Why are some immigrants accepted, others tolerated and others rejected?
Soraya Mohamedi · Employment Area Coordinator, Ubuntu Canarias · 15 min read
Immigration is not only about the people who arrive; it also shows who we are, those of us who receive them. A psychological, human and social look at our prejudices.
There is a question worth asking without fear of making people uncomfortable, without getting into political arguments and without turning the issue into a blind defence of immigration or a general rejection of it: why do some foreign nationals seem to inspire trust almost automatically, while others have to keep proving that they can be trusted?
In Spain, people from Latin America, Morocco, other African countries, Europe, Asia and many other regions live side by side. They all have different stories, different reasons for migrating, their own personal circumstances and their own ways of understanding life. Yet they do not all seem to occupy the same place in our collective imagination. There are people we see as close before we even know them, and others we watch with a certain wariness, even when they have done absolutely nothing to justify that mistrust.
Why does this happen? Why can language, physical appearance, religion, clothing or certain customs influence so much the first impression we form of someone? And why, when a person from a socially stigmatised group commits a crime, can their origin become the centre of the conversation, while in other cases the same act is seen as individual behaviour?
These questions are not answered by saying that some people are good and others bad, nor by claiming that all rejection is racism or that any concern about living together is unjustified. To understand what is going on, we need to go beyond quick answers and look at the psychological, cultural and emotional mechanisms involved in how we relate to those we consider different.
Immigration is also a mirror. It lets us see our fears, our loyalties, our need for security, the prejudices we have learned and our ability —or difficulty— to recognise the humanity of someone who does not belong to our group.
1. Cultural familiarity: why we feel closer to some people than to others
When a Latin American person arrives in Spain, they may find things that make the first contact easier: a shared language, familiar expressions, common cultural references, some similar traditions and, in many cases, historical and family ties between both sides of the Atlantic.
This does not mean that all Latin Americans are the same, that they necessarily share our customs or that integration is always easy. Latin America is extraordinarily diverse. But there are points of connection that can reduce the initial distance between the person who arrives and the person who receives.
With a Moroccan person, especially when they come from a cultural and religious background very different from that of the observer, that familiarity may be smaller. There may be linguistic, religious, family or social differences that need more time and willingness to understand each other. Islam, for example, may be unfamiliar to someone who has never lived closely with a Muslim person. And what we do not know well can be viewed with suspicion, especially when the information we receive is dominated by conflicts, stereotypes or negative news.
Here an important distinction appears: feeling more affinity for someone is not necessarily prejudice; considering that someone is worth less, is more dangerous or deserves fewer opportunities because they are different can become discrimination.
Spontaneous affinity is part of human relationships. We find it easier to approach what is familiar. The problem begins when we turn that initial preference into a criterion for deciding who deserves our trust, who seems acceptable as a neighbour, whom we would hire, to whom we would rent a home or whom we would distrust when passing them in the street.
At that point, familiarity stops being simple emotional comfort and starts working as an invisible border.
We may naturally accept that someone keeps their Latin American accent, their music, their celebrations or certain customs from their country, while looking with more suspicion at a Muslim woman’s headscarf, a beard associated with a particular religious identity or a group of Moroccan men chatting in a café. It does not always happen like this, of course, but when it does, it is worth asking ourselves what we are really interpreting: a specific behaviour, or a set of meanings we had already attached to that appearance?
A person can feel uncomfortable with what they do not know. That discomfort is human. What we need to review is the conclusion we draw from it.
Not knowing a culture does not make us intolerant. But using our lack of knowledge as proof that a culture is dangerous stops us from learning and can lead us to treat the people who represent it unfairly.
2. The brain looks for safety, but does not always tell real danger from imagined danger
Social psychology tells us that people tend to classify the information they receive very quickly. Our brain uses previous experiences, learned categories and signals from the environment to find its way in complex situations. This process can help us react to real dangers, but it can also lead to errors of judgement.
