Issue of discrimination of immigrants and asylum seekers living in the Czech Republic

The behaviour of the majority towards foreigners (including asylum seekers and immigrants) is often based on stereotype thinking and the resulting prejudices against a group or an individual. Discrimination occurs then on the base of those prejudices. But discrimination is not only a problem of minorities; anybody in essence can become a victim of discrimination. There are a number of forms of discrimination, but even in case discrimination occurs in public, it can be proved only with difficulties. The theoretic part of the bachelor work is focused on the definition of the concept of discrimination and its forms, the concepts related with the issue of discrimination, the concepts from the sphere of migration, refugees and asylum seekers. The last part of the theory deals with the issue of media and their influence on the society. Two methods of qualitative research were used for the investigation of my bachelor work. The first was the method of controlled interview with selected members of majority population. The second method used was the method of contents analysis of a selected newspaper with focus on coverage (articles) of immigrants and asylum seekers (or possibly applicants for international protection). The contents analysis was performed retrospectively for six months of issue of the selected newspaper. The first goal of the work was to ascertain the opinions, stereotypes and prejudices related to immigrants and asylum seekers (or possibly applicants for international protection) among the selected members of the majority population. The second goal was to ascertain how the selected newspaper presented the coverage (articles) of immigrants and asylum seekers (or possibly applicants for international protection) {--} i.e. to discover whether it did not offer neutral (unbiased) view of the relevant situation in fact by using certain word classes. Both those goals were met. As my work presents qualitative research, the hypotheses were set only on the base of the research results. Among other things, e.g. the hypothesis No. 1 was set: Personal experience with foreigners shall be described mostly by respondents from the category of early and middle adulthood (age range from 20 to 45 years). Hypothesis No. 5: The members of majority population would not be ready to accept an asylum seeker or an immigrant as a member of their family. Hypothesis No. 15: The headlines of the articles correspond to their contents. Further hypotheses are stated in the discussion part. My work gave base to the origin of several suggestions for solution of the relevant issue, e.g. by expanding the awareness of the issue of migration, not only in schools but also through different lectures for broad public and of course also through the media, in order to guarantee the information level of broad classes of the public, further by releasing the public from prejudices concerning foreigners from Eastern countries {--} through contact with foreigners from those countries to broad public, e.g. meetings with the foreigners, lectures about those countries, about the problems the inhabitants can have in their relevant countries, etc. Further suggestions are described in the end of the work