The perception of foreigners in northeast Italy

The Friuli Venezia Giulia region is highly attractive for immigration, but the region is also a tourist destination: in 2015 there were 1,104,118 foreign arrivals (+ 5.2% over the previous year) and in the region they are present in research facilities and internationally renowned training institutions. The goal of this research was to explore the perception that people have of "foreigners", which traits characterize them, what feelings they evoke. To this end, a brief questionnaire was administered to a purposive sample and the valid questionnaires total 1.854. Despite the known limitations of a non-probabilistic survey, it is believed that the results obtained can provide interesting insights into the phenomenon studied. The foreigner is mostly one who "comes from another continent" but many people, especially the young, indicate as “foreigners” the natives of other European countries, and this stimulates interesting considerations about the sense of belonging to the European Community of the respondents and the relationship that should tie the natives of the different Community countries. A third of respondents believe that there are no elements that make a foreigner "different", while for the others the differences are mainly due to the culture, language, customs, and religion. The "declared" attitude reveals a generational difference (but not gender) against those who are foreigners: adults and elderly are more related to the stereotypes that guide the views to a certain mistrust and closure to foreigners. The new generations, however, also hold some of those views, but they seem to be in favour of greater openness. Across the latent attitudes from the factor analysis, very positive profiles emerge; the best qualities of "foreigners" are brought out. For all, regardless of gender or age, the first factor of honesty, kindness, trust, acceptance and security (to name a few) and the "personality traits" "clear" and "white" are all correlated to the idea of the “foreigner”. Foreigners are considered to be “too present”, and are less thought of as tourists than as people who reside in the country.