| Description: |
This study of xenophobia is based upon New Democracies Barometer V, a representative sample survey in post-Communist countries in Spring, 1998 in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Belarus. Xenophobic attitudes were particularly strong in the Central European post-Communist countries of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This may be a response to their increasing migration pressures since the transition from Communism and their role as a migration "buffer zone" between East and West. Xenophobia was stronger among older people and those with low education. People who are xenophobic feel threatened by international powers--Russia, Germany and the USA--as well as by internal minorities and migrants. Xenophobia is also associated with distrust in democratic institutions and in reform regimes. Xenophobic people are also likely to support authoritarian political alternatives. Xenophobia is strongly associated with national pride and with resistance to multi-culturalism, preferring assimilation for minorities and rejection of international integration through NATO or the European Union. Xenophobic attitudes are part of a Volk-model of citizenship, seeing citizenship as inherited with nationality rather than based on place of birth.
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