What Is Behind the Anti-Borders Personality?
There's lots of research on xenophobia, but little on xenophilia
By Ian Smith on June 6, 2025
Every supporter of CIS will know well the term “xenophobic.” They might have even been smeared with the label by globalist/anti-borders types before. But far fewer will know its antonym: “xenophilia”, or love, rather than fear, of the foreigner.
On xenophobia, thousands of scholarly papers have likely been written over the decades attempting to ascertain why Americans who resist “enrichment” by way of mass immigration think the way they do — the answer invariably being: “fear.”
For xenophilia, however, such analysis is virtually naught. At least according to one 2017 paper by German scholars (henceforth “Sturmer et al.”), there had been just six studies published on the topic up to 2012 — half being from the 1950s — which discuss its own psychological foundations.
This says a lot. Likely, it points to cosmopolitan attitudes toward the foreign as simply being de rigeur among academics and assumed to be good, healthy and, therefore, not worth delving into. Take, for instance, Sturmer et al.’s soft, admiring and complimentary approach to xenophilia in their psychological study of the concept. As they write: “In a very basic psychological sense, xenophilia can be conceptualized as a favorable attitude toward exploratory contact with individuals from other groups that are perceived as culturally different and unfamiliar on the basis of their language, ethnicity, habits or customs.” (Emphasis added.)
https://cis.org/Smith/What-Behind-AntiBorders-Personality
