Western societies are witnessing major demographic changes because of human displacement. The September 11 attacks and the wars that followed have increased host societies’ feelings of hostility, anger, and mistrust toward refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants, especially those from Arab countries. This systematic review aimed to gather available peer-reviewed literature regarding how society’s hostile attitudes and feelings of anger and mistrust toward these refugees may have a negative impact on their general well-being. It further aimed to identify whether society’s discrimination and negative feelings toward this population influence the refugees’ willingness to seek support from services provided by the host society and, simultaneously, to trust the helping professionals who provide the services. Twelve studies met the inclusion criteria. Results indicated that: (a) host societies’ mistrust, hostility, and discrimination expressed in overt or subtle ways toward refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants have a harmful impact on their biopsychosocial well-being, often triggering feelings of helplessness, anger, frustration, and general mistrust; (b) society’s discriminatory attitudes and behaviours may lead refugees and asylum seekers to avoid social and health services even when needed, and to transfer their negative feelings onto helping professionals; and (c) immigration laws and policies may have deleterious effects on their biopsychosocial well-being, on society’s negative views of them, and on their own perception vis-à-vis available services and helping professionals. Some recommendations are provided to address these concerns.

Summary Anger, hostility and mistrust towards refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants (hereafter migrants) are increasing across most Western societies. Media discourse, tough migration laws, and the escalation of right-wing views across Europe, all manifest a desire to exclude those who are seen as a threat to national interests and identities. The literature repeatedly confirms that discrimination has a harmful impact on the general well-being of migrants, while often weakening their trust on helping professionals. Social workers are among the professionals most often in contact with migrants, making them important actors in the field of migration. Findings This qualitative study was conducted in Madrid (Spain) and follows the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. Findings revealed that Muslims and Blacks are the groups facing the most intense racial hostility. Emotions like fear, sadness, learned helplessness, frustration, rejection, anger, and general mistrust were underlined by participants. Some migrants highlighted negative coping mechanisms like isolation, aggressive impulses, approaching mafias, and risk behaviours, leading to further rejection from host societies, and thus initiating a vicious circle of hostility. Application These findings constitute a modest contribution to the literature, as they result from an integration of migrants’ and helping professionals’ perspectives. Several suggestions are put forward for social workers and other professionals. The two most significant suggestions are that professionals (a) use their field experience to raise awareness about racial hostility towards this population, and (b) help identify migrants who may rely on negative coping strategies and so prevent adverse consequences for both migrants and host societies.

This paper explores how real scenarios of racial hostility and discrimination trigger anger rumination tendencies in refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants (hereafter RASI). Undergoing discrimination often leads to the development of negative thoughts and behaviors, and to a loss of meaning and self-worth. This could make young RASI particularly vulnerable to being recruited and exploited by extremist groups as they search for identity. We developed a picture-elicitation instrument (the PEI) to provide professionals with a tool that could identify groups of RASI according to their reactions to discrimination scenarios and explore how racial hostility might influence withdrawal levels. The tool was applied with the Anger Rumination Scale (ARS_19) to 509 RASI of Latin American origin living in Spain. Four categories were identified, according to how RASI processed anger when observing discrimination scenarios: “Social desirability”, “Chewing”, “Grudge”, and “Vengeful”. Further analyses showed that the youngest (18–29) fell under the “Grudge” and “Vengeful” categories and revealed more despair and social isolation. This study makes a positive contribution by being the first to investigate the problem of anger rumination in RASI undergoing racial hostility. Moreover, it equips professionals with two tools that, once validated, may help plan and implement strategies to reduce the impact of hostility on both RASI and their host societies.