PSD, PS and Chega voters, in the last legislative elections, show above-average figures when it comes to opposition to immigrants. The media in Portugal accentuates the bad image of immigrants, with the repetition of stereotypes that show a country victim of an invasion.
from the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, found that Portugal has high levels of rejection, across the board, particularly with regard to people who come from the Indian subcontinent.
The sample of 1,072 interviews was not concerned with respecting the legislative electoral results, but crossing the data collected with the indication of the party they voted for, it is possible to conclude that rejection is very high.
According to the study, presented in December:
- 63% of respondents want a decrease of immigrants from Indian subcontinent;
- 68% of those interviewed consider that “immigration policy in force in Portugal is too permissive in relation to the entry of immigrants”;
- 67,4% say they contribute to more crime;
- e 68,9% consider that help keep wages low.
At the same time, 68% agree that immigrants “are fundamental for the national economy.”
The majority is in favor of granting rights, such as the right to vote (58.8%), facilitating naturalization (51.8%) or family reunification processes (77.4%).
Although voters in the main parties have high levels of opposition, in “other dimensions of attitudes towards immigration there is already a distinction, in which Chega is isolated from AD and PS”, Rui Costa Lopes, one of the coordinators of the study, from the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) in Lisbon.
The differences between PSD, PS and Chega
According to Rui Costa Lopes, voters in PSD and no PS “they are not distinguished from each other in a more positive position of greater granting of rights.
In turn, whoever voted for the He arrives tem more rejection and also relates the arrival of foreigners with the crime.
However, Pedro Góis, from the University of Coimbra, pointed out that the AD makes “a bridge between PS and Chega”aligning with each one, depending on the indicators.
For Rui Costa Lopes, a relevant piece of data from the study is the fact that 42% of those interviewed overestimate the number of immigrants in Portugal.
More than 40% of those interviewed think that immigrants make up more than 20% of the population and one in four Portuguese people thinks they make up more than 30%.
“We showed that this underestimation is correlated with negative attitudes towards immigration, that is, people are wrong about the number of immigrants in the country”, he explained.
Nuno António, the third and last of the study coordinators, from the Catholic University, considers that this overestimation is more evident among those who do not regularly come into contact with immigrants.
Newspapers accentuate discrimination
The authors of the Immigration Barometer consider that the media in Portugal are accentuate the bad image of immigrants, with the repetition of stereotypes that show a country victim of an invasion.
An example of this is the media visibility given to an attack, in Lisbon on Sunday, which caused only minor injuries among the Bangladeshi community, said Rui Costa Lopes.
“It is necessary to always remember journalistic criteria when making decisions about what makes front page news”, he stated, considering that the fight on Benformoso Street “I wouldn’t open the three news programs if it had been elsewhere or if it had involved other populations, like in Portalegre”he stated.
To this is added the “excessive media coverage” of the migratory phenomenonwith “huge queues of people to obtain documentation” at the headquarters of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), as if there was an “invasion”rather than addressing “resource inefficiency,” he added.
Pedro Góis went further and warned of the weakening of these communities, with the “repetition of the same images, the same places and the same people who have a different color”as if immigration were just that,
In reality, the populations of Bangladesh, India or Nepal are minorities in the context of immigrants.
“If I always look for the same places to illustrate immigrants, and they are places that are not very obvious to citizens, this image will work as looping in memory and we will associate migrants with these places, it could be at the door of AIMA, the Loja do Cidadão, the Health Center or Rua do Benformoso”, he added.
“Benformoso Street is not representative of immigration in the country”because “the majority of migrants are spread across the national territory and are invisible, which is why they do not give good images”, summarized Pedro Góis.
In Portugal, “we have other examples of Benformoso streets in other communities. What is Cova da Moura if not this stereotypical representation of the Cape Verdean community in Portugal?” – he questioned, considering that the Portuguese media promotes positive multiculturalism in other countries but, in Portugal, contribute to an “image of negative multiculturalism”.
And it was based on “extrapolation of this stereotype” and from these media images about immigrants that “many Portuguese responded to our barometer”, even if “they live in Portalegre and have not seen immigrants in recent months”.
For Pedro Góis, who is also scientific director of the Migration Observatory, it is “it is necessary to have a human perspective on these human beings” and this stereotypical view “takes away their humanity”.
