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Notes -
I don’t care about immigrants one way or another at an emotional level and don’t have a strong opinion at a rational level. But everyone, always, everywhere, hates competition in the absence of strong countervailing factors. Some degree of hostility is virtually inevitable. Ways that tensions can be reduced, with historical examples: -receiving population is self-consciously hurting for warm bodies (steppe nomad confederations tending to accept any and all willing dwellers in felt tents, the widespread North American Indian practice of ‘adopting’ war captives as full tribe members, competing ethnonationalists courting ethnically ambiguous populations (I’m most familiar with Silesians, Masurians, and Kashubians. I’ve heard similar things about bilingual Ferghana valley dwellers (Turkic vs. Dari), Macedonian Slavs, “Catholic Serbs,” etc.) -immigrants are hard to tell apart from natives (similar physical appearance, language, etc.) -immigrants are already aligned with Ingroup and conspicuously oppressed by Outgroup (Huguenots in England/Germany, Irish in Spain and France, oligarchic/democratic exiles from competing Poleis in Archaic-Classical Greece) -immigrants are part of Outgroup but we need them to run certain machinery in the meantime (only works if they eventually assimilate) -immigrants have the same religion or readily convert -immigrants aren’t forbidden from eating with, marrying, or interacting socially with the host population (Gypsies and Jews are especially well-known offenders, but a fairly common problem - present to a certain extent with Catholics/Protestants apart from the food. Parsis would be similar if there were more than five of them left. Less of a whole problem if the whole society is like this already (India)). -immigrants are only competing with people with no voice or power (Germans/Christian sectarians/Jews in Medieval Eastern Europe, Indians in English Burma/Africa, etc.) Situation tends to rapidly degenerate during anarchy (Chmielnicki rebellion), when the central authority changes (Russian annexation of the pale of settlement), or when (which God forbid) the popular vote is introduced.
I’m sure there are others
Edit: It’s helpful to have a third, low-status group that’s already in place and against which new groups can identify themselves. This was probably helpful in integrating miscellaneous European types as Whites in the Americas.
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