The reason why. An investigation on social representations of the ”other-stranger” as support for prejudice and unequality in a “nearly-multiethnic” Europe

Abstract

This article represents a first result of research carried out on the main problems relative to the relationship with the ‘Otherforeigner’, a relationship which today, in a Europe that would like to be increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, can develop or wipe out the possibility (for Europe itself) of succeeding in actually being such. This is a subject that clearly cannot be thoroughly dealt with in just a few pages, and the aim therefore is at least to define a number of leading issues, starting with the assumption that every social action (and therefore also prejudice and inequality) is often founded on the way in which we know the Other, reproducing it by means of pre-established images.