People’s Perception Towards Immigrants Based on Acceptance in Pekanbaru (Riau Province)

Abstract

Immigrant is a person who migrates to another country due to some reasons. Immigrants in this research are refugees and asylum seekers who stay for a while in Pekanbaru. They are waiting to be sent to resettlement. Sometimes, this process takes a long time. Since they live in Pekanbaru, they get some psychological problems. Some researchers found that psychosocial intervention work better for them than individual or group intervention. However, applying psychosocial intervention in Pekanbaru seems difficult. First of all, some local communities in the city are afraid of them. Second, there is a legal aspect. The aim of this research is to know how people in Pekanbaru perceive immigrants based on their acceptance. This research used quantitative methods. A total of 262 people were taken as the number of samples. The result showed that social perception was affected by acceptance. Acceptance contribute to social perception as much as 10.7%; β = −3.27; p < 0.00.

Keywords: Stereotyping, hallo effect, non-judgement, local community, Indonesia