… Psychologists and political scientists have documented a link between terrorist attacks and public antipathy toward immigrants and minorities, but the nature of the connection depends on economic, demographic and political factors — which vary from country to country and from tragedy to tragedy. It is difficult to generalize, said Joscha Legewie, a sociologist at New York University who has studied the issue. …
Legewie studied public opinion in Europe after terrorist attacks in Kuta, Indonesia, that killed 202 people, many of them European tourists, and train bombings in Madrid that left 191 people dead. He found that Europeans became less tolerant of immigrants after those events, but mainly in places where the economy was poor and where the population of immigrants was increasing. Legewie also found that the shifts in opinion did not last more than several weeks. CONT.
Max Ehrenfreund, Washington Post