Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
Wednesday, 11 July 2018
Apparently immigrants are popular now
From the British Social Attitude Survey. Interesting and unexpected. This doesn't necessarily contradict the widely-reported increase in hate crimes, but it is odd.
I suspect it's probably very simple: reaction to Brexit racism. People who were fairly negative about "immigration" with no particular racist tendencies now see themselves being associated with the far right and are adjusting their responses more towards the positive. I've not worded that particularly well, but I hope you get the gist.
I always wonder about these surveys about when and where they carried them out. I imagine there's a significant variation across the country. It's usually quite difficult to find out that information and has a massive impact on the usefulness. That change in the unweighted base is intriguing and a bit ambiguous.
The journalist's conundrum is that, for even those of relatively high intelligence or aptitude and sufficient compassionate humanity, they receive more interest in their work when they report on negative events. So, in some measure, a perverse and professional existential incentive exists in the media to focus their narratives on misanthropy and horror.
Hate crimes are occurring, certainly, and they remain without question abhorrent but the relationship between occurrences and media reporting is a strangely bifurcated beast: of self-propagating narrative amplification and of dangerously instructive entrainment for those ignorant half-wits who know no better than to express their insecurity as intransigent, unrepentant stupidity and aggression.
Statistics can rarely be trusted but this, too, is very likely only a statistically derivable fact. Personally speaking, subjectively and potentially inaccurately (i.e. without tangible evidence), I think that populations as a whole (across the "Western" world) are much more tolerant to difference than they may potentially and historicaly have been (although this itself is unclear, also, as history itself possesses its own historical biases); that once exposed to difference and discovering that its distance from the perceived safety and security of those more familiar, normative cultural spaces is far less than may have been fictionally constructed through ignorance, power-play or misunderstanding, they are much more open to change and assimilation than may be widely acknowledged.
I'd very much like to hope that Alun Jones's idea is correct; it had crossed my mind. Like guns, certain factors may be an enabler of violence rather than a direct cause. That is, the same event that mobilises and radicalises the worst segment of society might also repel the majority. In this specific case there were at least some who, rightly or wrong, didn't like the bureaucratic system of the EU and whose concerns didn't really have that much, or indeed anything at all, to do with xenophobia.
That said, the principle figure driving the push towards Brexit was a man repeatedly saying he wanted "a proper, grown-up debate about immigration" who then did a whole series of manifestly racist and otherwise cuntish things. I'm not sure what's going on here, but the stupidity levels of display don't fill me hope or confidence. Partly I keep thinking about Trump/Farage supporters, "well, even if they do manage to say something that's occasionally not entirely wrong, you can still tell they're both massive pillocks, right ? Right ? I mean, it's obvious, isn't it ?". And apparently it isn't.
Thinking some more - following on from my original comment...
A widespread unconscious dislike of immigrants as a concept would translate into survey answers in the "Bad" or "Neutral" categories.
Once they start hearing of people (oh, I didn't mean actual people) being victimised and driven away by the fallout of the referendum, and they start seeing staff shortages, maybe people start putting faces to the questions.
Their friendly, helpful GP is suddenly the example popping into their head when asked the question, rather than "faceless person with a funny accent stealing our jobs".
Suddenly they're actually thinking about the questions: "How are they having a bad impact on our economy?" "How are they undermining our cultural life?" And, of course, they're not!
You can easily have a spike in hate crimes and have attitudes towards immigrants overall becoming more positive. Extremists will become more extreme when they feel they're losing.
Alun Jones Indeed. The interesting question is at what point do people decide the local village immigrant is an exception and the rest of them must be awful people, and how far can this go. Exposure's likely a factor (very hard to believe the right wing press if you have lots of immigrant friends). There are a few recent studies which seem to be converging on a figure of about 30% of information in a news feed being enough to start to change opinions. I'd venture to generalise this to all information sources, including direct experience. But living conditions and wealth inequality are probably also at work.
Chris Greene Well again, that's what I hope is happening. To very slightly modify Event Horizon's comment, it's not so much the reporting of hate crimes that may be misleading here as the widespread reporting of anti-immigration attitudes. That's another reason the statistics above feel off. Hopefully this is only because of selection biases in the media.
Rhys Taylor this is a problem when you have narrative fueled reporting (which is basically all modern reporting). 20% is more than enough to run a story focusing on several individuals with strong anti-immigrant views every day of the year.
The problem with the news media is that they run 'stories'. But the question that those stories answer is left implicit, causing people to focus on "is this true?" (which typically the answer is 'yes'), and not focus on the much more complicated question 'Is this relevant?'.
Due to a small but consistent influx of spam, comments will now be checked before publishing. Only egregious spam/illegal/racist crap will be disapproved, everything else will be published.
I suspect it's probably very simple: reaction to Brexit racism. People who were fairly negative about "immigration" with no particular racist tendencies now see themselves being associated with the far right and are adjusting their responses more towards the positive. I've not worded that particularly well, but I hope you get the gist.
