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In-Group Bias or Out-Group Reluctance? The Interplay of Gender and Religion in Creating Religious Friendship Segregation among Muslim Youth
Abstract
Even in diverse schools that provide opportunities for interreligious friendships, Muslim youth disproportionally tend to be friends with Muslims rather than non-Muslims. Echoing broader debates about minorities’ self-segregation versus exclusion by majority group members, a key question is whether religious friendship segregation arises because of Muslims’ in-group bias or because of non-Muslims’ reluctance to befriend them. We suggest that the answer differs for Muslim boys and girls. Building on research on interreligious romantic relations and accounts of the lives of young Muslims and other ethno-religious minorities in Western societies, we propose that religious in-group bias is stronger for Muslim girls than for Muslim boys. Conversely, we expect non-Muslim youth to be more open to befriend Muslim girls than Muslim boys. Applying stochastic actor-oriented models of network dynamics to large-scale longitudinal data of friendship networks in German schools, we find that Muslim girls indeed have a strong in-group bias, whereas non-Muslim youth are not reluctant to be friends with them. Muslim boys, by contrast, have a much weaker in-group bias, but non-Muslim youth are less willing to be friends with them rather than with non-Muslims. A simulation analysis demonstrates that these gendered individual-level processes result in comparable aggregate patterns of friendship segregation among Muslim boys and girls. Religious friendship segregation thus arises because Muslim girls tend to self-segregate and non-Muslim youth are less willing to befriend Muslim boys although the latter are open to interreligious friendships. This gendered friendship-making behavior has implications for the larger question of minority social integration.
... Sociological research also addresses the influences of ingroup-outgroup relationships on behavior (e.g., Parsons, 1951;Blau, 1962;Smelser, 2015). However, while there are some studies that pick up these perspectives, particularly in order to examine deviant behavior (e.g., Kleinewiese and Graeff, 2020), other recent sociological literature picks up the perspective of social identity theory (e.g., Kretschmer and Leszczensky, 2022). Using an integrated interdisciplinary approach, we can utilize the advantages of both perspectives in order to understand how discriminatory behavior can result from ingroup-outgroup relationships. ...
... For example, I do not vary the gender of the neighbors. However, previous research on gender and inter-religion friendships, for instance, suggests that religion-based ingroupoutgroup relationships can differ based on gender-compositions (Kretschmer and Leszczensky, 2022). Hence, it seems feasible that ethnic ingroup-outgroup discrimination may also vary according to gender-composition. ...
Research on discriminating behavior against ethnic minorities in everyday situations is still a rather under-researched field, since most prior research on ethnic discrimination focuses on housing markets, job markets, criminal justice, institutions or discourses. This article contributes toward filling the research-gap on everyday discrimination by bringing together prior research from sociology and social-psychology, including threat and competition theories from integration research, social identity theory, particularism-universalism theory and experimental findings on fairness norms. It conceptually advances the field by combining them into an integrated interdisciplinary approach that can examine discriminating behavior in everyday situations. This approach studies the dynamics of ingroup-outgroup relationships, fairness norms and threat in regard to negative behavior toward others (e.g., a neighbor). In particular, it focusses on the dynamics under which negative behavior is more likely toward an ethnic outgroup-person than an ingroup-person (i.e., discriminating behavior). To scrutinize the expectations derived within this framework, a factorial survey experiment was designed, implemented and analyzed (by means of multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions and average marginal effects). The survey experiment presents a hypothetical scenario between two neighbors in order to measure the effects and dynamics of ingroup-outgroup relationships, fairness norms and threat on behavior. While no significant outgroup-effect can be found in the general analysis of the main effects, more in-depth analyses show an interplay of situational cues: Outgroup-discriminating behavior becomes significantly more likely when the “actor” has low general fairness norms and/or when threat-level in a situation is low. These results foreground the importance of interdisciplinary in-depth analyses of dynamics for understanding the conditions under which discriminating behavior takes place in everyday situations—and for deriving measures that can reduce discrimination.
... This work suggests that concerns or worries over what may happen during interracial interactions may preclude both majority and minority group members from engaging in intergroup interactions (Stephan, 2014), and that indirect contact with outgroup members through ingroup friends (i.e., having an ingroup friend with an outgroup friend-referring to extended contact) will diminish intergroup anxiety-ultimately leading to friendships with outgroup members (Wölfer et al., 2019). Finally, another mechanism has been suggested whereby ingroup bias may result from internalized endogamy norms that discourage involvement in intergroup friendships and peer relationships (Kretschmer & Leszczensky, 2021), underscoring that there may be critical intersectional forms of bias that shape the development of intergroup friendships. ...
This paper presents a call for research to examine how interpersonal racism shapes and is shaped by peer relationships in adolescence. Prior research has primarily focused on individual experiences of interpersonal racism and their effects on individual adjustment. Moreover, this work has mostly relied on static indices of the peer context, which has hampered our ability to understand interpersonal mechanisms of racism in a larger peer system. We propose a conceptual framework that examines how interpersonal racism occurs in peer relationships by identifying (1) the multiple types of interpersonal racism perpetrated in peer relationships, (2) the peer consequences of interpersonal racism, and (3) the multiple roles that peers may play in interpersonal racism. This framework integrates culturally- and intergroup contact-informed models with peer relationship models to chart a comprehensive account of the antecedents and mechanisms through which interpersonal racism is embedded and unfolds in peer relationships. Carefully understanding these complex issues is necessary to advance developmental theory and research on challenges and opportunities of intergroup peer relationships and to design more effective interventions to help reduce interpersonal racism and enhance positive intergroup peer relationships in adolescence.
... Kondisi ini jelas berbeda dengan ikatan sosial-keagamaan di Barat yang menekankan untuk menjaga jarak dan hanya berhubungan baik dengan yang seiman, seagama, dan seideologi (Leszczensky and Pink, 2017). Begitu pun perempuan Muslim cenderung memisahkan diri dari kalangan non-Muslim dan anak muda non-Muslim sebaliknya tidak menjalin ikatan sosial dengan pemuda Muslim (Kretschmer and Leszczensky, 2021). Pola ini mendasari terbangunnya segregasi sosial di kalangan Muslim dan non-Muslim. ...
