TOLERANCE AND XENOPHOBIA IN INTERETHNIC RELATIONS OF KYIV STUDENTS

Abstract

The article analyses the data of several sociological surveys of Ukrainian students in Kyiv in 2005, 2009 and 2018 (with the main focus on the analysis of the data of the last survey), which were conducted by the staff of the department for migration studies (Institute for Demography and Social Studies, Kyiv). The key goals of the paper are to identify the features of interethnic relations at institutions of higher education in Kyiv; to determine the attitude of Ukrainian students in Kyiv to foreigners; to assess the character of changes in the attitude of Ukrainian students in Kyiv to foreigners for the last decade. Novelty of research: in the article, the intolerance index was calculated by the author’s method and performed a comparative analysis of the results of several waves of Kyiv student surveys. Comparison of the results of the survey in 2018 with previous polls indicated an improvement in the attitude of students at institutions of higher education of the capital towards foreigners - reducing conflict, increasing the level and frequency of communication between foreigners and students, increasing friendship in interethnic relations and so on. Also, after the intolerance index and xenophobia index were calculated, it was found out the main factors influencing the attitude of Ukrainian students to foreigners, such as the respondent’s gender, the experience and frequency of respondents’ communication with foreigners, the respondent’s place of residence before admission to the institution of higher education. As a result of building a complex profile of the attitude of Kyiv students to foreigners, it was identified 5 clusters of nations by the character of the perception of different ethnic groups. It has been established that despite the general improvement in the attitude of Ukrainian students in Kyiv to foreigners for the past decade, negative xenostereotypes have formed in the student environment that border on racism and religious intolerance, which is alarming and requires immediate opposition through educational work. It has been found out that the possibility of integrating foreigners into Ukrainian society is influenced by the socio-economic and geopolitical situation in Ukraine, the immigration crisis in Europe, domestic and foreign media content.

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