When we meet someone we do not know, we do not always have enough information to know what they are like. So we may rely on superficial clues: their appearance, their language, the way they dress, their accent or the group we think they belong to.
The problem is that a quick impression is not the same as real knowledge.
If a person has heard for years that certain immigrants are linked to crime, extremism or a lack of integration, they may start to read the presence of those immigrants as a sign of danger. They do not need to have had a negative experience themselves. Repeating an association can be enough for it to start to seem obvious.
Research on perceived threat between social groups has found a relationship between the feeling of threat and negative attitudes towards groups seen as outsiders. An analysis published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, which brought together 95 samples, examined how different perceived threats —realistic, symbolic and related to anxiety or stereotypes— are associated with unfavourable attitudes towards other groups.
This does not show that every concern is imaginary or that people who feel fear necessarily act with bad intentions. It shows something more precise: perceived threat can influence the way we judge others, and that perception does not always match an individual assessment of their behaviour.
Safety is a legitimate need. We all want to live in peace, to walk around our neighbourhood, to protect our children and to trust those around us. There is nothing wrong with that. The mistake appears when we stop assessing specific situations and behaviours and start using a person’s identity as a substitute for evidence.
Intimidating behaviour deserves attention, whoever it comes from. A threat must be taken seriously. A crime must be investigated. But the mere fact that a person is Moroccan, Muslim, Latin American or African does not, on its own, tell us whether they will behave respectfully or violently.
When we confuse identity with danger, we stop seeing the person and start reacting to a mental image.
Reference: Riek, Mania and Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Review (2006). See the study on PubMed.
3. Double standards: when one person’s mistake becomes the fault of many
One of the most delicate phenomena in the public debate on immigration is collective generalisation.
Imagine that a man commits an assault. If he belongs to a group we consider close, our first reaction may be to ask what led him to act like that, what circumstances were involved or what individual responsibility he bears. We will not necessarily justify his behaviour, but we will analyse it as the behaviour of one person.
Now imagine that the perpetrator belongs to a group about which prejudices already exist. In that case, the conversation can change quickly: it is no longer only about the attacker, but about “Moroccans”, “Muslims” or “immigrants”. The individual act becomes supposed proof of what a whole group is like.
Here a logical leap takes place that we should recognise: the fact that a person belongs to a group does not mean that the group is responsible for what that person does.
Nationality is not a personality. Religion is not a moral diagnosis. A culture does not automatically turn all its members into representatives of its most problematic aspects.
This does not prevent us from studying crime patterns, analysing reliable data or discussing specific problems of coexistence. It means that these issues must be examined with evidence, context and comparable criteria, not with anecdotes selected to confirm an opinion we already held.
If data show a specific problem, we must be able to talk about it. If a practice violates someone’s rights, we must be able to question it. If someone commits a crime, they must answer for their actions. But none of these circumstances allows us to automatically shift responsibility onto people who had nothing to do with what happened.
Double standards can also work the other way. In trying to avoid discrimination, someone may play down harmful behaviour when it comes from a vulnerable group. That is not fair either. Compassion does not require denying reality, and equality does not mean applying different criteria to protect some and condemn others.
Consistency means keeping the same principle for everyone: assessing the facts, recognising the relevant circumstances and holding responsible those who are responsible.
A mature society does not need to choose between two extremes: justifying everything an immigrant does or suspecting everyone who shares their origin. It can condemn an act without condemning an identity.
And that difference, which seems simple, deeply changes the way we live together.
4. The weight of the news, social media and stories that keep being repeated
Collective perception is not formed only through personal experience. It is also built through the stories we hear, the images we see and the content that circulates again and again.
News about a crime may be necessary and relevant. The problem is not reporting a crime committed by a foreign national. The problem arises when origin is used for impact when it is not relevant, when certain associations are repeated until they seem inseparable, or when an isolated episode is presented as proof of a supposed collective nature.
Social media can intensify this process. A short video, an image without context or an emotional story can spread much faster than a careful explanation of the facts. In addition, people tend to pay special attention to what confirms their suspicions and to remember more easily the experiences that made them feel fear, outrage or rejection.
