in their personal safety, or the
more they distrust other people or political leaders … or the more they
perceive ethnic minorities to pose a collective threat, the more they
favour ethnic exclusionism.’ 108
What this indicates, among other things, is that people who display heightened fear
of crime and distrust in others are more likely to display hostile attitudes towards
ethnic minorities and immigrants. In other words, if people show hostility towards
minorities – as thoughts, words or actions, including violent crime – the roots of
this hostility can be partly understood by looking at individuals’ personal
characteristics and insecurities.
The above survey also found that people in rural areas, where immigrant and ethnic
minority populations are typically small, showed more negative attitudes towards
minorities than people in urban areas, where immigrant and ethnic minority
populations tend to be large. What this seems to indicate is that people’s attitudes
are often not grounded in actual experience. Here, intolerance or ‘fear’ of the
unknown, in this case ‘outsiders’, plays an important part in forming people’s
attitudes.
Personal insecurities are shaped by both real and perceived threats to one’s wellbeing.
Personal experience of unemployment and criminal victimisation, as
concrete experiences, can serve to enhance an individual’s sense of insecurity. As
concrete experiences they are, in turn, affected by perceived threats to one’s wellbeing,
such as the threat of terrorism. This combination of real and perceived
threats can then be directed at ‘outsiders’ who present an easy target to ‘blame’ for
one’s misfortune or sense of insecurity.
Many people experience both real and perceived problems and threats in their daily
lives. However, it needs to be asked which individuals or groups transfer these
negative experiences and perceptions into hostility against ‘outsiders’, and, in
particular, into violent racism?
108
EUMC (2005) ‘Majorities’ Attitudes Towards Minorities’, Report IV; see:
www.eumc.eu.int
181