Understanding refugee-related stereotypes in context of European “refugee crisis”

Stereotypes

Pictures in a people’s minds

The term stereotype derives from two Greek words: stereos and typos. Literally translated, stereotype means “solid impression”. For the first time, the concept of a stereotype was developed in 1922 by Walter Lippman, an American writer, reporter, and political commentator, who understood it as distorted picture or image in a person’s mind. This “picture” is not based on personal experience but derived culturally [1]. The metaphor used by Lippmann emphasizes fact that this belief about a particular category of people is over-generalized. It means that stereotypes are permanent and identical – the images are the same in the minds of different people. This is because the images-stereotypes, although they exist in the minds of individuals, do not arise from their own experience, but were passed on in the process of socialization (education and social contacts). For this reason, stereotypes are shared by members of a specific community. When it comes to the functions of a stereotype, Lippman distinguished two basic functions: psychological (economization of the effort to discover the world), and social, which in some way gives a sense of security.
 

ABC—affect, behavior, and cognition

Stereotype can be also defined as a “generalized belief about the characteristics of a group, and stereotyping represents the process of attributing these characteristics to particular individuals only because of their membership in the group”[2]. By means of stereotypes, positive, neutral, and negative traits can be assigned to groups. Sometimes perception of a group is ambivalent, i.e., it contains both positive and negative characteristics. After all, stereotypes have a pervasive and often pernicious influence on people’s responses to others. From a psychological perspective, stereotypes are a kind of schema shaped and developed in the cognitive process. So, in other worlds, stereotype is related to a one’s thoughts and beliefs, that is the cognitive aspect of an attitude. Having a clear stereotype in mind, a person reacts in the same, learned way when he/she finds himself in a situation related to this stereotype – the activation of a stereotype is knee-jerk and inevitable. So, people may spontaneously decide that “refugees are incompetent”, or that “refugees are dangerous”. The affective component in people’s perception of group members is prejudice. A classic definition of prejudice was provided by Gordon W. Allport, an American psychologist, who wrote that: “prejudice is an antipathy based on faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group or an individual of that group” [3]. Prejudice can take various forms, such as disliking, fear or hatred. Stereotypes and prejudices may create discrimination which can be defined as “differential treatment of individuals, based on their membership in a particular group. Such treatment can often be motivated by prejudice, but it may also result from ethnocentric feelings that are devoid of animus” [4].
 

Origin of stereotypes

Creating stereotypes is a spontaneous human tendency that aims at reducing the overflow of information coming from the world. This is related to methods of ordering reality such as categorization, generalization, and cognitive schema. Individuals may form stereotypes and specifically assign attributes to certain groups that they may have indirectly learned in the process of socialization (for example, family is a primarily source that provide information and teach stereotypic beliefs). On the other hand, according to the social learning theory, people learn social behavior through direct experience or through the observation of others [5]. So, people can learn to stereotype others because of their direct experiences with a specific group, or by learning stereotypes from influential others. Although stereotyping has not been created by the media, modern media have also a huge influence on generation and maintenance of stereotypes. Mass media are overflowing with stereotypes and are a main source of stereotypes learned by individuals. See: Exercise 2.

 

Revision of stereotypic beliefs

Stereotypes exist about a broad range of social groups. They can vary by context or situation, but many stereotypes have a long history. As it was said before, in contemporary societies the media (television, the Internet, newspapers) play a huge role in transmitting stereotypes. Of course, stereotypes are also conveyed by all other cultural products, such as literature or paintings. Stereotypes are inherently stable and resistant to change. The stability of the stereotype results from its strong relationship with unique culture, language, and social structure. It does not mean, however, that stereotypes cannot be changed. Sometimes they disappear on their own after cultural, social, or economic conditions change. Individuals also abandon stereotypes under the influence of their own experience or intellectual work. Revision of stereotypic beliefs can also be developed in the process of formal and informal education and through participation in culture. See: Exercise 3

Renee Weber and Jennifer Crocker identified three possible models of stereotype change: the bookkeeping model, the conversion model, and the subtyping model.

The bookkeeping model	“Model views stereotype change as an incremental process in which each instance of stereotype-relevant information is used to modify the existing stereotype (…). According to the model, any evidence that is relevant to the stereotype is noted and used to “finetune” the existing stereotype. Any single piece of disconfirming evidence will elicit a minor change and the structure of the stereotype is not affected by this fine-tuning process. Substantial change in the stereotype will occur gradually with the accumulation of many instances of disconfirming evidence, which deviate systematically from the stereotype”.
The conversion model	“Model portrays stereotype change as a more dramatic, less gradual process (…). The conversion model views people as swayed by salient instances. These instances might include events such as racial riots and landmark law decisions, or atypical individuals who strongly deviate from our expectancies. According to this model, change is an all-or-none process. Stereotypes change drastically in response to dramatic instances, but they remain unchanged by minor disconfirmations” .
The subtyping model	“Model views stereotypes as hierarchical structures which evolve through experience (…). Initial knowledge about the group is represented by superordinate stereotypes in which traits are attributed to the entire group. As discrepant information is acquired, discriminations within the group are mate, leading to the development of subtypes”.

