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Definition/short description
Discrimination refers to the action or even consideration of, or making a distinction against or in favor of a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit. In addition, it is the process of dealing with people differently through prejudice (this refers to unequal treatment of one person or group, usually because of prejudice about race, ethnicity, age, religion, or gender).[1]
In depth
To understand the discrimination it is important to be considered the difference between prejudice and stereotype.
Whereas the stereotyping is a way of general assumption of a group of people (the term of stereotyping is introduced by the American journalist Walter Lippmann to refer to practice of categorize and make simpler the perception of a given group of people), the prejudice emphasizes on the pessimistic attitude towards the others (people that do not belong to the group), usually this attitude is based and caused by faulty and inflexible information or stereotypes about the people that come from other groups. In addition, quiet often prejudices and demonstrations of discrimination are driven not by direct lack of any sympathy headed for different culture but simply because of a strong preference for and loyalty to, one’s own culture (thus, the process of formation of the individual’s cultural identity sometimes could reach a state of hostility or even hate and followed by discrimination not in favor of the people that are not part of same culture).[2]
While the prejudice is the only individual’s attitudes and mental representation, the discrimination itself is the behavioral demonstration of that prejudice or it is very appropriate to say that the discrimination could be also described like a prejudice “in action”. The process of discrimination itself could appear in varieties of types, for instance it could take form of the extremes of isolation and apartheid to prejudice in the capability of employment, education, personal and legal protection, housing or unfair attitude toward certain persons simply because he or she is a part of a different culture and he /she is not an associate in a particular group. But the term of discrimination also has its several distinctions (which include all kinds of discrimination such as Age Discrimination, Disability Discrimination, Equal Pay and Compensation Discrimination, National Origin Discrimination, Pregnancy Discrimination, Race-Based Discrimination, Religious Discrimination, Retaliation, Sex-Based Discrimination, Sexual Harassment and so on)[3]:
- Direct discrimination – The term is quite often straightforward in most situations. It occurs while somebody is dealt with factors not linked to merit, capability or potential toward an individual or a group of people as an unambiguous motive for discriminating against them. Or it could be referred to this as regarding someone with more hostility than someone else in same conditions. For example, a female job applicant with the best qualifications and experience does not get an interview, but a male job applicant with less qualifications and experience does. Or if she is already in a job, she is overlooked for promotion, whilst her less qualified and experienced male colleague is promoted ahead of her. Another example is a woman wanting to rent a house. When she arrives to inspect a house she is told it’s already been taken. She arranges for a friend to inquire about the house. He rings, is told it’s still available, looks at the house and is offered a lease. This is the third time she has tried to rent a house through this agency. In spite of the fact she has a good tenancy record, each time she phones, she is told a house is available, and each time she meets one of the agents, she is told it’s been rented already.
- Indirect discrimination - This aspect of discrimination is visible when an obligation or conditions are applied equally to all, which meanwhile have an unbalanced and damaging influence on a sex or racial class for instance. This by the way makes this sort of discrimination less obvious for the reason that sometimes a policy, rule, law or practice seems fair simply because of the fact that it is relevant to everyone equally, but a more detailed observation would present that some people more or less are being treated not so equally. For example, a public building, while fitted with lifts, has a set of six steps at the front entrance. Entry for those needing to use the lift is through the back entrance near the industrial bins (where those using a wheelchair can’t get into the building from the front entrance) or all information about workplace health and safety in a factory, is printed in English(which means those whose first language isn’t English may be at risk). But in some circumstances an that is in fact needed for the performed job and an employer could disagree that may be a act of discrimination, which is known as a “genuine occupation requirement” (GOR).
- Harassment – Generally this distinctive type of discrimination could be illustrated as wrong and out of any norms action, behavior, comment or even physical contact that is unpleasant or offensive to the person to whom this attitude is headed for. It might consists of a sexual or racial reason or it might be aimed to individual or many individuals based on their age, sexuality, disability or some other quality or trait that differentiates them. For example, the classical case of a student who is walking back to his room after a night of studying at the library. He notices a group of guys following him who eventually form a circle around him. The group of other boys starts to push the student around and call him names such as “gay” and “queer.” The boy tries to walk away but the guys shove him to the ground and repeatedly kick and punch him (this is one of the extreme cases of harassment). Or when a male employee loudly abuses or offenses his female colleague by highlighting on her outlook in front of the other present members of staff (this is perhaps one of the most frequent cases of harassment, especially on the working place).
