The term xenophobia comes from the Greek xénos „the foreigner“ and phóbos „fear“. Fear of the foreign refers to rejecting attitudes and behaviors towards everything that appears foreign and is perceived as threatening, contrary to one’s own ’normality‘.
Xenophobia is directed against people who differ from one’s own ’norm‘ by their origin (xenophobia), religion (e.g., anti-Semitism) or skin color (racism).
Evolutionary biological explanations
Psychologist and anxiety researcher Borwin Bandelow explains that „a phobia […] is an exaggerated, unreasonable fear, in this case of strangers.“ He tries to reconstruct the fear of strangers in terms of evolutionary biology and says: „Developmentally, it was probably a survival advantage to group together, to defend one’s own tribe and to slay members of other tribes“ (Höhn 2015). Thus, distrust of other societies was perfectly reasonable in the past in order to secure scarce resources that were essential for survival.
Changed basic conditions
Today, basic conditions have changed; human rights and principles of equality form the basis of our coexistence. Xenophobia promotes exclusion, unequal treatment, discrimination, threats and violence. Social science studies also show considerable intersections between xenophobia and racism (cf. Vedder/ Reuter 2008, 202).
Xenophobia̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ – a problematic term.
In this context, it becomes clear why the choice of terminology can be problematic, because the determination of foreignness and strangeness is subjective, arbitrary and capricious. Moreover, the term reverses perspectives: „In reality, however, a crime is not committed because the victim has a certain characteristic or origin, but because the perpetrator has a certain attitude“ (cf. BAMF 2013, 46).
Literature
Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (2013): New German Media Makers. Documentation of the workshop. New terms for the immigration society. Nuremberg. http://www.neuemedienmacher.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Tagungsdokumentation-NDM-Begriffe-2013.pdf [25.04.2018].
Höhn, Franziska (2015): Xenophobia. The fear of the foreign slumbers in everyone. https://www.welt.de/gesundheit/psychologie/article147372371/Die-Angst-vor-dem-Fremden- schlummert-in-jedem.html [25.04.2018].
Vedder, Günther/ Reuter, Julia (2008): Glossary: diversity management and work-life balance. Trier contributions to diversity management. Rainer Hampp Verlag, 2nd ed. Munich/ Mering.