Atteggiamenti dei giovani verso gli stranieri nella Germania riunificata. Alcuni dati survey e una rassegna delle ipotesi esplicative e interpretative della xenofobia

Through a secondary analysis of survey data, some dimensions of xenophobic attitudes of young German people are described; a typology is used to compare young people of east and West Germany. It emerges from the analysis that hostility against foreigners is not an exclusive of right-wing extremists in both sides of the Country. After having examined the widespread interpretative frames of xenophobic attitudes in the current sociological debate in Germany, some explicative paths of these attitudes are tested with the Structural Equation Models. Apart from their general contribution to a comprehension of social conditions favouring xenophobic attitudes, these frames don’t seem adequate to explain the different levels of xenophobia characterising East- and West- German youth. The higher level of hostility against foreigners in East Germany is probably contingent, bounded to the widespread climate of uncertainty among the population in the first years after the reunification. Nevertheless, some symptoms of a nationalistic revival are present, especially in East Germany, where it seems to be a response to the speedy dissolution of old social identities.