I think Jung’s collective and tribal unconscious is a key. We are still programmed to act like we have in 99% of our human existence as tribes that are Ok with our neighbours when times are good but not when they are not.

And all human progress arises from one tribe learning from another and often intermarrying to create diversity.

But as soon as there’s a threat, eg 9/11 then fight or flight takes over and “That tribe” the other, then become scapegoats.

The language of immigration is twisted to appeal to our tribal unconscious…swamped, overrun..our tribal territiry is in danger…from “that lot” whether it is or not.

Even people are misdescribed as black and white in order to fit into the us and them template when there are no such skin colours. The need to separate and emphasise difference overrides accuracy in a blatant way

So deep psychol;ogy is called on to really understand what is in our human condition that gives rise to xenophobia without becoming anti-racist racists !!

Peak immigration was clearly higher in the US. But the definition is also different. Germany it is non holder of pasport while the American definition was born in a different country.

The Chinese and Japanese were concentrated in the West of the USA. were they where a sizeable minority.

Racism is far, far, far from rare in any society, and I challenge Europeans to question whether or not their nations can really claim any superiority over Americans in that respect. I have to ask whether Europe is really facing anything like the immigration levels the US has now or had before the 1924 immigration reform. According to Wikipedia, non-European immigrants to Belgium represent some 3% of the population; it might be 8% in the Netherlands, but a big chunk of those are Indo-European and a lot of the rest Antiillian and Surinamese (you conquered’em, you get to keep’em); in Germany 9% are non-Germans, but a lot of those are other Europeans; it might be 7% for France, with a lot of them other Europeans. I really don’t see that Europe’s non-European immigration numbers are enough to qualify as massive in comparison to the peak immigration years in the US in the 1870s.

But, to be sure, presence does not make the heart grow fonder. We gush over other people’s problems, as long as they stay where they are. All immigration, large and small, has produced resentment among the natives and suspicion and fear among the newcomers. At least, I know of no exception. But sometimes, large immigration waves have produced very little heat and small ones produced a lot. Germans came to the US in masses, and except for some local grousing, no one cared; or at least I’m unaware of an organized opposition of any magnitude. A handful of Chinese merchants and Japanese farmers arrive in the same years, and the result is total exclusion and a century of suspicion, resentment and discrimination.

There always seems to be a sense that some immigrants are more acceptable than others. As far as I can tell this isn’t much based on any kind of rational analysis, but something deeper and less well thought out. No one cares that 8% of the Belgian population is from the rest of Europe, but the 3% from Turkey and North Africa cause folks to freak out. No one notices that Germans took generations to learn English, while Mexicans generally take at most one.

It’s about some kind of construction of race, but it’s obviously not very constant. In America in the 1840s, the Irish weren’t even thought of as white people; in Belgium in the 21st century, Mexicans are seen as just as white as I am.

Interesting. Anyone else have something to add to this figure?

“The other obvious explanation. It indicates that there’s no direct connection to wealth.”

Maybe not, but how was the general attitude to immigrants in the US in that time frame? I am talking about the general population not the authorities.

I do believe that wealth can play a role if natives and newcomers are competitors for the same jobs or even benefits. Or, still, if the economic situation of households is so depressing that people need to have an outlet for their frustrations and are more likely to rally around a common cause. This cause, of course, does not have to be xenophobic nationalism. And, of course, people do not need to be frustrated for them to embrace more extremist ideas.

It really is not that easy to define the origins of xenophobia, is it?

BTW, any comments on this: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/05/global-hate.html

A trend begins with dubious actions against especially conspicious targets.

“You cannot blame it on postwar depressions”
? Where did that come from?

The other obvious explanation. It indicates that there’s no direct connection to wealth.

The shutdown in immigration in the early ’20s had only a little to do with the recession of 1919-20. (N.B., it was also entirely unrelated to the earlier Japanese and Chinese bans.)
What are you trying to get at?

That we have a clear example of a society previously very open to immigration which underwent a backlash after immigration figures had gone way up.
On the other hand we have Australia with an immigration quota of 23%. However, Australia may still undergo a backlash and you can’t fully count UK emmigrants.

So I am saying that you we have an upper bound of possible immigrants at 15-20% of the population.

“Exactly in those years you got the Chinese Exclusion Act, similar deals about Japanese and a few years later a strong cut in immigration. This is unlikely to be coincidence.”

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say here. Sure, there was racially-driven resistance to Chinese and, a bit later, Japanese immigration. But (1) the Japanese and Chinese were a very small percentage of the total immigration into the US in those years, and (2) despite the resistance, they managed to found significant communities anyway.

Saying there was not-very-effective resistance to a couple of small and particularly strange groups… well, sure, if you like.

“You cannot blame it on postwar depressions”

? Where did that come from?

The shutdown in immigration in the early ’20s had only a little to do with the recession of 1919-20. (N.B., it was also entirely unrelated to the earlier Japanese and Chinese bans.)

What are you trying to get at?

Doug M.

Of the other 20% that’s not ethnic Russian, a significant amount is made up of indigenous people, such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, etc. These people have been around for the past centuries and are not recent immigrants.

For that reason, it is tendentious to say that Russia’s growing xenophobia is due to the significantly growing presence of immigrants. For one, Russia’s economic situation is not significantly better than that of its neighbours (though Moscow is much better off than the rest of the country). Secondly, Russia can hardly be called a “migrant country” or a country that experiences inward migration in the same way that, say, the United States, Canada or parts of the European Union do.

In the old communist days there was enough propaganda both to believe that Soviet citizens were doing OK and little overt evidence that other countries were doing better. Now the evidence is there. Russians at the bottom of the shareout see some of their own people getting more than them and no ideology or mobility to improve their lot. What else can they do to vent their frustration and powerlessness, when it boils over but attack someone even less powerful than themselves, as they perceive it?

I read recently somewhere that France is a country that cannot make incremental change, but needs a revolution. Of course the revolutions are not so violent these days. Maybe Russia is the same. Putin is desperately trying to keep the lid on NGOS and opposition that might harness some of that powerlessness and frustration into something more political and positive for change.

I’m not condoning the racism and violence in any way, just I can see how from their perspective it is both logical and they can get away with it under Putin, like in the 30s in Germany.

Solutions rely on people at the bottom having more control over their lives. Maybe they even envy the mobility of immigrants, since traditionnally job mobility has been low in Russia. If the French Moslems feel desperate in the banlieus imagine how much more desperate you would feel in smaller Russian towns with no chances of doing anything with your life.

Some sort of genuinely shared ideology reinforced by politicians in public is necessary to make racism and violence unacceptable. But divide and rule seems to be it at the moment. When the state itself has condoned violence and bullying in the army and prisons, people learn they can get away with it on the streets.

“Putin’s government has an aggressive immigration program that will, if implemented, replace tens of millions of native-born Russians with immigrants from Central Asia, China and the Caucasus.”

First of all, there’s the suggestion that there’s going to be any large-scale immigration from China at all. Aren’t the two countries more-or-less at the same level of development? China has a large peasantry, yes, but Chinese cities are the main receiving areas followed by First World destinations–I understand that Dongbei Chinese are becoming prominent in France.

More importantly, there’s the use of the word “replace.” Is Alexei seriously saying that, but for a Georgian, there would be a Russian born? The theory that large-scale immigration discourages large-scale reproduction strikes me as … off.