To Understand the Resentment Some Feel Towards Refugees ?

[wantaholiday]

I've name changed for this because I'm a regular poster and don't really want it known I've taken in a Ukrainian family.

We are a family with teenager school children and a Ukrainian mum and her six year old child are living in our house with us as in our spare bedroom as part of our family. We are very, very lucky because the family are lovely and a joy to have. It was a big gamble taking them as we didn't know them and just because you're escaping a war doesn't make you a nice, easy to live with person. Likewise for them, offering space doesn't mean we'll be easy.

They have been given a lot of help (this is great) such as, our oversubscribed and full village primary school made extra space to take child in. People in the village have been very welcoming, they've received loads of donated toys and clothes (that they needed). They've also gone out of their way to invite mum and kid to things and offer lifts (also needed) to the mum. Even the dentist, you can't get an NHS dentist for 50 miles in any direction from where I live, this was even on the news a while ago, my dentist has made an exception for them and taken them on as NHS patients.

All this is great, and I'm very happy about all of it and shows what a great place the world is. My issue is how we treat our own poor. So many people in the UK live in real long term grinding poverty with no end or hope in sight, they and their kids get none of this special treatment and are even blamed for their own circumstances. I can understand if they might feel resentful towards my guests. For what it's worth I think they're completely blaming the wrong people, it's not the fault of refugees that poor people in the UK live in such dire conditions, it's the fault of government. Absolutely no sympathy understanding or excuses given to people living comfortably lives who also resent refugees though.

I've turned off voting because I don't want any vote to be read as if we are right to be resentful of refugees .

I do think racism and xenophobia plays a big part in why Ukrainians have been viewed differently by the public compared to, say, Syrians, but I do think the fact that they're largely women and children is a bigger factor. They're what people 'expect' the vulnerable to look like, and who they're most willing to help - I remember that when charities were collecting donations for the Calais camps they kept having to ask people to stop giving baby clothes, women's clothes and children's toys because the camp was mostly young men, who people just aren't willing to help in the same way. People are also a lot less frightened of having strange women in their homes than strange men, which is understandable even if awful for men needing help.

The reason we don't help the poor who live here is because poverty is generally believed by a lot of people ( underneath the veneer of civilised sentiment) to be mostly the fault of the poor themselves. They just have to work harder. After all they were born in a free democratic country with equality of opportunity, they just have been too lazy to take advantage of it 🙄

The difficulty with this is that in a tiny minority of cases there may be some limited truth in that view which means there is alway some example to draw on ' my neighbour hasn't worked a day in her ife and fraudulently claims benefits ' type references. This one anecdote is often enough to convince that this is true of the majority of the poor instead of the vast minority. Humans vastly prefer stories to numbers or data and are instinctively more convinced by them

There is no reasonable argument or vivid ' anecdote' to illustrate that a person deserves to be driven from their home by war. This is enough for most people to draw a distinction. The ' deserving poor' is a very old concept

The question about the difference in how we treat types of refugees is about distance and is we feel we can truly picture ourselves in the same position and that is always easier to do if the person is more like us. So yes racism plays a big part , if your definition of racism is having less empathy for someone and instinctively treating them less well because we see them as ' other' and not ' like us'. - which is pretty much what racism is

Instinct and our love of stories have helped us survive as a species and make us human. Like any traits however they have a dark side

This.

Up until the Rwanda disgrace, people arriving as asylum seekers did get housed and given some funds, emergency healthcare and legal aid. Not much admittedly. It is the failed asylum seekers that are destitute because government support is withdrawn if they don’t win their case. They are then totally reliant on charity, or their friends, sometimes for many years until (in most cases) eventually they make a successful fresh claim and are given refugee status and can work and are entitled to housing etc.
I have housed / fed / clothed etc many of these young men and in a few cases there were problems but generally it went well. I wasn’t paid anything.
People from Ukraine, women and children, are definitely more vulnerable and we see them fleeing their bombed homes on the news. Of course people want to help them.
They are not in the same situation as failed asylum seekers but if you choose to call everyone’s response racist then fine, keep your blinkers on.

@neverbeenskiing I agree too, I wanted to like it but I realised you can't on here. So true. I don't really understand much of what's going on in the Middle East either, that's not an excuse or even a coherent reason for people to be so hostile.

I think the resentment comes from people who have voted and consistently supported policies that have led to the very issues that matter to them most. So supported less social housing being built, sale of council houses, happy to have the cheapest food, for example.

It’s not that surprising - mainly females and families arriving through legitimate means for (Putin notwithstanding) a temporary respite.

I volunteer in a food bank and at a hospice. My husband is originally from a country that is commonly a basis for asylum claims. He translates and volunteers in our nearest city. He says that sadly he has seen many cases that are not genuine. Not all, by any stretch, but enough to make him feel a bit jaundiced.

@bumblingbovine49 that is very perceptive. I am bemused why governments don't prioritise their own citizens, I must say though. I would have thought that's the point of them, to have a primary duty to their own people.

Literally the only thing of note the Tories have achieved in 12 years of government is Brexit. Which is arguably the greatest act of self harm a modern Western nation has ever inflicted upon itself. Meanwhile wages stagnate, public services rot, people can no longer afford homes. Who keeps voting for these clowns?

I understand op. It's amazing how so many well off (both in terms of money and mental contribution) people were chomping at the bit to "adopt" a Ukrainian.

Yet, these people would never consider doing the same for a native Brit, whose life they could really change by supporting them at school etc.

poor people in the UK live in such dire conditions

Do most poor people live in dire conditions? Poverty is relative. Most poor people in the Uk would be seen as doing pretty well by poor people in many other countries.

I don't disagree with your premise, but your definitions are wooly

I think an important part of this is also that it was widely expected that the Ukrainian refugees would be here temporarily. That's not as clearly the case if you take on a middle Eastern refugee, and it's certainly not if you take on a struggling British family. It's one thing to open your home for a temporary crisis (though I'm not sure people really even thought that through enough), doing it for people whose need is due to entrenched, long-term patterns is a commitment very few could make.

It's unfair to blame asylum seekers and refugees for our governments repeated inability to tackle social inequality, the housing crisis or poverty.

Agreed!

Absolutely. It is in my view the government's job is to do this. To actually mitigate the worst of human tendancies. Unfortunately what happens is that they play down to them instead, well worst governments do anyway