European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

278 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYwould affect other ministerial areas such as foreign affairs, employment,health, the justice system, education etc… and would reinforce theintegration, both socially and in terms of employment, of immigrants.An example of the threat posed by immigrants as conceived byWesterners is the attitude of Spanish school children. Following a studycarried out by the teacher Calvo Buezas 6 , the following conclusionswere made: one in every three non-university students over the age ofthirteen want Spain to prevent the arrival of more immigrants. Half(51.5 %) of these school children believe that immigrants take jobs awayfrom Spaniards and 42 % think that they contribute to the rise in drugtrafficking and crime. Even if it is true that this study only goes to showthat the majority of these children are clearly misinformed about thereality of immigration in Spain, the statistics are still deeply worrying 7 .The statistics in Europe are no different to those in the analysispresented in this essay. Over the last few years racist and xenophobicattacks have been on the increase and we have only seen the tip of theiceberg with regards to just how far advanced these attitudes are.In Europe, political parties situated on the extreme right of thepolitical spectrum with explicitly xenophobic manifestos are gainingvotes, and in some cases, even gaining enough to form part of thegovernment, as seen in the case of Austria which allowed Heider’sparty to form part of the coalition government. We can also take theresults of the recent elections in France as a prime example.These, and other events (for example El Ejido and Dover, engravedin our collective memories) have alerted public opinion and we reallyshould stop and think about where we are going and above all, whatwe can do to combat such situations. We can all do something asindividuals, as professionals and as citizens and it is high time to startthe ball rolling.6Calvo Buezas, T. (1997) The Racism and Solidarity of the Spanish, Portuguese andLatin Americans. Young People’s Attitudes to Other Races and Cultures. Madrid,Libertarias.7Other surveys carried out on university students and school children in thecommunity of Madrid produced similar conclusions. They reflect just how advancedracist and xenophobic attitudes are in the sectors of the population that due to theirage and situations are traditionally the most open minded in society. It has to be notedthat the majority of students declare themselves to show solidarity with the immigrants,say they are not racist and have positive attitudes towards immigration. However,around 15% of university students say they are racist and xenophobic. These attitudesare not more common among adolescents than university students. Those surveyedbelieve that little or nothing is done at University to fight these attitudes. BERNIS, C.(1999) «Racismo y xenofobia». El País, 7 de marzo.