Xenophobia
For some time in Canada in the early twentieth century, a Chinese Head Tax existed, which was a discriminatory policy which forced Chinese immigrants to pay a fee in order to enter the country, which other immigrants did not have to do. Japanese were displayed as a vile and dangerous people in government propaganda.
Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian property was confiscated and not returned by U.S. and American authorities.
The aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks by the militant Islamic fundamentalist organization Al Qaeda have led to increased suspicion and xenophobia towards people of Middle Eastern descent or Islamic religious backgrounds.
The result has been a number of arrests of wrongly accused people of Islamic descent on charges of terrorism.
Europe
Xenophobia has been exhibited across the whole Europe by its various cultures and nationalities, both against non-Europeans and other Europeans.
Northern and Northwestern Europe
In Northern and Northwestern Europe, a variety of xenophobic trends have occurred throughout its history. Over six million Jews, most of whom were from countries outside of Germany, were deliberately murdered in a pre-meditated attempt to destroy the Jewish race.
During the Nazi invasion of Russia, over twenty million Russian Slavs also died, representing a pitiless attitude to those that the Nazi doctrine deemed as only worthy of existing as German slaves.
During the past fifty years, most Northern European countries have experienced both European and non European immigration to an extent that in France today, only about half of the population is descended from its 19th century sires, with the trend existing to a lesser effect in other countries like Britain and Germany, causing some displacement to the indigenous inhabitants. This has resulted in a resurgence of xenophobic nationalism at the political level in countries like Germany and France towards minorities which both countrys' governments have set out to oppose.
In Germany, xenophobia and neo-nazism has risen in response to increased immigration to Germany by among others, Turkish immigrants. In France, a history of xenophobia towards France's Muslim population, almost all of whom are either first or second generation immigrants, has existed for sometime, with political parties like the National Front campaigning on xenophobic views towards Muslim people in France.
Southeastern Europe (Balkans)
Southeastern Europe has been subject to degrees of xenophobia for many years and heighted xenophobia during the 20th century to present.
Religious and ethnic divisions have caused antagonistic relations between the peoples of Southeastern Europe. The creation of Yugoslavia in 1918 led to escalating ethnic and religious rivalries and violence which fully exploded in World War II, when the Axis Powers backed xenophobic nationalist forces in Croatia to form an independent Croatian state which proceeded to persecute and kill hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Jews.
These extreme nationalist forces were contained under the authoritarian rule of Communist dictator Joseph Broz Tito who repressed ethnic nationalism in Yugoslavia until his death in 1980. As the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s, xenophobic views between ethnicities who were rivals over territory began to develop.
Atrocities, ethnic cleansing and genocide occurred during the Yugoslav wars between these ethnic groups, with the most atrocities being committed by military and paramilitary forces of the largest and most well-armed ethnic faction, the Serbs. Serb nationalists committed atrocities as acts of revenge for long-standing historical rivalries and disputes against Croats, Bosniaks, and Albanians who they claimed were occupying Serb lands and had to be ethnically cleansed. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia, ethnic Albanians, Bosniaks, and Croats typically have a negative and sometimes hostile outlook on Serbs, whose armed forces fought wars to keep Serbs united with Serbia and committed atrocities against all these groups.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the number of serious and large scale atrocities there caused the United Nations to intervene and push for the internal partition of Bosnia & Herzegovina into a Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) and a Bosniak-Croat federation (Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina). Irish people were historically looked down upon in British society with stereotypes of Irish being alcoholics, violent, and irresponsible people. Ireland's struggle for independence in the early 20th century and the resulting partition of the island has led to divisions between nationalists who are predominantly Catholic and unionists who are predominantly Protestant, this divide led to xenophobia between the two faiths.
Japan
From 1641 to 1853, Japan had a policy of exclusion of virtually all foreigners (not merely an avoidance of foreign relations or isolationism), known as 'national closure', or sakoku.
In the early 19th century, Mito scholars advocated jōi, the forceful expulsion of 'barbarians', though almost none existed there. By the middle of the 19th century, with outside pressure mounting, some Japanese scholars and leaders tied 'Western Learning' and 'Nativist Studies' (kokugaku) to a goal of nation building. Nihonjinron, a widely popular type of nonfiction literature emerging in the second half of the 20th century, has been described as xenophobic, though most of the works in the genre lack this element.
Dominican Republic
In Dominican Republic, according to Amnesty International, the United Nations, and The Human Rights Watch, physical attacks against Haitians have increased since 1992 and reports of the lynching of Haitians surfaced as late as 2006.
According to another New York Times report in 2004, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Haitians are denied birth certificates, medical care, education and social services because of their race and decendancy. In 2007 the United Nations found "profound and entrenched" racism at all levels of Dominican society, including within families. Middle East
The Middle East is subject to multiple disputes along religious and ethnic lines which have involved xenophobia, especially in Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian National Authority, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Iraq.
In Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, continuous violence between Jews and Arabs over disputed territory has created xenophobic sentiment amongst the two sides as well as in many Muslim countries towards Israel. On the island of Cyprus, the land is divided between Greeks and Turks who both have claims on the island.
Civil violence has occurred in Cyprus between Greeks and Turks. In Lebanon, xenophobia has increased towards Palestinian Arab refugees who a number of Lebanese see as causing instability in their country. Religious sectarian violence exists, as Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have engaged in violent attacks on each other, while in the north, ethnic tensions are high between the Kurds and Arabs in northern Iraq and Turks in neighbouring Turkey.
Under apartheid, black South Africans were automatically second-class citizens, who could not vote, could not participate in the political affairs of the country, and were not allowed to access facilities and public places that were designated for white South African use only. The apartheid government of South Africa was belligerent to neighbouring African countries, occupying Namibia whose people demanded independence, supporting white-minority rule in the former Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) and waging war in Angola.
Apartheid rule came to an end in the 1990s and South Africa's new constitution committed the country to creating a multicultural South Africa in which blacks and whites could live in equality, but tensions between the races remain.
A new phenomenon in South Africa has been increasing xenophobia towards foreigners by South Africa's black majority. A series of attacks against foreigners in South African townships in May 2008. The attacks originated in the township of Alexandra, an impoverished suburb of Johannesburg.
UN Human Rights are fearful of the alleged xenophobia that some say exists in Switzerland, and condemned laws that target the country's immigrants as unjust and racist. The Swiss People's Party which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country's coalition government, drew worldwide condemnation with an advertising campaign depicting three white sheep kicking a black sheep off a Swiss flag.
The United Nations special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, has observed that Switzerland suffers from racism, discrimination and xenophobia. Diène pointed out that representatives of minority communities said they experienced serious racism and discrimination. More than half of the Swiss population are xenophobic and two thirds want foreigners to be better integrated, according to a survey published in June 2006 which measures the development of xenophobic and rightwing extremist attitudes.
This first type of data, which was not uncontroversial, tends to support observations made by anti-racist institutions, as well as outside observers.
Sociobiological explanation
The effects of xenophobia (dislike against the genetically dissimilar out-group and nepotistic favoritism towards the genetically similar in-group) are analyzed by many sociobiological researchers. Some see it as an innate biological response on the part of the evolved human organism in inter-group competition.
In Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, author James Waller argues that all human beings "have an innate, evolution-produced tendency to seek proximity to familiar faces because what is unfamiliar is probably dangerous and should be avoided. This universal human tendency is the foundation for the behavioral expressions of ethnocentrism and xenophobia" (Oxford University Press, USA, 2002, p.