This can create a feedback loop: someone believes a group is dangerous, pays more attention to negative news about it, sees it as confirmation of their belief and becomes even more distrustful. Facts that contradict that image can go unnoticed or be dismissed as exceptions.
The opposite can also happen: a person who has only had positive experiences with members of a group may idealise it and stop recognising its real problems. Good intentions do not free the human mind from bias.
That is why we need to distinguish between a striking story and a proven trend, between a personal experience and a general conclusion, between a suspicion and evidence.
A victim’s experience deserves respect. A neighbour’s fear should not be ridiculed. But neither can we use one person’s pain to fuel hostility against millions of people who have nothing to do with what happened.
The same criterion must apply to messages that dehumanise immigrants and to messages that deny any difficulty in living together. Both extremes prevent us from understanding reality in all its complexity.
The useful question is not only what news we have seen, but what conclusion we have drawn from it and whether that conclusion is really backed by the facts.
5. Islamophobia and the experience of being looked at as a suspect
Cultural difference becomes especially complex when it is mixed with religion. For Muslims, religious identity can become a visible marker of belonging, especially when it is expressed through recognisable clothing, practices or customs.
For someone looking from the outside, those signs may seem like a statement of values they do not know. For the person who wears them, they may represent faith, family identity, tradition, personal choice or a combination of reasons. Not all Muslims interpret their religion in the same way, just as not all Christians, atheists or agnostics share a single view of the world.
However, in the collective imagination, Islam can become simplistically associated with extremism, inequality between men and women or the rejection of Western customs. When that automatic association happens, a Muslim person who has not expressed any position can be treated as if they had to answer for actions or ideas that are not theirs.
This does not mean that issues such as religious freedom, gender equality, freedom of conscience or child protection should not be debated. They are legitimate and relevant issues. It means they must be addressed by examining specific practices and behaviours, without assuming that everyone of a religion shares or defends them.
A report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, published in 2024 and based on the experiences of almost 10,000 Muslims in 13 European countries, found that 47% of respondents had experienced racial discrimination in the five years before the survey. The report also documented problems in areas such as employment and housing.
These results do not, on their own, describe all the experiences of Muslims in Spain, nor do they mean that every social interaction is marked by discrimination. They do show that rejection linked to religion, ethnic origin or appearance is a real phenomenon that deserves attention.
In Spain, a survey on intolerance and discrimination against Muslims published by OBERAXE in 2020 also recorded perceptions of Islamophobia and difficulties in areas such as access to employment and housing.
The sources do not require us to deny cultural differences or problems of coexistence. They remind us that we must also look at the other side of the relationship: what happens when a person is repeatedly judged by an identity that others interpret before getting to know them.
When someone feels they must prove again and again that they are peaceful, honest or respectful simply because they are Muslim or Moroccan, they stop relating to others on an equal footing. They are placed in a position of preventive suspicion.
And suspicion that persists even in the absence of any specific behaviour can end up closing doors, reducing opportunities and making it harder to achieve precisely the integration that is expected of that person.
Sources:
- European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Being Muslim in the EU (2024). Full report.
- OBERAXE, Survey on intolerance and discrimination against Muslims in Spain (2020). Published results.
6. Individual responsibility and the limits of living together
A balanced reflection on immigration must avoid a common confusion: recognising that a person may suffer discrimination does not mean that all their behaviour is acceptable. In the same way, holding someone responsible for their behaviour does not mean we should look down on their origin.
Societies need rules for living together. Violence, intimidation, abuse, coercion and the violation of other people’s rights do not become acceptable because they have a cultural or religious justification. No one should be forced to give up their freedom, their safety or their dignity to avoid conflict with the community they belong to.
This includes, for example, equal rights for men and women, the freedom to choose one’s own beliefs, respect for those who think differently and the possibility of living without threats. These are principles that must be defended without making exceptions based on the origin of whoever violates them.