The relevance of Discrimination for Migration and/or Migration Policy
Migration could refer to a process of changing the living in a given region by humans to another (mostly over long distance). Today it could be differentiated two types of migration (among the people): deliberate (when people just changer their environment to another because of financial, health, social or other perspective) and unintended (by which it might be referred to slave trade (in the past), human trafficking (a contemporary social problem) or national cleansing (an act of ethnically based violence- issue of past and the world today).[4]
And from the facts surrounding those characteristics (mentioned above) it is very easy to emerge a sort of discrimination and escalate between the people who are migrants and the people that are the actual inhabitants of the area, for instance, and mostly discrimination towards the migrants, and it is very critical to be setup an appropriate strategy (policy) concerning the migration process within the state. Thus many (democratic) countries today have been influenced to create institutions, laws and different policies that carry out the problem of discrimination in a community with various nationalities, religions and so on. In addition, because of the modern process of globalization and spreading the democracy, nowadays there have been appeared very influential NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that put the protection of the human rights on their list as a top priority. In conclusion, the concept of discrimination has a grate impact on migration and policies concerned with migration processes.
| Example: The case of Attorney General Palmer[5]
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| Alexander Mitchell Palmer (or also nicknamed as The Fighting Quaker) has been a supporter of the Democratic Party in the United States during the period of 1909 to 1915 and worked as a member of the House of Representatives. In 1919 he is appointed as attorney general.
The story begins with the revolution that had taken place in Russia during that time. Such as developments had provoked worries in A.M. Palmer’s mind and he had became convinced that Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government the same time, and this theory toughened by the discovery of almost 40 bombs planted to kill main politicians and the unsuccessful attempt of an Italian to kill attorney general Palmer who blew himself up outside the Palmer’s home. In response to this he decided to use the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) to kick-off operation to capture radicals or others such as backers of the communist organizations. He launched this operation by the help of the fear of the Americans from immigrants at that time. The start of the operation begun with a denouncing of the labour unions and the Socialist party and the Communist party in America meanwhile were claimed as breached by radicals who are looking only to destroy the American political, economic, and social stability. The campaign after aimed to hit the immigrants in the country and mostly those from Russian origin. As a result thousands of people were deported or even more were arrested with little or no evidence at all and all civil liberties and rules were violated for the reason that the arrests were without any reasons, denied counsel as well, and not to forget the unfair trails and prosecutions they were given with. But after the searching for the inexistent the whole campaign (or better known as the Palmer Raids) went down as well as the Palmer’s theories and he had been accused after of disrespecting people's basic civil liberties. Even those raids had prevented, the discrimination patterns towards immigrants still remained.
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| Example: The case of the Rise of Nazis
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| Ever since 1933 in Germany the Nazi party stepped on the ruling position leaded by Adolf Hitler who firstly named as the German Chancellor then he became the Dictator of Germany. Central to Hitler's view was his philosophy of race supremacy. He believed in the racial superiority of the Germanic peoples (or so called the Aryan race) and in the lowliness of other races, especially Jews but also Slavs and blacks. In addition, Hitler was a major opponent and hostile toward the ideas of Marx, who emphasized the unity of the international working class rather than racial one. And from such as philosophy from a leader of the country the unwelcome inhabitants (mostly Jews in this case) were hunted, killed and forced to migrate by the threat of dead. The outcome of actions like this was millions of people dead and hundreds of thousands forced to migrate. The reasons for this holocaust lay on the basis of racial discrimination headed mainly for Jews at that time.
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Sources, further reading, links
- Dictionary.com
- Myron W. Lustig, Intercultural competence: interpersonal communication across cultures, 5th edition, Pearson and Allyn Bacon, 2005, ISBN-020545352X
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commision
- Migration
- A. Mitchell Palmer
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