Irish teenagers show little empathy with asylum-seekers and find it hard to understand why people become refugees. They are unable to comprehend why a person would have to leave his or her country for political or social reasons, according to research conducted with Transition Year pupils in four Dublin second-level schools.

Pupils in two fee-paying and two non-fee-paying city centre schools discussed issues relating to asylum-seekers in 80-minute workshops conducted by researcher Anna Keogh. Her findings are reported in Cultivating Pluralism, edited by Malcolm MacLachlan and Michael O'Connell (Oak Tree Press £19.95), a collection of reports on research into pluralism in Ireland. Keogh's study shows that pupils believe that refugees choose to come to Ireland because of the booming economy and that they have a choice about leaving their countries. They assume that if they have to leave, it must be because they are criminals. Pupils assume, too, that refugees are poor, but because they see well-dressed Africans with mobile phones, they believe they must be abusing the welfare system or be involved in crime. Teenagers are concerned that if people from other ethnic groups come here, Ireland will lose its cultural identity. They are also concerned that refugees will remain in Ireland. They believe that Ireland's economy is insufficiently stable to afford to admit refugees. The teenagers worry about where Ireland will locate the refugees, and about the State's ability to handle it when refugees start having babies and the population increases.

According to Keogh, the pupils regard immigrants as being here to abuse the system. They show very little awareness that these people might help build Ireland. When discussing Irish emigration, however, they say that when the Irish went to America "we worked", "we helped build the country", "we were shipped over like slaves" but "we found a way".