ReplyDeleteI always wonder about these surveys about when and where they carried them out. I imagine there's a significant variation across the country. It's usually quite difficult to find out that information and has a massive impact on the usefulness.
ReplyDeleteThat change in the unweighted base is intriguing and a bit ambiguous.
Re: reporting of hate crimes.
ReplyDeleteThe journalist's conundrum is that, for even those of relatively high intelligence or aptitude and sufficient compassionate humanity, they receive more interest in their work when they report on negative events. So, in some measure, a perverse and professional existential incentive exists in the media to focus their narratives on misanthropy and horror.
Hate crimes are occurring, certainly, and they remain without question abhorrent but the relationship between occurrences and media reporting is a strangely bifurcated beast: of self-propagating narrative amplification and of dangerously instructive entrainment for those ignorant half-wits who know no better than to express their insecurity as intransigent, unrepentant stupidity and aggression.
Statistics can rarely be trusted but this, too, is very likely only a statistically derivable fact. Personally speaking, subjectively and potentially inaccurately (i.e. without tangible evidence), I think that populations as a whole (across the "Western" world) are much more tolerant to difference than they may potentially and historicaly have been (although this itself is unclear, also, as history itself possesses its own historical biases); that once exposed to difference and discovering that its distance from the perceived safety and security of those more familiar, normative cultural spaces is far less than may have been fictionally constructed through ignorance, power-play or misunderstanding, they are much more open to change and assimilation than may be widely acknowledged.
Event Horizon Well, I dunno. On the one hand the reported hate crime spike was based on statistics (here's an interesting little read : http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/03/19/hate-crime-did-spike-after-the-referendum-even-allowing-for-other-factors/) rather than anecdotes (though I have reliable second-hand evidence of Brexit being used to justify a specific anecdotal hate crime). On the other, detailed records are relatively new.
ReplyDeleteI'd very much like to hope that Alun Jones's idea is correct; it had crossed my mind. Like guns, certain factors may be an enabler of violence rather than a direct cause. That is, the same event that mobilises and radicalises the worst segment of society might also repel the majority. In this specific case there were at least some who, rightly or wrong, didn't like the bureaucratic system of the EU and whose concerns didn't really have that much, or indeed anything at all, to do with xenophobia.
That said, the principle figure driving the push towards Brexit was a man repeatedly saying he wanted "a proper, grown-up debate about immigration" who then did a whole series of manifestly racist and otherwise cuntish things. I'm not sure what's going on here, but the stupidity levels of display don't fill me hope or confidence. Partly I keep thinking about Trump/Farage supporters, "well, even if they do manage to say something that's occasionally not entirely wrong, you can still tell they're both massive pillocks, right ? Right ? I mean, it's obvious, isn't it ?". And apparently it isn't.
Thinking some more - following on from my original comment...
ReplyDeleteA widespread unconscious dislike of immigrants as a concept would translate into survey answers in the "Bad" or "Neutral" categories.
Once they start hearing of people (oh, I didn't mean actual people) being victimised and driven away by the fallout of the referendum, and they start seeing staff shortages, maybe people start putting faces to the questions.
Their friendly, helpful GP is suddenly the example popping into their head when asked the question, rather than "faceless person with a funny accent stealing our jobs".
Suddenly they're actually thinking about the questions: "How are they having a bad impact on our economy?" "How are they undermining our cultural life?" And, of course, they're not!
You can easily have a spike in hate crimes and have attitudes towards immigrants overall becoming more positive. Extremists will become more extreme when they feel they're losing.
ReplyDeleteAlun Jones Indeed. The interesting question is at what point do people decide the local village immigrant is an exception and the rest of them must be awful people, and how far can this go. Exposure's likely a factor (very hard to believe the right wing press if you have lots of immigrant friends). There are a few recent studies which seem to be converging on a figure of about 30% of information in a news feed being enough to start to change opinions. I'd venture to generalise this to all information sources, including direct experience. But living conditions and wealth inequality are probably also at work.
ReplyDeleteChris Greene Well again, that's what I hope is happening. To very slightly modify Event Horizon's comment, it's not so much the reporting of hate crimes that may be misleading here as the widespread reporting of anti-immigration attitudes. That's another reason the statistics above feel off. Hopefully this is only because of selection biases in the media.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor this is a problem when you have narrative fueled reporting (which is basically all modern reporting). 20% is more than enough to run a story focusing on several individuals with strong anti-immigrant views every day of the year.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the news media is that they run 'stories'. But the question that those stories answer is left implicit, causing people to focus on "is this true?" (which typically the answer is 'yes'), and not focus on the much more complicated question 'Is this relevant?'.
Chris Greene SMBC to the rescue !
ReplyDeletesmbc-comics.com - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Bacon is Literally Cancer