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Oxford University Press, Journal of Refugee Studies, Special_Issue_1(32), p. i238-i252, 2019

DOI: 10.1093/jrs/fez043

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Does Individual Health Have Implications for Individuals’ Attitudes towards Minority Groups? A Case Study from the Greek Population

Journal article published in 2019 by Jonathan Hall, Carolin Rapp ORCID, Terje Andreas Eikemo
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

AbstractImmunological defence against pathogens and behavioural responses to members of other ethnic or racial groups may be understood as co-evolved solutions to a commonly recurring adaptive problem in our ancestral environment: the need to avoid infectious disease. In recent years, research on the concept of the behavioural immune system has highlighted behavioural defence, showing in particular that individual-level disgust sensitively is associated with greater prejudice towards members of other—particularly stigmatized—social groups. Stigma thus represents in part a human disease-avoidance strategy. This mechanism is thereby assumed to be particularly strong for individuals who report poor mental and/or physical health. In this article, we draw upon MIGHEAL data to examine how health vulnerabilities impact prejudice towards new immigrants in Greece—a key refugee- and migrant-receiving society. The findings have direct implications for the political consequences of health interventions: policies that result in enhanced immune-system functioning and resilience to health shocks may reduce prejudice towards new migrants, enhancing a society’s capacity to receive and integrate refugees and other migrants. Health policy may thus provide an avenue by which societies improve their responses to large-scale migration flows—a policy area that arguably represents the greatest moral crisis of our time.