Ep.14 (S4): Mathew Creighton speaks about The Resilience Of Xenophobia

The Migration Podcast

***We apologise for the bad audio in this episode*** A special announcement: the deadline for submitting a paper proposal for IMISCOE’s 2025 Spring conference is coming up, on September 16. The theme of the conference is “The Regularity of Irregularity: Rethinking Migration Paradigms” and it will be hosted by the University for Continuing Education Krems, in Austria on the 17th to 19th of March, next year. In this episode, you’ll hear Asya Pisarevskaya’s conversation with Mathew Creighton about his recent book “Hidden Hate: The Resilience of Xenophobia.” They start by discussing: Are we all liars? Mathew talks about how our opinions and behaviours, for example when it comes to race and ethnicity, can vary greatly whether they are being expressed in public or not. In other words, people may have an opinion or belief, but they may show another one, through “masking”. The research behind the book helps us understand anti-immigrant attitudes in countries including in Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and the US, and how we can go beyond a “majority vs the minority” perspective to better understand and fight the persistent marginalization of minority groups. I also learned from the research that higher education levels mean people are more convinced of their own opinions! Who would’ve thought…. Mathew Creighton is associate professor in the School of Sociology at University College Dublin. He is also the national coordinator of the European Social Survey in Ireland and the principal investigator of a Horizon Europe project, EqualStrength, which assesses prejudice in work, childcare, and housing throughout Europe.