Salafi Islamic community has been negatively constructed as puritan, extreme, and exclusive group separated itself from the social space. This justification precludes possibility that Salafi groups can synergize with surrounding socio-religious conditions. This article reveals the socio-religious life among Salafi community of Ma’had Ittiba’us Salaf in Purwoasri Village, Metro City to maintain the Islamic Salafi concept and expanding network of its followers. The research methodology is qualitative using observation, interviews, and documentation studies to expose the Salafi movement. This study shows that the presence of Salafi in Purwosari can build good relations with other religious communities, both Muslims and non-Muslims (Chrisrtian). The synergy between Salafi Muslims and Christians in building a strong social construction in maintaining the peace values is facilitated by the FPKM organization. This study concludes that Salafi da’wah is not entirely around the radical activities and leads to violence. Salafis in Metro City use a lot of social networks, technology facilities, and local organizations to preach, be economically, and socially. Keywords: salafi, socio-religious construction, religious relation, tolerance Pandangan masyarakat tentang komunitas Islam Salafi telah terkonstruksi negatif sebagai kelompok puritan, ekstrim, dan ekslusif yang memisahkan dari lingkungan sosial. Justifikasi tersebut menutup kemungkinan Salafi dapat bersinergi dengan keberagaman sosial-keagamaan sekitarnya. Artikel ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap realitas kehidupan sosial-keagamaan komunitas Salafi Ma’had Ittiba’us Salaf di Kelurahan Purwoasri Kota Metro dalam mempertahankan konsep Islam Salafi dan memperluas jaringan pengikutnya. Metodologi penelitian ini adalah kualitatif dengan menggunakan data observasi, interview, dan studi dokumentasi untuk menjelaskan gerakan Salafi. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa keberadaan Salafi di Purwoasri mampu membangun hubungan baik dengan komunitas kegamaan lainnya, baik Muslim maupun non-Muslim (Kristen). Sinergisitas antara Salafi dan Kristen dalam membangun konstruksi sosial yang kuat dalam menjaga nilai-nilai perdamaian difasilitasi dengan adanya Paguyuban FPKM. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa ternyata dakwah Salafi tidak secara keseluruhan terkonsentrasi dengan aktivitas radikal dan mengarah kepada kekerasan. Salafi di Kota Metro banyak menggunakan jaringan sosial, fasilitas teknologi, dan bergabung dalam Paguyuban untuk berdakwah, berekonomi, dan bersosial. Artikel ini masih terbatas pada skala penelitian di kota Metro, sehingga masih sangat mungkin untuk dilengkapi oleh kajian pada tempat lain dengan skala dan pendekatan yang berbeda. Kata Kunci: salafi, konstruksi sosial-kegamaan, relasi keagamaan, toleransi
In recent decades, various cities in Sweden have implemented school closures as a desegregation strategy. Using simulation models calibrated with administrative data for all primary and lower secondary schools in Stockholm, Sweden, we assess the potential impact of school closure on ethnic school segregation. More specifically, we study how the characteristics of the school to be closed, the local opportunity structure for the displaced students, and the student reallocation criteria influence the effects of school closures on school segregation. Our findings show that the change in ethnic school segregation is highly dependent on reallocation criteria and local opportunity structures. Moreover, they demonstrate that the current practices associated with school closures in large urban areas (i.e., closing minority-dominated schools in minority-dominated neighborhoods) are likely to be ineffective in reducing school segregation, especially when students are reallocated to their nearest school or to schools whose composition resembles that of their former schools.
The religious similarity of adolescents and their friends can arise from selection or influence. Prior studies were limited because of confounds that arose from the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of the samples and the use of cross‐sectional designs. SIENA was used in this two‐year longitudinal study of 825 Indonesian Muslim high school students (445 girls; mean age = 16.5 years) to assess peer selection and influence as these pertained to religiosity and religious coping. The analyses yielded significant influence but not selection effects for both religiosity and religious coping. This study is an important methodological advance over prior research and although limited by correlational data, nevertheless, provides evidence that adolescents influence their peers' religiousness.
While network studies have shown that preferences of both Muslim and non-Muslim adolescents contribute to religious friendship segregation, it is unclear whether these preferences are ubiquitous or dependent on local context. Examining large-scale longitudinal friendship network data of adolescents in Germany, we investigate how the proportion of Muslim classmates affects friendship preferences of Muslims and non-Muslims. We find that Muslim youth favor Muslims over non-Muslims to a similar degree at all proportions of Muslim classmates. Non-Muslims’ reluctance to be friends with Muslims peaks in classrooms in which about half of the students are Muslims but is otherwise lower or absent.
Recent migration from Muslim-majority countries has sparked discussions across Europe about the supposed threat posed by new immigrants. Young men make up the largest share of newly arrived immigrants and this demographic is often perceived to be particularly threatening. In this article, we compare pro-sociality and trust toward immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, focusing on gender differences in treatment. We study these questions using behavioral games that measure strategic (trusting) and non-strategic (pro-social) behavior. Our data comes from measures embedded in a large survey of residents of Germany's eastern regions, where anti-immigrant sentiments are high. We find that Germans are similarly pro-social toward immigrant men and women in non-strategic situations, but are significantly less likely to trust immigrant men (but not women) in strategic encounters. These findings provide evidence that immigrants' gender can be an important factor conditioning the behavior of the majority population, but also caution that (gendered) ethnic discrimination may be situationally dependent. Future research should further examine the exact mechanisms underlying this variation in discriminatory behavior.
