Psychological Analysis of Social Distance in the Post-Conflict Region

Abstract

Thе article describes the study of the social distance level among the youth in post-conflict areas (for example, the Chechen Republic and Rostov region). In today’s world migration flows are becoming more and more intense. It creates a lot of interethnic conflicts. A variety of different migrant types in terms of their social-cultural characteristics, the increasing number of illegal migrants, internally displaced persons
and refugees cause social tension among the host population and migrants and even leads to migrant-phobia. The introduction of the article includes the relevance of the study, description of the inter-ethnic relations in the South of Russia and of the main problems in the sphere of inter-ethnic interactions. The main part of the article reveals the concept of social distance, which is described in the context of
inter-ethnic relation. A description of the organizational phase of the study followed by: its stated goal, hypotheses and objectives, a description of the sample and the selected methodological
tools for the collection of empirical data. Further on, the authors present the main results obtained in the study of social
distance among young people and basic approaches to the interpretation of the results by the method of “social distance scale”. On the basis of these results the following conclusions: the level of social distance among the youth in postconflict areas is at a level of openness that can speak as a true rapprochement between the studied ethnic groups, and of targeting the media and government
agencies in the studied regions in the development of mutually tolerant relations. In order to clarify these results it is planned to carry out further studies of tolerance, ethnic identity and mutual ethnic stereotypes among young people of the post-conflict areas.