The second hypothesis is quite more plausible and should be considered in more detail. According to this, in situations of crisis receiving immigration, the changes that are taking place in the social structure are totally opposed to what is pointed out in the previous hypothesis. In this case, native groups see how as a result of the crisis, their material conditions of life worsen. This fact does not imply an upward mobility by these native classes, but the opposite situation: a downward mobility. From a symbolic point of view this is an important wound: his pride of class suffers, because its symbolic capital decreases: they value themselves less and are less socially valued as a social class which has seen its material conditions of life worsen. The fact of receiving immigrants (in this case, they also migrate because although they occupy the lowest positions in the host society, their material conditions of life improved in relation to the society of origin) still worsens the situation: in the eyes of the natives, the immigrants do not fall into poverty because they are already in poverty. From that moment on, the immigrants will be the scapegoat against which will reveal these social classes who see how their material conditions of life and their symbolic capital decreases subjectively and comparatively more than those of immigrants, because it is not the same for someone who sees itself as “middle class” became poor than became poorer for someone who already sees itself as poor: the shame and the indignation of the former becomes the resignation of the latter. Thus, immigrants are seen as “competitors” of the “new poor” who believe that these (when, in fact, the crisis is the cause of all this, since crisis affects subjectively, never objectively or materially, more the natives than the immigrants: the wound inflicted on moral to those going from “have it all” to “have nothing” or are badly off is a great wound, mainly because the wounds inflicted on those who have never suffered any wound are very deep, because overprotection does not help diminish the importance of the wound inflicted, since the first cut is the deepest) are stealing their opportunities, their benefits and their jobs.

(An excerpt from the document The establishment of the district of Santa Maria de Palafolls (in Catalan).)

El artículo Racism and crisis se publicó primero en Xavier Gimeno Torrent.