We draw on a field experiment conducted in five European countries to analyze hiring discrimination on the basis of gender and race. We adopt an intersectional perspective and relate existing theories on gender and racial discrimination to recent work on the gendered stereotype content of different races. We find that employers prefer hiring white women over men for female-typed jobs. By contrast, women of color do not have any advantage over men of the same race. Moreover, black and Middle Eastern men encounter the strongest racial discrimination in male-typed jobs, where it is possible that their stereotyped masculinity, made salient by the occupational context, is perceived as threatening. Overall, we argue that the employment chances of applicants of different gender and racial backgrounds are highly dependent on their perceived congruence (or lack thereof) with the feminine or masculine traits of the job they apply to.
We use data from a cross-nationally harmonised field experiment to examine discrimination towards Muslim job applicants in five European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom). We focus on job applicants originating from countries that have a substantial Muslim population: of these, some signalled closeness to Islam in their job application while others did not. With this design, we can empirically disentangle anti-Muslim discrimination (a 'disclosed Muslim' effect) from the possible stigma of originating from countries where Islam is prevalent (a 'Muslim by default' effect). Our double-comparative design allows us to compare the extent of anti-Muslim discrimination faced by different origin groups in destination countries characterised by a varying history of church-state relations and distinctive approaches to grant cultural and religious rights to minorities. We find alarming levels of discrimination, especially towards male applicants from more visible groups. Anti-Muslim discrimination and origin-based discrimination independently contribute to the severe disadvantage faced by ethnic and religious minorities, a disadvantage that is especially severe in the Norwegian labour market.
Informal status in communities is a relational phenomenon, it is attributed by others, and can be analysed using social network measures. However, many studies measure a single network relation – friendship – and interpret it related to status hierarchies: the number of friends is assumed to indicate status and asymmetric friendships are assumed to indicate status difference. While this practice is grounded in theoretical models of group structure, its assumptions have not been tested thoroughly and contradict research from various fields. We assess the validity of the approach using multiplex network data with three measures of status attribution from 17,469 high-school students in 5 European countries. We find that (i) asymmetric and symmetric friendships rarely overlap with status attributions, (ii) asymmetric friends are closer in status than expected by chance, and (iii) friendship and status attribution indegrees are only moderately correlated. These findings show that friendship relations cannot substitute for direct measurements of status in the study of informal hierarchies.
An important public debate in contemporary Europe is whether immigrant-origin Muslims will successfully integrate into mainstream society. We engage those debates by analysing national identification among immigrant-origin Muslim adolescents in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. A common argument is that the Islamic religion prevents Muslims from integrating because its practices are incompatible with mainstream European culture. However, we find that religiosity is not the most important predictor of Muslim identification. Instead, citizenship, contact with the native majority, and perceived discrimination are all as important as religiosity for predicting Muslim national identification. In addition, we find the same relationships between these variables and national identification among Muslim and non-Muslim immigrant-origin adolescents. Country of birth, host language proficiency, and socio-economic status, by contrast, are less important predictors of national identification of both groups. In sum, our findings suggest that Muslims are not necessarily a uniquely problematic population, as their national identification is best understood through dynamics that affect immigrants more broadly rather than Muslims specifically, though more research is necessary to identify specific causal pathways.
Individuals’ favorite subjects in school can predetermine their educational and occupational careers. If girls develop weaker preferences for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), it can contribute to macrolevel gender inequalities in income and status. Relying on large-scale panel data on adolescents from Sweden (218 classrooms, 4,998 students), we observe a widening gender gap in preferring STEM subjects within a year (girls, 19 to 15 percent; boys, 21 to 20 percent). By applying newly developed random-coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models on social network data (27,428 friendships), we investigate how social context contributes to those changes. We find strong evidence that students adjust their preferences to those of their friends (friend influence). Moreover, girls tend to retain their STEM preferences when other girls in their classroom also like STEM (peer exposure). We conclude that these mechanisms amplify preexisting preferences and thereby contribute to the observed dramatic widening of the STEM gender gap.
We present a broad review of all studies having tested for discrimination against minority ethnic groups in the rental housing market by the correspondence testing method. We perform a meta-analysis of correspondence tests from 25 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 2006 and 2017, containing more than 300 estimates of effects and representing a total of more than 110,000 e-mails sent to private landlords or real-estate agents. In addition to presenting overall results of recent studies, we focus on subgroups of specific correspondence tests in order to highlight the differences in ethnicity, gender, type of landlords, procedure, continent, and type of information provided in applications. We provide evidence that both gender and ethnic discrimination occur in the rental housing market in OECD countries, such that applicants with minority-sounding names and male names are discriminated against (especially Arab/Muslim applicants). Thus, ethnic majority women are the most favored in this market in OECD countries while minority men are the most disadvantaged. Moreover, we show the existence of interactions between ethnic and gender discrimination: gender discrimination is greater for minority-sounding names than for majority-sounding names. Finally, it seems that real-estate agents discriminate significantly less against minority applicants than private landlords do. This would seem to be at least in part because private landlords display significant statistical discrimination while real-estate agents do not. These results are robust to the estimation methods used (random effects, fixed-effects, and unrestricted weighted least squares methods).
This article introduces a novel theoretical approach for understanding racial fluidity, emphasizing the social embeddedness of racial classifications. We propose that social ties affect racial perceptions through within-group micromechanisms, resulting in discrepancies between racial self-identifications and race as classified by others. We demonstrate this empirically on data from 12 Hungarian high school classes with one minority group (the Roma) using stochastic actor-oriented models for the analysis of social network panel data. We find strong evidence for social influence: individuals tend to accept their peers' judgement about another student's racial category; opinions of friends have a larger effect than those of nonfriends. Perceived social position also matters: those well-accepted among majority-race peers are likely to be classified as majority students themselves. We argue that similar analyses in other social contexts shall lead to a better understanding of race and interracial processes.
