This article compares the public perceptions of various types of migrants in Japan and examines whether Japanese view them equally. Using an original survey, which presented six types of migrants that Japanese people most commonly face in their daily lives, I show several interesting results. First, respondents express the most negative views toward labor migrants. Second, respondents who have migrant friends tend to have more positive feelings for all types of migrants. In contrast, simple coexistence with migrants fails to enhance public sentiment toward labor migrants, particularly those whose stay is temporary. Overall, my statistical results suggest that Japanese people are not pessimistic about every kind of migrant, and their openness increases as migrants acculturate into Japanese society and interact with Japanese people. These findings provide evidence to influence policy discussions on whether Japan should recruit labor migrants in its current form in order to fight its aging population.

Forty per cent of Europeans refuse to have Roma as their neighbours, while 80 per cent of these do not even have direct contact with them. Using these statistics as a point of departure, this study analyzes how attitudes toward Roma are constructed. It proposes to investigate this process in two similar environments but where local integration policies directed toward Roma differ, resulting in disparate forms of intergroup contact. The analysis is premised on two theoretical assumptions: that the integration of migrants is a local public policy issue and that intergroup contact frames attitudes between majority and minority groups. From semi-structured interviews in the French municipalities of La Courneuve and Ivry-sur-Seine, four theories are empirically tested: the contact theory, the halo effect, the impact of local immigrant integration policies and media influence. This study demonstrates that the implementation of municipal policies in favour of Roma integration can improve their living conditions and thus deconstruct prejudices attributable to their precarious situation. In addition, it illustrates how the media activate, maintain or solidify the way Roma are perceived.

Segregation has long been recognized as a source of ignorance which breeds negative feelings and hostility. This view maintains that interactions between members of different groups can foster social bonds and promote positive group relationship. Employing recently collected survey data, this study examines the effect of cross-Strait contacts on Taiwan citizens’ negative views toward Chinese citizens and the Beijing government. The empirical results show that casual encounters have no effect on the island residents’ general perception of China. Serious interactions in the form of friendship moderate their unfavorable feelings of Chinese citizens but have no effects on the perception of a hostile Beijing. Unless contacts can invoke true social bonds, frequent interactions do not have transformative effects on individuals’ political views. The moderating effect of contacts at the personal level is not transferable to a political entity when the latter is perceived as a suppressing agent.

The article evaluates Robert Putnam's discussion of two differing concepts of the role of the diversity perspective toward inter-ethnic/inter-racial relationships in American society since the 1960s—namely, the “contact theory” and the “conflict theory.” The former was initially formulated by Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Putnam's analysis—published in the comparative politics journal Scandinavian Political Studies (Vol. 30, No. 2, 2007)—favors the “conflict theory,” which holds that diversity sharpens “us-against-them” inter-ethnic/inter-racial interactions. Putnam's view opposes diversity-influenced public policies. By contrast, “contact theory” holds that diversity erodes “us-against-them” interactions and thus eventually democratizes such interactions, and thereby American society generally. “Contact theory” influenced the NAACP-led civil-rights movement's quest for desegregation public policies during the 1950s, 1960s, and onward.