Majority Group Perceptions: Psychological Meaning related to National Migrants Outgroups living in Mérida, Yucatán.

Abstract

Sociocultural space establishes the historical and ideological parameters around social structures, providing conceptual organization and tools with which individuals construct meanings (Valsiner 2018a). Meanings shared by members of a specific cultural group towards members of other cultural groups play a significant role in intergroup biases which are manifested in behaviors during intercultural encounters within the same country. In the present study, the Modified Natural Semantic Network technique (Reyes-Lagunes 1993) was used, and subsequently, a semantic structural analysis was developed to identify the meanings associated with migratory groups from México with a greater presence in Yucatán. The words used as items were “Quintanaroense,” “Campechano”, “Veracruzano”, “Tabasqueño” and “Chilango”. The participants were 260 men and women from Mérida, Yucatán, living in it (local group). Two types of structures were made: one, affiliate network, where the five words were grouped, identifying definers with negative affective charges for the Tabasqueño, Chilango, and Quintanaroense, while for Veracruzano and Campechano only descriptive definers were presented and with positive affective charge. The second structure allows observing the words associated with each cultural group in a particular way. The results of the study give evidence of the differentiated stereotypes towards each group by the locals, which allows suggesting differentiated interventions directed in the first instance to the transformation of meanings towards the outgroups and promote positive intercultural relations between the majority culture and national migrants residing in Yucatán.