Perceptions

At the level of larger groups

Although immigration featured heavily in the Brexit campaign, areas with the most migrants … were among those most likely to vote Remain … Mint-tea sipping metropolitans may find it absurd that people in areas with comparatively few foreigners should be so keen to curb migration. But consider the change in numbers, rather than the total headcount, and the opposite pattern emerges … Where foreign-born populations increased by more than 200% between 2001 and 2014, a Leave vote followed in 94% of cases. The proportion of migrants may be relatively low in Leave strongholds … but it has soared in a short period of time. High numbers of migrants don’t bother Britons; high rates of change do.

The Economist July 16th 2016

I knew that those new seedlings are in-stable, because the new generation is weakened by loyalty. If the history of the parents dies out, then in principle they have never arrived here and they do not live on. They die out.

Nazmiye Oral, de Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper), November 29th 2010

Hearing that the group you belong to, is reprehensible, is not without consequences for the day-to-day life of someone. Feeling that you belong to a group that is not desired, of which everone has more than enough, really does not make your life any rosier. Being put away as a group of dangerous simpletons is something nobody has to comply with.

Nazmiye Oral, de Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper), October 18th 2010

We are used to look for the extremes of the spectrum of contemporary problems. You are in favour or against and hence, you are always opposite one another. The outliers are so focused on enforcing their right that the problems rather serve as ammunition than as barriers that need to be taken and that may be thought through in a clear way. The centre is absent, a huge grey area, a whole.

Nazmiye Oral, de Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper), October 18th 2010