In the last decade, a growing empirical work has focused on adaptation processes of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries who live in the West, particularly Muslim youth born and/or educated in Western countries. The current study explored how Muslim boys and girls immigrated from Morocco, Egypt and Pakistan negotiate their identity on the base of interiorized social and cultural in-group norms associated to the representation of a “good” son and a “good” daughter within the resettlement society. Participants were 45 Muslim immigrant adolescents (30 females, 15 males) coming from Morocco, Egypt and Pakistan, who were interviewed through an in-depth semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis carried out on the interview transcripts permitted to identify four themes and thirteen subthemes, revealing interesting differences based on participants’ gender and country of origin. The quality of being obedient and respectful of parents’ desires was a significant common topic among all participants, although it was differently articulated by girls and boys. For girls, norms and expectations were strictly modeled around staying at home and preserving heritage culture. For boys, a heavy mandate—that is, gaining educational success in order to become the breadwinner—weights on them. Implications of these gender-based challenges are discussed in relation to specific vulnerabilities experienced by young Muslims living in Western society.
The literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti-Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from value conflicts between Muslims and the non-religious majority. The two theories are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of the European Values Study 2008. Our findings indicate that, although more secularized countries are on average more tolerant towards Muslims and Islam, strongest anti-Muslim attitudes are nonetheless found among the non-religious in these countries.
This paper reports on a project exploring the friendships of children and adults in ‘super-diverse’ (Vertovec, 2007) localities in London, England, examining whether and how friendships are made and maintained across ethnic and social class differences. The aim is to identify what friendships reveal about the nature and extent of ethnic and social divisions in contemporary multicultural society. Drawing on interviews with children and their parents, this paper analyses affective parental responses to their children’s friendships, identifying instances where parents seek to manage these friendships. We identify the importance of the ‘ease of similarity’ for many parents concerning their children’s friendships, and the relative lack of concrete practices amongst parents to support their children’s friendships across difference. However, we also note parental support for living in super-diverse localities and children attending schools therein.
ABSTRACT This article elucidates the dynamics of Muslim family life and the role of family values in shaping the present experiences and future aspirations of adolescent British Muslim girls. A group of Muslim girls in three schools, their parents and some of their teachers were interviewed. The research shows the dynamism of family values and the way British Muslims are socialising their daughters to construct a British Muslim identity by adopting and rejecting aspects of their Asian and British ethnicities and through a combination of freedom and control. It also argues that British Muslim young women are getting ambiguous messages about freedom and they feel ambivalent about various features of their Asian and British ethnicities. Furthermore, the research notes the stereotypical notions held by some of the teachers, which are apparently based on assumptions regarding the lives of British Muslim girls.
The most influential theory on partner choice, from which I will also depart, the theory on assortative mating, starts from the premise that individuals prefer to marry someone who shares certain characteristics denoted by the Greek term ‘homophily’. Religious and ethnic homophily are very important in this context. Consequently, this paper looks at marriages between natives and migrants of different origin, which are at the same time interreligious as the focus is on Muslim migrants. Marriages between natives and migrants from countries with a large Muslim majority have been reported as exceptionally low. Further analyses try to find out what is so exceptional about intermarriage between Muslim migrants and natives and devote attention to levels of individual religiosity, conflicting ideas about family life and relationships, premarital sexuality, attitudes about intermarriage and lastly, the role of parents in the matchmaking process. The latter have been understudied in previous research, as it was mostly not able to go beyond socio-demographic variables. My research provides evidence for all of these factors, but in contrast to earlier research, my analyses show for the first time that parental interference and possibly the importance of value transmission through marriage reduce the likelihood to intermarry.
Increasing numbers of second-generation Muslims are highly qualified and locally embedded in today’s European cities. This does not protect them, however, from experiencing discrimination in intergroup encounters in school, at work, or in the street. Taking an approach from local intergroup relations between ethnic minorities and the majority society, and drawing on the TIES surveys (‘The Integration of the European Second generation’) of Turkish and Moroccan Muslims and majority Belgians in Antwerp-Belgium, our research aims (a) to establish minority and majority perspectives on (reverse) personal discrimination, (b) to explore their perceptions of discrimination in different life domains, and (c) to differentiate internally between gender, socio-economic attainments, and local climates. Structural equation models show minority and majority group perspectives on discrimination as situated, gendered and local intergroup encounters in socio-economic and civic domains of life.
This study (N = 234) examined Muslim Canadian young adults’ openness to interfaith dating and
marriage. We extended previous research on interfaith dating by examining the role of mainstream
cultural identification and family connectedness, in addition to religiosity and gender. Participants
reported more openness to dating than marrying a non-Muslim, although the pattern of results was
similar for both. As expected, stronger religious fundamentalism and stronger religious identification
were predictive of less openness toward interfaith dating and marriage. Conversely, stronger
identification with mainstream Canadian culture significantly predicted more personal openness
toward intimate interfaith relationships with a non-Muslim. The role of family connectedness was
indirectly transmitted through religious identification. Finally, being a man was predictive of more
personal openness toward both dating and marrying a non-Muslim. Findings suggest that openness
to interfaith romantic relationships among young Muslim Canadians is affected by multiple factors,
including, but not limited to religious ones.
Most studies on social integration of ethnic minorities focus on the role of segregation, intergroup threat and hostility. The role of parents and the values they try to convey has received much less attention. These may include ideas about the appropriate choice of friends and spouses. Previous studies have shown an impact of parental attitudes and contacts on the interethnic contacts of their school-aged children. But do adult children also reflect parental attitudes in their attitudes and social networking? Parental influence may begin to wane when children become older. This article investigates the influence of parents on their adult children's attitudes and interethnic social contacts. Based on a unique data-set with parent–child dyads from a random sample of Turkish minorities in France, Germany and the Netherlands, I test first, whether parents influence their adult children's attitudes and second, the extent to which the ethnic composition of the social circle of parents affects that of their children. Third, I study how parents' and children's attitudes relate to children's interethnic social contacts. I find that parental attitudes do not have a direct impact on the interethnic social contacts of their children, but that they affect them indirectly through children's attitudes towards intermarriage.