But we must also ask ourselves whether we demand these rules consistently. Do we challenge a sexist attitude just as firmly when it comes from a man born in Spain as when it comes from a foreign man? Do we condemn domestic violence without turning it into a trait of a nationality? Do we recognise that a person can defend democratic values and, at the same time, keep a cultural or religious identity different from ours?
Integration should not mean that everyone has to dress the same, eat the same, believe the same or give up every reference to their culture of origin. That would be confusing living together with uniformity.
Integrating means being able to take part in society, knowing and respecting its rules, building relationships with other people and sharing a framework of rights and responsibilities. There can be different ways of living within that framework. What there should not be is a double standard that allows some behaviours in some people and condemns them in others for reasons of identity.
Nor would it be reasonable to demand that a person always represent the best of their community in order to be accepted. No one should have to be exemplary to be treated with dignity. Basic dignity is not a prize given to those who never make mistakes.
Individual responsibility works in both directions: no one should be condemned for other people’s actions, and no one should be exempt from answering for their own.
7. Transpersonal psychology: looking beyond the identity we have learned to defend
From a perspective inspired by transpersonal psychology, we can add a question that goes beyond social categories: what happens inside us when we feel that someone different threatens our way of understanding the world?
Transpersonal psychology explores, among other things, consciousness, the sense of identity, human experience and the possibility of widening our perspective beyond a limited view of the self. It does not need to be presented as the single scientific explanation of prejudice; it can be used as a complementary lens to reflect on how we identify with our beliefs and how we build the border between “us” and “them”.
Each person develops an identity through their family, education, experiences, language, values and surroundings. That identity can give us stability, belonging and meaning. We need to feel that we are part of something and that our world has a certain coherence.
But when we identify rigidly with our customs, we can come to see differences as a personal threat. An unfamiliar practice is no longer simply something we do not share: it starts to look like a provocation, a challenge or an attempt to change what we consider our own.
Sometimes, rejecting others may be related to a difficulty in tolerating uncertainty. What is different reminds us that our way of living is not the only possible one, that there are other belief systems and that we do not fully control the environment we live in.
Recognising this does not mean that every fear has a deep psychological explanation or that we can know someone’s motivations without listening to them. It means that, before turning our discomfort into a moral judgement about another person, we can ask ourselves which part of our reaction comes from observable facts and which part comes from our own interpretations.
There is a difference between saying “I don’t understand this custom” and saying “whoever practises this custom is inferior”. Between saying “this behaviour worries me” and concluding “people of that origin are dangerous”. Between defending one of our own values and needing others to be identical to us in order to feel safe.
The transpersonal perspective invites us to observe our identity without being completely trapped in it. We can love our culture, feel connected to our country and defend the values we consider essential without turning that belonging into an absolute measure of other people’s worth.
Maturity does not mean having no preferences, differences or limits. It means recognising them without losing the ability to see the other person as a complex human being, not as a label.
In this sense, inner work does not replace social, educational or community solutions. It complements them. A person may need to review their prejudices, but they also need to live in an environment where information is rigorous, relationships are possible and behaviour is judged by clear criteria.
8. The collective shadow: what we condemn outside and find hard to recognise inside
A deeper psychological reflection can lead us to notice a phenomenon known in several psychological traditions as projection: sometimes we attribute to others characteristics, impulses or flaws that we find it hard to recognise in ourselves. Not every criticism of immigrants is a projection, and it would not be right to diagnose an entire society on the basis of this concept. But it can serve as a question for self-observation.
When we describe a group as aggressive, intolerant, sexist or unable to live with others, it is worth examining the specific behaviours we are pointing to and asking ourselves whether we use the same criterion to look at our own surroundings.
Does sexism disappear because the person who practises it was born here? Does violence become less serious when it is committed by someone from our community? Does intolerance stop being intolerance when it is directed against a religion that seems foreign to us? Does lack of respect become legitimate cultural defence when we are the ones practising it?
This is not about equating different situations or denying that there are important differences between cultural contexts. It is about not using criticism of other cultures as a way of no longer examining our own.