Source: R. Weber and J. Crocker (1983), Cognitive Processes in the Revision of Stereotypic Beliefs, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(5):961-977.

 

Match the cards (the model + the explanation)

 

Understanding refugee-related stereotypes in context of European “refugee crisis”

The age of migration

The twentieth century is often defined as the age of migration. The unprecedented increase in human mobility is an important social trend affecting both sending and hosting countries. Migration processes are dominated mainly by economic migration caused by the increasing stratification between the living standards of developed countries (host societies) and the countries of the global south (sending societies), from which most modern migrants come. Also, the development of the international refugee protection is playing an important role. Armed conflicts are the cause of the influx of people seeking protection in Europe. The most important in recent decades are: war in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, conflict in the North Caucasus, the instability in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the civil war in Syria which is the aftermath of the Arab Spring. It also includes local civil wars, revolutions, and tribal conflicts, which have affected post-colonial African states.

 

European Refugee Crisis

The so-called European refugee (or migration) crisis is marked by a sharp increase in the number of migrants traveling to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea – most often in small ships or in pontoons operated by smugglers – to obtain asylum. Although the number of migrants has increased over the past few years, the crisis is considered to have started in 2015, when a 1.2 million asylum applications were submitted in the European Union Member States. According to the UNHCR data, migrants who reached Europe in 2015 were mostly Syrians (49 percent), Afghans (21 percent) and Iraqis (8 percent) [6]. Asylum applications have been submitted mainly in Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Hungary. Only during the first two months of 2016, another 123,000 people landed on the coast of Greece. For comparison, in the same period of 2015, there were only 4,600.

 

“The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. It also has a mandate to help stateless people. In more than six decades, the agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives. Today, a staff of some 7,685 people in more than 125 countries continues to help some 33.9 million persons”. Source: UNHCR.

 

The main cause of the European “migration crisis” is the numerous conflicts in the vicinity of the EU, caused by the military interventions of the United States and NATO member states, but also the accumulation of social discontent in the Middle East and North Africa region, which was visible from the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring. The revolution began in Tunisia in December 2010. Then the wave of discontent, combined with the hope for political changes in the region, spread to other countries such as Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Jordan and Syria. But this crisis is also a crisis of human values.

 

Key terms

Asylum is a form of international protection given to people who flee their country and are unable to return because of well-founded fear of persecution. The EU has a legal obligation to protect those in need. Member States are responsible for examining asylum applications and deciding who is granted protection. But not everyone who comes to Europe needs protection. Many people leave their home country to find a better life. These people are often referred to as economic migrants. If their asylum application is not successful, national governments have a duty to send them back to their country of origin or to another safe country whose borders they have crossed along the way. See: Exercise 1.

Amnesty International defines refugee as a “person who has fled their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations and persecution there. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers. Refugees have a right to international protection” [7]. According to article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”.

 

Stereotypes about refugees

Negative stereotypes about refugees are pervasive in Central and Eastern European societies. The refugee crisis has provoked anti-immigration forces and created a great opportunity for both populists and the mainstream parties to garner support using fear and xenophobia. So, the crisis has initiated a heated debate on the topic of immigration which was full of myths and stereotypes about refugees Negative sentiments about specific nationalities, chiefly Syrians, and Iraqis, reverberated around CEE countries. These nationalities are little known there on the factual level, and burdened with stereotypical beliefs regarding not only nationality, but also their origin – Arabs, or religion – Muslims. It is significant that, for example, many Poles do not even know any Arab or Muslim and did not have personal, direct contact with representatives of these groups. Likewise, “yet 72 per cent of Hungarians, the highest proportion of any European country, see Islam and Muslims in a very negative light” [8]. Stereotypes about refugees or Muslims are not the result of Poles or Hungarians own experiences but are often borrowed from other countries. They reproduce stereotypes present in other national groups rather than “create” theirs (for example, the stereotype of a refugee-terrorist is very popular, even though these countries have virtually no experience with terrorism motivated by radical Islam) [9].

 

References:

1. Lippman W. (1922), Public Opinion, Transaction Publishers, pp. 4–7.
2. Bodenhausen G.V., Richeson J.A. (2010), Prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination, in: Advanced Social Psychology. The State of the Science, Baumeister R.F., Finkel E.J. (ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 345.
3. Bodenhausen G.V., Richeson J.A. (2010), p.342.
4. Bodenhausen G.V., Richeson J.A. (2010), p.343.
5. Bandura A. (1971), Social Learning Theory, General Learning Press.
6. UNHCR, Global Trends 2015.
7. Amensty International.
8. Goździak E.M., Márton P. (2018), Where the Wild Things Are: Fear of Islam and the Anti-Refugee Rhetoric in Hungary and in Poland, in: Central and Eastern European Migration Review, (2), p. 130.
9. See: Górak-Sosnowska K. (2015),Dlaczego trudno uczyć o świecie islamu?.