This study explores the way minority ethnic youth in the Netherlands evaluate their sexual experiences, how they frame these experiences in different sexual discourses and how they deal with conflicts between different sexual discourses, both at home and in Dutch society. During 46 narrative interviews, Dutch young people (aged 12-22 years) from different minority ethnic communities shared their sexual histories and their dreams for the future relating to love and sexuality. Different sexual discourses can be identified in the language they used to describe their ideas and their experiences. Young people grow up with a variety of discourses but actively re-shape them according to circumstances and need. In many cases, young people experience a conflict between the discourses of the home and those that are prevalent more generally in Dutch society. Young people's ways of negotiating these contradictory discourses comprise four main strategies: (1) conforming to parents' values, (2) breaking up with parents, (3) leading a double life and (4) integrating competing discourses. By bringing together different sexual discourses and acknowledging diverse strategies, sexual health policies can become more effective in promoting sexual health for minority ethnic youth. Findings from the study add fuel to debate on understanding (sexual) agency among young people, exhibiting the social 'embeddedness' of individual agency.
In this article, we analyze the extent to which Muslims self-identify as French. A common interpretation of Muslim political
attitudes assumes that Islam fundamentally conflicts with mainstream European society and that when Muslims are more attached
to their religion they will be less likely to identify as French. We examine this assumption by exploring whether Muslim national
identification is more strongly related to religiosity or other factors such as socio-economic status, social networks, and
immigrant integration. Our results offer some support for each explanation, but we find that religiosity is not the dominant
force shaping Muslims' attitudes. Instead, factors associated with immigrant integration have the most profound relationship
with Muslim identification. These conclusions are supported by the fact that religiosity and immigrant integration variables
have similar effects on the national identification of Christian immigrants. Our findings suggest that focusing on religiosity
is not the best way to analyze Muslims' attitudes or identities, and that tensions surrounding Muslims' self-identification
with France are likely to decrease in future generations, as immigrant integration proceeds through the increased prevalence
of birth in France, having French citizenship, and French language fluency.
Against the background of contrasting religious versus secular norms in immigrant communities and in Dutch society, this study examines how religious identity expression is related to the social integration of Dutch Muslims within (a) Turkish or Moroccan minority groups and (b) Dutch majority groups. Using nationally representative survey data (N = 2,027), we distinguish religious identification from religious practice (worship and dietary practices) and assertion (support for the role of religion in politics and society) as different forms of religious expression. Structural equation models confirm that minority group contact supports and, conversely, majority group contact suppresses religious practice and assertion. In line with religion as social identity, this result is partly because Dutch Muslims with more minority contacts identify more strongly with their religion, whereas those with more majority contacts identify less strongly. As found in a social capital approach, social integration also directly influences religious expression, especially within the most cohesive Turkish minority group.
Discourses often uncover underlying social boundaries related to concepts such as ethnicity, gender and religion. By applying an intersectional approach, this article shows how the gendering of ethno-religious boundaries is central in the narratives of parents of Belgian, Italian and Moroccan origin, living in Flanders, Belgium. These processes are extremely salient when discourses on partner choice are discussed, as is the focal point in the current study. The construction of boundaries and identities are deeply influenced by dominant social representations. The results show how the construction and justification of boundaries can also have restrictive consequences for individuals. Parents want to restrict daughters for their own good, and exogamy seems to be the prerogative of sons.
This chapter reviews the last 15 years of research inspired by social dominance theory, a general theory of societal group-based inequality. In doing so, we sketch the broad outlines of the theory and discuss some of the controversies surrounding it, such as the “invariance hypothesis” regarding gender differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) and the effect of social context on the expression of SDO. We also discuss the central role of gender in the construction and maintenance of group-based inequality, and review some of the new research inspired by the social dominance perspective. Finally, we identify and discuss some of the most important theoretical questions posed by social dominance theory that are yet to be researched.
This study conducted among Christian, Muslim, and nonreligious early adolescents living in the Netherlands used intergroup theory for examining religious group evaluations. There was evidence for a religious group divide with a third of the Christian and nonreligious participants explicitly indicating negative feelings toward Muslims, and Muslim children having negative feelings toward Christians, nonbelievers, and Jews. Furthermore, the Muslim early adolescents had high religious in-group identification and higher identification was associated with more negative feelings toward nonbelievers and Jews. In addition, the results show that increased opportunities in school for contact between early adolescents from different religious and nonreligious groups contributes to more positive group relations. It is argued that the pattern of results is in agreement with an intergroup perspective in which the role of the broader social context and the concrete situation is taken into account.
This article draws on a two‐year study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of South Asian parents and their children’s views on the school experience (Parents, Children and the School Experience: Asian Families’ Perspectives – Grant Reference: R000239671). The article focuses on an aspect of the young people’s school experience and reports that teachers constructed the students’ behaviour in terms of ‘Asian gang culture’. Teachers frequently criticised the South Asian students for not mixing with their white peers, not going on school trips, and not participating in extra‐curricular activities. The authors discuss this in relation to notions of integration, teachers’ perceptions of gendered and ethnic differences and issues of symbolic violence. The emphasis was on the students integrating into the dominant culture: in terms of conforming and knowing their place. In this sense the young people do not see a place for themselves. Ethnocentrism together with racist harassment serves to relegate the young people to the margins, where they have little choice but to remain, not least for fear of their safety.
Using longitudinal data, this paper analyses the effect of different forms of social capital on the likelihood of employment and the occupational status of first generation immigrant men in Germany. This allows me to examine to what extent social capital of the bonding and the bridging types yield different returns. The study considers how contacts with natives, co-ethnic ties and family-based social capital are beneficial to the economic position of immigrant men. Random effects and fixed effects models show that strong inter-ethnic ties are beneficial both for employment and occupational status. There is no effect of co-ethnic ties and family-based social capital. It is concluded that, when using panel data, bridging social capital contributes to a better economic position and bonding social capital does not.