Every society has things it can be proud of and others it needs to improve. No community is made up only of exemplary people, and none is condemned to always repeat its worst behaviour.
When we recognise this complexity, we can criticise a practice without despising an entire population. We can also learn from different people without idealising them or turning them into perfect models.
True openness does not mean believing that everything is equally valid. It means being honest enough to apply our principles consistently, even when that forces us to question the ideas we grew up with.
9. What happens when a person lives permanently under suspicion?
The way a society looks at a group can influence the opportunities and relationships its members find. If a person feels that their origin causes mistrust at work, when renting a home or in everyday interactions, they may experience frustration, isolation or a persistent feeling of not belonging.
This does not mean that every difficulty with integration comes from discrimination, or that the person affected has no responsibility for their decisions. Integration depends on many factors: language, training, employment, housing, social ties, expectations, previous experiences and willingness to take part in society, among others.
But social acceptance also matters. If a person follows the rules, works, learns the language and tries to build relationships, but is still treated as a suspect because of their appearance or religion, they may come to feel that their efforts are never enough.
This raises a contradiction: we expect immigrants to feel part of society, but sometimes we keep reminding them that we see them as outsiders.
Research on contact between groups offers a useful perspective here. A meta-analytic review by Pettigrew and Tropp, published in 2006 and based on 713 independent samples from 515 studies, found that contact between members of different groups is generally associated with a reduction in prejudice. Another analysis by these researchers, published in 2008, examined possible mechanisms and found an important role for reduced anxiety in contact, the development of empathy and the ability to take the other person’s perspective.
These results do not mean that any contact automatically produces trust. Negative experiences, unequal relationships and badly managed conflicts can increase distances. But they do support an important idea: real relationships can help us correct simplified images that persist when we only know others through labels or other people’s stories.
References:
- Pettigrew, T. F. and Tropp, L. R., A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory (2006). See the study.
- Pettigrew, T. F. and Tropp, L. R., How Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? (2008). See the publication.
Living together needs opportunities to meet, but also the right conditions: safety, respect, equal treatment and spaces where people can relate to each other without feeling obliged to represent their whole group. Sharing a street or a building is not enough. There must be a chance to build trust through concrete experiences.
10. What can we do to improve living together without denying the problems?
If we accept that living together is built between people, families, neighbours and communities, the solutions must also start in those everyday spaces. Not everything depends on big speeches or institutional debates. There are changes that can happen in the way we communicate, set limits and relate to those who live around us.
First, separate facts from generalisations. When a crime or a conflict happens, it is worth talking about what happened, who was responsible and the circumstances that can be proven. If there is a pattern worth studying, it should be analysed with comparable data. An anecdote may be important, but it is not enough to describe an entire population.
Second, defend the rules of living together consistently. Violence, harassment, threats, coercion and the violation of other people’s rights must be dealt with seriously, whoever commits them. This is not about softening problems for fear of seeming intolerant, but about preventing outrage from turning into collective discrimination.
Third, encourage getting to know each other without imposing friendship. No one is obliged to have a close relationship with everyone. But a community can create everyday spaces for meeting: neighbourhood associations, sports activities, cultural projects, local initiatives and collaborations where people get to know each other for what they do, not only for what they appear to be.
Fourth, give importance to language, participation and autonomy. Learning the local language, knowing the rules of living together, accessing training and employment and taking part in community life can make integration easier. These opportunities must go hand in hand with personal responsibility and realistic expectations. Integration does not happen automatically, but it does not improve either when doors are closed to those who try to take part.
Fifth, teach critical thinking. Both adults and young people need to learn to distinguish between verified information, rumours, images taken out of context and messages designed to provoke fear or outrage. Intercultural education should not be limited to asking for tolerance: it should also make it possible to discuss differences, identify prejudices and understand shared rights and responsibilities.
