‘Their’ Poverty Is ‘Our’ Problem: Explaining Continuities and Discontinuities in Xenophobic Responses to Crisis

Economic crisis may lead to xenophobia and calls for restrictions on movement, but the link is never straightforward. Economic crisis did lead to debates about restrictive laws, but so did each political crisis. The impact of political crisis was stronger than that of economic crisis, I argue in this paper. Overall foreigners were accused more easily of being a threat to security, homogeneity, and safety, than of being the cause of the economic crisis, or its solution. Migrants could be presented (and were presented as a threat) but not per se or only as an economic threat. In the most recent debate not the poverty of the migrants is presented as the problem (for which ‘we’ are perhaps to blame), but rather ‘their’ choice for non-integration (for which only ‘they’ are to blame). Calls for restrictions on mobility may spring from economic reasons, but they are justified by references to other ‘threats’. In this respect there is continuity over time.