The survey found that citizens across the region consistently tend to exaggerate the numbers of non-citizens in their countries, to view the migration of people within the region as a “problem” rather than an opportunity, and to scapegoat non-citizens. [...] 30 1 Namibia, Botswana) are so pervasive and widespread that it is actually impossible to identify any kind of “xenophobe profile.” In other words, the poor and the rich, the employed and the unemployed, the male and the female, the black and the white, the conservative and the radical, all express remarkably similar attitudes. [...] Representative govern-ment, a rights-based Constitution and the deracialization of public life and the institutions of governance all testify to the extent and depth of this transformation. [...] The first point to emerge from this inter-country study is that citi- zens across the region consistently tend to exaggerate the numbers of non-citizens in their countries, to view the migration of people within the region as a “problem” rather than an opportunity and to scapegoat non-citizens. [...] The primary challenge is therefore an educational one: to provide citizens with direct or vicarious knowledge of migrants, immi- grants, refugees as people through the media, and to encourage a greater sense of continentalism and internationalism in the population through curriculum reform at schools, the media and the public pronouncements of opinion-makers.
- Pages
- 55
- Published in
- Port Elizabeth, South Africa