Sixth, listen to those who live the conflicts without turning one experience into a collective verdict. Neighbours who suffer problems of coexistence must be able to express them without being dismissed in advance. And immigrants who experience discrimination must be able to explain it without their testimony being automatically rejected. Listening to one side does not require silencing the other.
Seventh, assess the results instead of settling for good intentions. If an initiative to improve living together does not work, we need to review why. If there are recurring conflicts, it is worth identifying their causes and acting on them. Living together does not improve by repeating words such as respect, diversity or integration, but when people can live safely, take part on reasonable terms and resolve their differences without resorting to hostility.
The aim is not for everyone to think the same or for cultural differences to disappear. It is to build a way of living together in which those differences can exist without automatically becoming reasons for suspicion, and in which the necessary limits are applied clearly and fairly.
11. The question we should really be asking ourselves
When we talk about immigration, we usually focus all our attention on the people who arrive: whether they will adapt, whether they will respect our customs, whether they will work, whether they will learn the language or whether they will share our values. These are legitimate questions. But the reflection is incomplete if we never examine the other half of the relationship: how we receive, how we interpret and how we treat those who arrive.
Are we willing to get to know people before judging them? Can we accept that someone keeps a different religion without seeing that difference as a threat? Are we able to point out unacceptable behaviour without attributing it to a whole nationality? Do we apply the same standards of responsibility to the people we feel close to and to those who seem strange to us?
We must also ask ourselves whether we confuse integration with the obligation to be like us. A person can respect the rules of living together and, at the same time, keep their family language, their celebrations, their recipes, their religious ties or their own way of understanding life. Diversity does not remove the need for shared agreements, but those agreements do not require us all to have the same identity.
In the same way, anyone arriving in a new society must understand that living together involves responsibilities. Respect must be mutual. Others cannot be asked to accept behaviour that violates their rights, nor can cultural origin be used as an excuse to avoid common rules.
The key is to hold both ideas at the same time: not all behaviour is acceptable, but no one should be condemned in advance for belonging to a group.
This requires individual and collective maturity. It requires tolerating a certain discomfort with the unknown without immediately turning it into rejection. It requires admitting that we may feel fear and, even so, examining whether that fear is justified. It requires recognising real problems without allowing them to become easy explanations about millions of people.
And it requires remembering that trust is not born from a label. It is built through actions, consistency and the way we treat each other over time.
Conclusion: living together begins when we stop confusing difference with danger
Immigration raises real challenges. There are cultural differences that require dialogue, integration difficulties that must be addressed, rules that must be respected and behaviours that must be challenged. Denying these issues helps no one. But neither does turning people into symbols of all the fears a society accumulates.
A person does not stop being responsible for their actions because they are an immigrant, but neither do they become responsible for the actions of others because they share a nationality, a religion or an appearance.
Perhaps the deepest problem is not that we feel affinity for some cultures and mistrust others. Affinity cannot be ordered. The real challenge is to prevent that spontaneous inclination from becoming a final judgement on the worth, dignity or dangerousness of others.
We can feel closer to those who share our language. We can have doubts about customs we do not know. We can firmly defend equality, safety, freedom and respect. What we do not need to do is turn those preferences, doubts and principles into an automatic condemnation of those who live differently.
From a psychological perspective, living together requires learning to distinguish between what happens outside and what our mind interprets; from a transpersonal perspective, it invites us not to confuse our identity with a universal measure of humanity. And from a social perspective, it reminds us that problems are better solved when they are analysed rigorously, responsibility is assigned fairly and conditions are created for people to really get to know each other.
It is not about opening the doors without criteria or closing them out of fear. It is about looking at reality honestly, keeping clear limits and not letting prejudice replace knowledge.
In the end, the question should not only be what kind of immigrant we are willing to accept. We should also ask ourselves what kind of society we want to build and what criteria we are using to decide who deserves our trust.
Because healthy coexistence does not mean thinking that everyone is good, but understanding that no one should be considered guilty before they have done anything.
And perhaps real progress will not come on the day our differences disappear, but on the day we are able to live with them without giving up either our principles or our humanity.