Individual preferences for same-ethnic friends contribute to persistent segregation of adolescents’ friendship networks. Yet, we know surprisingly little about the mechanisms behind ethnic homophily. Prior research suggests that ethnic homophily is ubiquitous, but a social identity perspective indicates that strong ingroup identification drives ingroup favoritism. Combining a social identity perspective with a relational approach, we ask whether the presumed increased homophily of high identifiers extends to all ingroup members, or whether it is conditional on the strength of same-ethnics’ identification. We propose that the strength of ethnic identification affects not only how much individuals desire same-ethnic friends, but also how attractive they are as potential friends to others. Fitting stochastic actor-oriented models to German adolescent school-based network panel data, we find that ethnic homophily is driven by an interplay of peers’ ethnic identification: high identifiers befriend same-ethnic peers who share their strong ethnic identification, while excluding same-ethnic low identifiers. Low identifiers, in turn, tend to avoid befriending inter-ethnic high identifiers. Our relational approach reveals that ethnic homophily is hardly ubiquitous but requires strong identification of both parties of a (potential) friendship.
The diversity induced by migration flows to Western societies has continued to generate scholarly attention, and a sizable new body of work on immigrant incorporation has been produced in the past ten years. We review recent work in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. Despite differences between the United States as a settler society and Western Europe as a composite of classic nation states, we find an overall pattern of intergenerational assimilation in terms of socioeconomic attainment, social relations, and cultural beliefs. We then qualify this perspective by considering sources of disadvantage for immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the lack of legal status is particularly problematic; in Europe, by contrast, religious difference is the most prominent social factor complicating assimilation. We proffer several general propositions summarizing mechanisms embedded in purposive action, social networks, cultural difference, and institutional structures that drive the interplay of blending and segregating dynamics in the incorporation of immigrants and their children. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology Volume 45 is July 30, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
This article presents evidence of ethnic discrimination in the recruitment process from a field experiment conducted in the Danish labour market. In a correspondence experiment, fictitious job applications were randomly assigned either a Danish or Middle Eastern-sounding name and sent to real job openings. In addition to providing evidence on the extent of ethnic discrimination in the Danish labour market, the study offers two novel contributions to the literature more generally. First, because a majority of European correspondence experiments have relied solely on applications with male aliases, there is limited evidence on the way gender and ethnicity interact across different occupations. By randomly assigning gender and ethnicity, this study suggests that ethnic discrimination is strongly moderated by gender: minority males are consistently subject to a much larger degree of discrimination than minority females across different types of occupations. Second, this study addresses a key critique of previous correspondence experiments by examining the potential confounding effect of socio-economic status related to the names used to represent distinct ethnic groups. The results support the notion that differences in callbacks are caused exclusively by the ethnic traits. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
Young men often make up a large share of newly arriving immigrant populations. How this impacts attitudes is unclear: young men have the potential to make substantial economic contributions, meaning attitudes toward them may be more favorable. However, young men may be seen as security and cultural threats, exacerbating anti-immigrant attitudes. I conduct a conjoint experiment on a sample of 2,100 Germans, asking them to evaluate groups of immigrants with randomly varying shares of young men. The results show that groups of immigrants with a large share of young men receive substantially less support. Further tests reveal that respondents also perceive of these groups as likely to pose security and cultural threats; there is no evidence that young men are viewed as having high economic potential. These results have implications for the importance of economic, cultural, and security concerns in underpinning attitudes toward immigrants.
This article contributes to the study of Muslim men and masculinities by drawing attention to the usefulness of exploring the under-researched relational, emotional and intimate dimensions of Muslim men’s lives. It argues that exploring personal life facilitates critical examination of Muslim men’s affective ties by casting light on their emotional and intimate lives, beyond a narrow focus on negative emotionality. It highlights the private sphere as a domain of social life that has been neglected in understanding Muslim men’s lived experience. The article presents findings from research exploring the impact on Muslim men of a child sexual exploitation crisis in Rotherham. Drawing on interviews with men to foreground their accounts, it shows how focusing on personal life enhances understanding of changing gender and generational relations in Muslim families and shifting masculine roles and identities. It highlights the impact of experiences of racialisation on men’s personal lives within the private domain.
This study examines gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents in Germany and attempts to explain why adolescents of Turkish, former Yugoslavian, and Eastern European origin tend to have more traditional attitudes than their native peers. In order to do so, it combines a migrant–native comparative approach that highlights the impact of religiosity and host society integration with an intergenerational transmission perspective that emphasises the continuity of gender role attitudes across generations. The empirical analysis relies on dyadic parent–adolescent data (N = 2744) from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. It demonstrates the importance of incorporating intergenerational transmission processes to fully understand attitude differences between natives and migrants: a substantial part of native–migrant gaps in gender role attitudes can be attributed to migrant parents’ more traditional attitudes and a strong transmission of attitudes across generations. Once intergenerational transmission and the influence of religiosity and integration have been accounted for, the remaining differences between gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents are small.
In contemporary Western Europe, both scholars and the public discuss the consequences of a rising share of a comparatively religious Muslim population for societal coexistence. Yet we know surprisingly little about how religion and religiosity shape social relationships. Focusing on adolescents’ friendship networks, we examine how religion and religiosity affect intra- and inter-group friendship choices. While youth should generally prefer to befriend peers of the same religion, this religious homophily should be more pronounced for highly than for less religious youth. Against the background of rising anti-Muslim attitudes in Europe, Christian and non-religious youth further may be particularly hesitant to befriend Muslim peers, and especially highly religious ones. We analysed three waves of German longitudinal friendship network data from ethnically diverse schools. Regarding intra-group friendships, while Muslim youth indeed preferred to befriend Muslim peers, Christian youth displayed no evidence of religious homophily. For Muslims, higher levels of religiosity further increased this preference. Regarding inter-group friendships, irrespective of their individual religiosity, Muslim youth were socially divided from their non-Muslim peers, as both Christian and nonreligious youth were reluctant to befriend Muslim peers. In sum, in the German context, religion itself rather than religiosity seems to matter most for adolescents’ friendship choices.
