The volume investigates in depth the phenomenon of the foreigner, who – controlled by the schemata of social interaction – can achieve both attractive and repulsive effects. These are often minimal situational shifts or context changes that determine the option for one side or the other and regulate the issue of social inclusion/exclusion without being stable over time. Attributions, labelling, stereotyping, stigmatization and discrimination that (can be) based on religious, ethnic, gender, ideological, economic, medical etc. categories ensure that inequalities are (re-)produced in an interactive way via symbolic demarcations and the fields of one's own and the stranger's are being sealed. It is shown in this context, using examples of literary, cultural and linguistic analyses, that the problem of the foreigner does not only take on importance in light of the big wave of migration and refugees, but also comes into its own in its social variant and entails (no less) critical encounters and/or painful arguments.