Xenophobia is defined as the fear or hatred of foreigners. It should be distinguished from racism, which is prejudice against people of other racial groups. Of course, xenophobia can have a racist element if the foreigner is of a different race, but that is not always the case. The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa has identified causes of xenophobia in the country: relative deprivation (poverty), a sense of exceptionalism (superiority), and exclusive citizenship (citizenship granted exclusively according to ethnicity or country of origin).
Poverty and economic inequality engender xenophobia
The hotspot of xenophobic violence in South Africa, Alexandra, is a dense and impoverished township that sits right next to a wealthy financial center of Johannesburg, Sandton. The township residents can see this stark physical manifestation of economic inequality every day just by looking out of their window.
As the political class and large businesses are largely out of reach, South Africans of Alexandra end up channeling their anger towards poorer and more defenseless African migrants, who are in closer proximity to the township. This process is called “scapegoating” – a psychological defense mechanism of projecting unmerited blame onto others to relieve stress and retrieve a sense of power.
In the HSRC report published following the 2008 riots, sociologist Michael Neocosmos says that the long-term trauma from apartheid makes poor black South Africans more fearful of attacking white South Africans and the wealthy. It becomes easier to blame Malawians with small businesses like barbershops of “stealing jobs” and limited housing space in the township.
The tendency to scapegoat vulnerable foreigners can only end by addressing and rectifying the deeper reasons behind the poverty in Alexandra. Local organizations have also launched community initiatives, like football and judo clubs, to foster peaceful collaboration and cultural understanding between South Africans and foreign African workers.
Middle-class and wealthy expats tend to be more protected from the most violent manifestations of xenophobia, but that does not mean that economic resentment cannot be directed at them too. In some countries, expats from Europe and North America can receive much higher salaries than locals. Sometimes it is because of discrimination against locals. At other times it is because of the legal requirements of residence permits.
For example, in Mauritius, the Professional Occupation Permit (OCP) for expats requires the foreigner to earn at least 60,000 rupees (1,331 USD) per month to stay in the country. This salary is nearly double the average salary of Rs 33,766 (748 USD) for locals (Statistics Mauritius, 2021). While this can breed resentment among Mauritians who are paid less, OCP holders remain insulated from virulent xenophobia. They might experience microaggressions like passive-aggressive comments in their everyday lives, but it has not escalated to public hate.
Instead, poorer Bangladeshi contract workers face more xenophobia in Mauritius. They work for very low wages in offshore processing zones, construction and the service industry. Mauritian newspapers have documented their poor treatment by employers, the bullying they experience from the police, and the scapegoating they suffer for keeping the Mauritian minimum wage low.
After the Mauritian general elections of 2019, Bangladeshis were widely accused of having “sabotaged” the elections by voting without having citizenship. Only 45 Bangladeshis were registered as Commonwealth voters, but these numbers were blown out of proportion on social media, which engendered a xenophobic conspiracy theory. The cases of South Africa and Mauritius, although they have different degrees of violence, show that xenophobia often stems from locals' fear of losing economic and political power – jobs, housing, votes.
Excessive cultural pride creates scorn for foreigners
The two other causes of xenophobia given by South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), “sense of exceptionalism” and “exclusive citizenship,” have to do with chauvinism, which is defined as excessive patriotism and excessive cultural pride. When people are overly proud of their country's history, economic success, military might, etc., it can lead them to scorn foreigners who they see as being from “inferior” cultures. They can have degrading stereotypes about those who come from abroad.
For example, xenophobia against expats in Singapore is often directed at those who come from neighboring Asian countries, notably Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, India and China. Singapore is the only high-income economy in the region, with purchasing power and living standards comparable to Europe and North America; this can make some feel that Singaporean work ethic, intelligence and culture are “superior” to those of other Asians. While inter-ethnic violence is absent from Singapore and the state has laws for multicultural harmony, xenophobia is still subtly present in the rental market, academia and the workplace.
According to a CNBC article from March 2017, xenophobia is common in Singaporean rental practices. Many landlords explicitly add “no Malay,” “no Indians” and “no PRC [China]” to their advertisements. Indian expats have reported that even if some adverts bear no discriminatory words, they have felt discriminated against during on-site visits or were even verbally told by agents that the owners “prefer” not renting to Indians.
Some of these Indian expats feel like their high level of education, high salary and cosmopolitan background do not protect them from being tagged with negative stereotypes. Some xenophobic stereotypes Singaporean landlords might have about other Asians are that they are “messy,” “do not adequately clean up” (unhygienic), and that their food “smells.” It shows that while middle-class expats rarely experience the violence that Zimbabwean workers in South Africa face, they can still experience xenophobia in more subtle ways.
Disease threat increases xenophobia
The Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed a new wave of xenophobia on Chinese immigrants and expats worldwide, especially in Western countries. The newfound fear of the illness, which was first detected in China, has been amalgamated with old stereotypes about the country, racist far-right politics, and pre-existing political tensions, especially in the context of the China-US trade war.
As compared to the situation in South Africa, relative poverty has no role in the generation of this xenophobia. Instead, disease threat is the main driver of fear here. An article by Zhuang She et al. in the journal BMC Public Health argues that all epidemics have been associated with increased xenophobia. Previously, West Africans faced discrimination in the US during the Ebola outbreak, as did foreigners in Switzerland during the avian flu crisis.
The Covid-born wave of xenophobia has resulted in an exponential increase in cases of discrimination, verbal harassment and physical assault against people of Chinese origin living in the US, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Russia, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Brazil.
Businesses in San Francisco's Chinatown were vandalized, and multiple Chinese people in the Bay Area were beaten by strangers on the streets. In March 2021, the city witnessed the horrifying footage of a 70-year-old Chinese woman being beaten by a young man in a public space. In 2021, an elderly Thai-American man was murdered in the same area as xenophobic hate extended to other Asians.
In Spain, similar violence left a Chinese-American man in a coma in 2020 after being beaten by a stranger. According to Human Rights Watch, over 250 anti-Asian hate crimes were reported in the UK only in the first three months of the pandemic, i.e., January to March 2020. Many victims were international students, some of whom decided to leave in the aftermath. While there was no physical violence in Japan and South Korea, Chinese businesses were vandalized there too.
Xenophobia was sometimes even espoused by the authorities, as in Italy when a regional governor told the press in 2020 that Italians are cleaner than the Chinese, who, in his words, “eat mice alive.” He later issued an apology. In Russia, the state-owned bus network started reporting Chinese passengers to the police in 2020, which prompted the Chinese embassy to send a letter to Moscow requesting an end to this xenophobic practice. In Brazil, the education minister tweeted a conspiracy theory that China is planning “world domination” through the virus. This conspiracy theory affects normal people – citizens, immigrants, expats, and international students – who are scapegoated for the imagined actions of the Chinese state.
As the terms “Wuhan virus” and “China virus” were helping fuel xenophobia, the World Health Organization instituted “Covid-19” as the official term to avoid further xenophobic stigmatization. In the US, the Stop Asian Hate movement was born in 2021; it organizes demonstrations, protests and rallies to fight back against racism and xenophobia.