This paper compares two aspects of the social reproduction of religion: parent-to-child transmission, and religious homogamy. Analysis of a survey of immigrants in France shows that for parent-to-child transmission, immigrant status/generation is not the central variable ? rather, variation is across religions with Muslim families showing high continuity. Immigrant status/generation does directly matter for partner choice. In Christian and Muslim families alike, religious in-partnering significantly declines in the second generation. In turn, the offspring of religiously non-homogamous families is less religious. For Muslim immigrants this points to the possibility of a non-trivial decline in religiosity in the third generation.
I use data from the 2011 Pew Survey (N = 1,033) to examine the prevalence and correlates of perceived discrimination across Muslim American racial/ethnic groups. Asian Muslims report the lowest frequency of perceived discrimination than other Muslim racial/ethnic groups. Nearly, all Muslim racial/ethnic groups have a few times higher odds of reporting one or more types of perceived discrimination than white Muslims. After controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, the observed relationships persist for Hispanic Muslims but disappear for black and other/mixed race Muslims. Women are less likely than men to report several forms of discrimination. Older Muslims report lower rates of perceived discrimination than younger Muslims. White Muslim men are more likely to report experiencing discrimination than white, black and Asian Muslim women. The findings highlight varying degrees of perceived discrimination among Muslim American racial/ethnic groups and suggest examining negative implications for Muslims who are at the greatest risk of mistreatment.
Introduction British Muslim young men occupy a sensationalised and demonised position in contemporary British society - indeed, we might describe them as the new folk devils of the British imagination. Popular discursive constructions of British Muslim young men coalesce around homogenised and stereotypical representations of dangerous and angry fundamentalists who engage in burning books (the Rushdie affair), rioting (e.g. in Bradford, Oldham) and planning, advocating and/or carrying out acts of terrorism (11 September 2001, 7 July 2005, summer 2006). In short, they are popularly feared as the archetypal ‘outsiders within’ - those who cannot be trusted and whose loyalty to the nation-state, and to the values and ideology of ‘Britishness’, cannot be counted upon. These representations and panics raise important social justice questions. Extending Skeggs' (2004) theorisation of the representation of working-class subjects in public life, I would argue that British Muslims are being increasingly subjected to a narrow ‘forced telling of the self’ within popular and media discourse. For instance, it has become a common practice within news and current affairs reporting to parade an endless series of Muslim individuals, spokespersons and community representatives who are asked to explain their identities and to define their own positions vis-à-vis the various events and issues in question. This is not limited to Muslim men, as witnessed in autumn 2006, when fierce debates erupted around the wearing of the niqab, a debate in which Muslim women have been impelled to explain and situate themselves and their religious identities/practices through a simplistic, narrow dichotomy (wearing the veil vs not wearing it).
Numerous studies have shown that even after controlling for relevant socio-economic background variables, the labour market position of immigrant minorities lags considerably behind that of natives. The label ‘ethnic penalties’ is often used to denote these gaps and reflects the idea that differences between natives and immigrants that cannot be explained by demographic and human capital variables must be due to discrimination by employers. I challenge this interpretation by looking at the role of sociocultural variables such as language proficiency, interethnic social ties and gender values as alternative sources of unexplained ethnic group differences. I use the data from the cross-national ‘Eurislam’ survey of four immigrant ethnic groups of predominantly Muslim belief—Turks, Moroccans, former Yugoslav Muslims and Pakistani—as well as native ethnics. The results indicate that once sociocultural variables are taken into account, differences in rates of labour market participation and unemployment between native ethnics and the Muslim groups are strongly reduced and in many cases become statistically insignificant. Using mediation analyses, I demonstrate that the findings do not fit a scenario that assumes that the causality primarily flows from labour market participation to sociocultural assimilation rather than the other way around.
In the Netherlands, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims have become polarized around issues of religion and gender. On the basis of a dataset with 669 parent–child dyads, we assess attitudes among the second generation concerning the gendered division of paid work and family responsibilities, that is, gender ideology, as compared to their parents. The aggregate picture indicates movement toward more egalitarian attitudes, indicating mainstream assimilation. At the same time, a sizeable subgroup turns out to be more traditional than their parents, indicative of reactive ethnicity. Embeddedness in the ethnic community and education are shown to explain part of these divergent patterns.
This article reveals that while Muslims have a surprisingly good reputation in Western Europe, the wearing of the headscarf in schools is opposed by a large majority of people. Several arguments are developed in this article to explain why people make a distinction between Muslims as a group and legislation on their religious practices. While attitudes towards Muslims vary little across countries, there is a lot of variation in levels of opposition to the headscarf. It appears that the more state and church are separated in a country or the more a state discriminates against religious groups the more opposed people are to allowing new religious practices in schools. At the individual level this article will test the extent to which general xenophobic attitudes, liberal values, and religiosity help us understand why attitudes differ. The article will show, among other things, that religious people are opposed to Muslims but not the rules that allow them to practice their religion. On the other hand, people with liberal values are tolerant of Muslims as a group but feel torn when it comes to legislation on religious practices such as the wearing of the headscarf, which for some people stands for the illiberal values of Islam. Data from a survey in six Western European countries will be analysed. Despite all the heated political debates this is one of the first studies that analyses attitudes towards Muslim immigrants across a number of countries, and for the first time attitudes towards Muslims as a group and legislation on the headscarf are compared.
As in Many other Countries Around the World, A Gender based double standard (one set of social and moral norms governing the male and another governing the female) has always existed in Iran. In modern Iran, prior to the 1978-79 revolution, the traditional Iranian family was patriarchal and patrilineal. From early childhood, members of each gender were initiated into their respective roles and were socialized to a double standard of sexual morality. For instance, women who sought and experienced the same privileges of sexual freedom as men were not respected, but rather became victims of social ostracism. Women suffered from many social disadvantages, and their position, in most cases, was far from equal to men's.
