We’re well used to hearing about xenophobia and xenophobes: ‘dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries‘ is the dictionary definition though ‘phobia’ implies a morbid fear of foreigners. Xenophilia is not merely the absence of xenophobia but its active and polar opposite: think of it as a bit like the term hydrophilic (attracting or drawn to water), the quality of being instinctively drawn to foreigners.
I’m not entirely sure where the boundaries of my comfort zone lie. Certainly nothing to do with language because I can quite happily sip coffee with a crowd of Albanian men on the streets of Tirana even if I can understand bugger all that they say. Same in Hanoi with Vietnamese. I guess I’m good with anyone as long as they’re not obviously a threat to me and even then I have a fairly high trigger point. So I’m possibly not the best person to be offering thoughts on how the average Brit might approach the topic of xenophilia.
Nevertheless I do know this from experience: every person whom I meet, who is not comfortable with what I’ve described above, causes a small but significant incremental rise in my stress levels in all but the most mundane situations.