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Czech poll finds respondents like Romani people least of any group - 76 % dislike them

28 April 2017
2 minute read

Of the national groups living in the Czech Republic, people like Czechs, Slovaks and Poles the most, while Romani people and Arabs are the most disliked. With the exception of Arab people, the degree of sympathy felt towards various national groups has not changed much over time.

Those are the findings of a March survey provided by the Center for Public Opinion Research (CVVM) to the Czech News Agency this week. Of those surveyed, 82 % said they like Czechs, four-fifths said they like Slovaks, and only 3 % of respondents dislike those groups.

The next best-liked group is the Poles, for whom 48 % of those surveyed expressed sympathy, with 15 % of respondents disliking them. Six other nationalities were more liked than not in the survey.

Greeks are perceived positively by 37 % of respondents, Germans by 34 %, Vietnamese by 32 %, Jewish people by 28 %, Hungarians by 29 % and Bulgarians by 26 %. For another four nationalities, while antipathy for them is higher than sympathy, the biggest proportion of responses was neutral (“neither like nor dislike”).

That group includes Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians and Chinese. “In the case of Romanians, Albanians, Arabs and Romani people, antipathy comprised most of the responses, and in the case of the last three mentioned national groups, it comprised the absolute majority of responses, which is significant,” the CVVM reported.

Of those surveyed, 54 % said they dislike Albanians, three-quarters dislike Arabs and 76 % dislike Romani people. The growth in dislike of Arabs was noted between 2014 and 2016 but has stopped this year.

Now 41 % of the public surveyed in the Czech Republic say they “greatly dislike” Arabs. “Compared to 2014 there has been a growth in extreme dislike in relation to Arab people of 18 percentage points, and more than 10 of those points were recorded between 2015 and 2016,” the authors of the survey point out.

According to the CVVM, there are now three independent factors apparent from these findings. The factor of dislike connected with crime, illegal residency, labor market involvement and/or migration is associated with Albanians, Arabs, Bulgarians, Roma, Romanians, Russians and Ukrainians.

The factor of sympathy determined by inclusion into mainstream society combined with dislike because of “otherness” is associated with Chinese people, Greeks, Jewish people, Serbs and Vietnamese people. The factor of sympathy for Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Slovaks is due to their Central European origins and the tradition of their being neighbors or having shared a common state together with Czech people historically.

CVVM also asks to what degree respondents like or dislike Czech people, in order to compare findings. Of those surveyed, 82 % see Czechs positively, while 3 % said they dislike Czechs.

The remaining 15 % of respondents were neutral on that question. The survey took place between 6 and 19 March and involved 1 045 people aged 15 years old and above.

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