Because pre-revolutionary Iran was a traditional society, the issues of dating and intimate relationships, especially for young women, were sensitive. Some of the sharpest contrasts between Western values and traditional Iranian values existed in these areas.
Using data from a school survey of N=1190 children at the age of 10 in N=20590 directed dyads and p* models for network data, we investigate the impact of religion on migrant and native children's friendships and visits at home. Deriving hypotheses from the formation of religious in-groups, our analyses show that having the same or a different religious affiliation as well as regularly attending worship has an impact on having a tie in friendship networks. Visiting alter's home depends more on similarity in worship attendance. These results indicate that religious diversity can be an additional factor increasing actual levels of immigrant-native segregation in social networks.
This study focuses on the partner choices of immigrant adolescents who are involved in a romantic relationship. We formulate hypotheses about the effect of immigrants' preferences, parental influence and structural effects of the school and neighbourhood on the likelihood of dating a native partner versus a non-native partner. Using unique data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) which was conducted in over 100 schools in each country among adolescents of around 14-year-old and their parents (n = 1896), we show, first, that more conservative immigrant adolescents are less likely to date a native partner. In addition, parental influence is demonstrated by gender-specific effects of religious background and by positive effects of parents' social and structural integration. Meeting opportunities with natives at school and in the neighbourhood are prominent factors in explaining the choice of dating a native partner.
This wide-ranging and accessible book examines race in relation to social divisions such as ethnicity, gender and class. It provides a major new approach to studying the boundaries of race, and will be of interest to students of sociology, ethnic studies and gender studies. © 1992 Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis. All rights reserved.
This paper investigates religiosity among immigrant children in four European countries: England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Drawing on major strands of theories in the sociology of religion and of migration, we analyse intergenerational change in religiosity within immigrant families of different religious affiliation and test how far common arguments can contribute to explaining existing patterns. We overcome several challenges and shortcomings in this field by studying adolescent‐parent dyads. Using strictly comparable and comprehensive data from the new Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), we find a considerable stability of religiosity or even an increase therein within Muslim immigrant families, in contrast to Christian immigrant families, whose religiosity declines over generations. This finding is astonishingly stable across the four countries. Our analyses furthermore suggest that interfamilial change in religiosity is only weakly related to assimilation processes in other domains of life.
Research on adolescents’ interethnic relations indicates that parents can resist their children's ethnic outgroup relations. However, there is little insight into the underlying reasons for this. The current study examines how cultural groups differ in parental acceptance of their children's outgroup relations, and it examines the role of perceived family reputation vulnerability as well as parents’ religiosity. In addition, it was investigated whether parental acceptance of outgroup relations differs for different outgroups. This was studied among Turkish (n = 49) and Dutch (n = 73) parents of first grade middle school students. Parental acceptance of intimate ethnic outgroup relations was lower among Turkish–Dutch than among Dutch parents. This difference was explained by group differences in perceived family reputation vulnerability and religiosity. It is concluded that concerns about culture transmission and family reputation are related to parental acceptance of outgroup contact, which explains differences in parental acceptance between cultural groups. In addition, status considerations seem to explain differences in parental acceptance of their children's close contacts with different outgroups.
This chapter talks about the relationship between Filipino immigrant parents and their daughters. It argues that gender is a key to immigrant identity, and a way for racialized immigrants to claim cultural superiority over the dominant group. The author uses epigraphs, or statements, by a Filipina immigrant mother and her second-generation Filipina daughter. These suggest that the virtuous Filipina daughter is partially constructed on the concept of White women as sexually immoral. The chapter also shows that their enforced “morality” and the sexuality of women are essential to the structuring of social inequalities. These narratives indicate that racialized groups also criticize the morality of White women as a resistance strategy, or a means of asserting a morally superior public face to the dominant society. The chapter is primarily concerned with understanding the actions of immigrant parents instead of the reactions of their second-generation daughters.
It is the contention of this paper that Muslim women in West Yorkshire, like their male counterparts, place an inordinate trust in the ability of the educational system to act as a means of delivering their children from the drudgery of poverty. Although in practice there is not enough evidence to support their optimism, women of all backgrounds, regardless of their own levels of educational achievement, seek to promote their children within the school and further educational systems and are increasingly doing so for their daughters as well as their sons. In a three generational study carried out by the author, it is evident that daughters of Muslim immigrant families, though aware of intense racism and poor prospects, are doing their best to comply with these parental wishes.
What happens to the religious identity, belief, and practice of Muslims who settle in Western countries? Do they, or their children and subsequent generations, gradually become more secular? Or do they react against the dominant ethos and perceived prejudice by becoming more religious? We review recent research that touches on these questions. Most Muslim immigrants outside the United States come from rural areas of less developed countries where religiosity is higher than in the receiving societies. Residence in areas of high coethnic concentration, support from religious communities, and religious endogamy help to maintain religious commitment. The situation is more complicated for the second generation. Western culture has an influence, but structural integration does not necessarily reduce religiosity. Some children of immigrants try to follow a “real” Islam that has been purified of culturally specific practices. Hostility toward Muslims may lead some to react by increasing their own religious involv...
Similarity breeds connection. This principle - the homophily principle - structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
This article investigates social and cultural aspects of "teenage life" among south Asian girls in Britain, particularly their experiences of relationships with boys and the extent to which they become involved in sexual activities. In-depth interviews were carried out with teenage girls and young women from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds and a comparative group of white British girls, in four schools and one college in the South and West Health Authority Region. Asian teenage girls conformed to different behavioural norms than their white peers. They were influenced by cultural traditions, religious obligations, family loyalties and community expectations. Few Asian girls became involved in relationships or sexual activities. However, once removed from the parental home, the influence of parents and their Asian community, their social and sexual behaviour changes; they experience an independence which often involves relationships and sexual activities. In contrast, white teenage girls experienced a different set of pressures which came from peers and boyfriends and accepted involvement with boys and sexual activity.