Tuesday, October 30, 2007


Racism · Sexism · Ageism · Religious intolerance · Xenophobia
Social Ableism · Adultism · Biphobia · Classism · Elitism · Ephebiphobia · Gerontophobia · Heightism · Heterosexism · Homophobia · Lesbophobia · Lookism · Misandry · Misogyny · Pediaphobia · Sizeism · Transphobia
Americans · Arabs · Armenians · Australians · Canadians · Catalans · Chinese · English · Europeans · French · Germans · Indians · Iranians · Irish · Italians · Japanese · Jews · Malay · Mexicans · Pakistanis · Poles · Portuguese · Quebecers · Roma · Romanians · Russians · Serbs · Turks
Atheism · Bahá'í · Catholicism · Christianity · Hinduism · Judaism · Mormonism · Islam · Neopaganism · Protestantism ·
Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching · Hate speech · Hate crime · Genocide · Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Pogrom · Race war · Religious persecution · Gay bashing · The Holocaust · Armenian Genocide · Blood libel · Black Legend · Paternalism
Discriminatory Hate groups · Aryanism · Ku Klux Klan · Neo-Nazism · American Nazi Party · South African National Party · Kahanism · Supremacism · Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · LGBT rights · Women's/Universal suffrage · Feminism · Masculism Men's/Fathers rights Children's rights · Youth rights · Disability rights · Inclusion · Autistic rights · Equalism
Discriminatory Race/Religion/Sex segregation · Apartheid · Redlining · Internment Anti-discriminatory Emancipation · Civil rights · Desegregation · Integration Counter-discriminatoryLusophobia Affirmative action · Racial quota · Reservation · Reparations · Forced busing
DiscriminatoryLusophobia Anti-miscegenation · Anti-immigration · Alien and Sedition Acts · Jim Crow laws · Black codes · Apartheid laws · Ketuanan Melayu · Nuremberg Laws Anti-discriminatory List of anti-discrimination acts 14th Amendment · Crime of apartheid Nepotism · Cronyism · Colorism · Linguicism · Ethnocentrism · Triumphalism · Adultcentrism · Isolationism · Gynocentrism · Androcentrism · Economic discrimination
Bigotry · Prejudice · Supremacism · Intolerance · Tolerance · Diversity · Multiculturalism · Political correctness · Reverse discrimination · Eugenics · Racialism · Speciesism
Lusophobia (Lusofobia) is a hostility toward Portugal or the Portuguese language. Like Lusitanic, the word derives from Lusitania, an Ancient Roman province, and phobia that means "fear". The term is used in Portuguese speaking countries, and its use in the English language has been limited.

Early uses
Portugal is now a stable democracy within the European Union (joined the European Economic Community in 1986), which has experienced considerable economic growth and economic development. After 1974 Carnation Revolution, not only have many Portuguese living overseas returned (including those living in the Portuguese colonies until the 1970s), thereby reversing a historical trend, but there has also been considerable migration from Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, and Brazil since the 1990s, in addition to the earlier migratory wave from the PALOP countries to Portugal that started in the late 1970s.
Several hundred thousand Portuguese emigrants arrived during the 1960s - 1980s period, and even before, in such places like the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland or Luxembourg, are in general highly regarded as a very productive, efficient and non-problematic workforce. Many of these emigrants, at least on the beginning of their foreign ventures, worked in low ranked occupations which may have raised a perception of the Portuguese as an inferior people in those countries. However, in the past, Portuguese emigrants were also disdained in Portugal by some sectors among the local population, including those employed in the large and usually inefficient public sector with whom emigrants had to deal in order to solve their personal bureaucratic affairs in Portugal. This can be explained by the fact that many emigrants returned to Portugal to spend their holidays or settle, used to frequently show a preceived ostensive "nouveau riche" aptitude, and non-emigrant Portuguese workers who had higher ranked, higher speciallized jobs in Portugal but very lower wages, used to feel unconfortable with this. For the other side, many emigrants liked to spoke their adoptive country languages instead of Portuguese, even in crowded public places in Portugal, prompting other people to laugh and comment the situation. A level of social prejudice towards Portugal was seen among some Portuguese emigrants who used to profess disgust over the Portuguese economy and society, openly criticizing their home country for lack of development and organisation and comparing it, often very negatively, with the more developed and wealthy countries where they were living in as expatriates. Thousands of Portuguese people living abroad due to economic emigration before the 1980s, didn't return to Portugal, and their heirs lost their contact with Portugal and the Portuguese culture completely.
One research study from 2003, indicated that among the then 15 European Union countries, Portuguese people lead the most sedentary lifestyles, followed by Germans, Spaniards and Belgians all in second place, and Greeks in the third place. Although sedentarism and laziness are quite different concepts, the published research study was enough to see UK's BBC presenting Portugal as the "laziest nation in Europe", a typical degree of racial prejudice and stereotyping of the Portuguese as lazy which is oftenly seen among central and northern Europeans towards Lusitanic people.
Related to the notable economic development that has been seen since the 1980s in Portugal, the development of tourism, which has allowed a display of the national cultural heritage, particularly in regards to architecture, has further improving popular opinions internationally. The organisation of Expo 98 world fair in Lisbon, the 2001 European Culture Capital in Porto and the Euro 2004, were also important for the public perception of Portugal among other nations.

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