ABSTRACT
The level of public hostility in recent years in the European Union towards ‘foreigners’, ‘outsiders’, ‘immigrants’, ‘third country nationals’, ‘Muslims’, ‘gypsies’, ‘those from the Third World’ (the labels and targets fluctuate) is now all too evident. Although there are depressing similarities, there are certainly also important variations in the strength, character and timing of this hostility when we look at different European countries. In Germany and Britain, for example, xenophobia has long roots. In France, with its stronger tradition of citizenship and assimilation, it has come as a relatively recent realization that some groups – particularly from the Maghreb and West Africa – are unlikely to be accepted and peacefully absorbed. In the southern countries of Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece) with their complex Mediterranean history of trade and migration and a familiarity with emigration rather than immigration, the general recognition of alarming levels of xenophobia is a post-1990s phenomenon.
