An Empirical Study on Xenophobia in Almeria (Spain)

This article examines the existence of xenophobia in ten census tracts, each with the greatest and lowest density of immigration in the city of Almeria. The study shows that immigration density encourages xenophobic attitudes and behaviours within the population, as well as segmentation according to the immigrant's place of origin. This paper presents a descriptive and explanatory analysis of xenophobia. The descriptive analysis profiles the most and least xenophobic areas in Almeria. The explanatory analysis uses five models of Pearson's correlations for socio-demographic variables and attitudes toward immigration (independent variables) and the xenophobia index (dependent variable) to test which variables best explain the level of xenophobia in Almeria. It was found that the cognitive level or beliefs about specific aspects of immigration have a high degree of explanatory power in addressing variation in the degree of xenophobia.