I'm sure you'll receive answers from editors with social science backgrounds that will relate directly to your question. That is not my area, but I can give you a fundamental answer concerning how the human brain works.
Humans are by definition egocentric. Reality is known to us only by what our senses feed to our brains. Everything we experience, of course, is experienced from our own, extremely limited point of view.
Therefore, anything different from our own perspective is foreign.
Our brains are also wired to quickly categorize and label new information, and then file it away, much like what we have our computers do when we place information into files.
When we are exposed to something new, then, it is naturally foreign, or alien to us. Yet, we still categorize and label the information, we can't help it. Once these first impressions are filed away, they are difficult to rewrite. And unfortunately, human first impressions are almost always wrong. Our brains attempt to do the impossible: people are too complex to be summed up and categorized by a first impression.
Thus, nomads would tend to be suspicious of settled peoples, and vice-versa. Only experience and education can improve our reactions to others.
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