Social scientific work on the suppression, mitigation or denial of prejudiced attitudes has tended to focus on the strategic self-presentation and self-monitoring undertaken by individual social actors on their own behalf. In this paper, we argue that existing perspectives might usefully be extended to incorporate three additional considerations. First, that social actors may, on some occasions, act to defend not only themselves, but also others from charges of prejudice. Second, that over the course of any social encounter, interactants may take joint responsibility for policing conversation and for correcting and suppressing the articulation of prejudiced talk. Third, that a focus on the dialogic character of conversation affords an appreciation of the ways in which the status of any particular utterance, action or event as 'racist' or 'prejudiced' may constitute a social accomplishment. Finally, we note the logical corollary of these observations - that in everyday life, the occurrence of 'racist discourse' is likely to represent a collaborative accomplishment, the responsibility for which is shared jointly between the person of the speaker and those other co-present individuals who occasion, reinforce or simply fail to suppress it.

This paper explores how the constructs of 'prejudice' and 'racism' were used and understood by respondents in an interview study concerning the settlement of Albanian refugees in Greece. Analysis indicated the existence of multiple, potentially contradictory, common sense understandings of prejudice and racism, analogous to some accounts of the prejudice construct in academic social psychology. However, notwithstanding the fact that respondents displayed multiple understandings of racism or prejudice in theory, these abstract formulations were rarely employed to account for actual instances of discrimination. Specific discriminatory acts against Albanian people were framed instead as matters of fear and risk. By virtue of being cast within a problematic of in/security rather than within the discursive frame of prejudice, particular hostile actions against the Albanian refugees could be glossed as reasonable and understandable.

No abstract

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and insecurity on the part of Greek people are represented as a sine qua non consequence of immigration to Greece. Two different lines of argument are used to account for the arousal of fear. According to the first, fear constitutes a corollary of a widespread stereotypical representation of immigrants as criminals. The stereotype of immigrants' criminality is considered to be ill-warranted and it is attributed to the media or to other unspecified people. According to another, more regularly used, line of argument, however, fear is predicated upon the sordid living conditions of immigrants in Greece which make the probability of them being involved in illegal acts particularly high. In this case, fear is seen to derive from a 'rational estimate' of the probability of immigrant's involvement in criminal acts. Nested within the discourse of 'risk' the stereotypical image of immigrants' criminality is sustained and used to account for the need to protect the 'ingroup' from 'immigrant groups' through immigration control and surveillance.

This study explores the ways in which constructions of immigrants' illegality and accounts on the meaning of naturalization and citizenship serve as argumentative resources against a particular immigration law in Greece. Data consisted of transcripts of parliamentary speeches by political party leaders who opposed the law. Analysis used the tools and concepts of discursive and rhetorical social psychology and identified three main lines of arguing. The first set clear boundaries between 'legal' and 'illegal' immigration and constructed immigrants' (il)legal entry as a category defining criterion. The second represented legal status as subject to change and constructed immigrants as 'legalized', in order to argue against their entitlement to citizenship. Finally, in another sort of accounting, regularization and naturalization procedures were trivialized, as the speakers negotiated the necessary, and also the ideal conditions of co-existence and participation in a nation-state. The findings are discussed in relation to their potential contribution (i) to the existing literature on the constituted and constitutive nature of the category of illegal immigration and (ii) to a social psychological approach to citizenship.