Valerie A. Lewis’s research while affiliated with Dartmouth College and other places

Scholarly and public discourses on Muslim immigrants in Europe have questioned if Islam is an impediment to sociocultural adaptation and whether Muslims are a distinctive group in their religiosity and social values. We use a new survey of 480 British Muslims in conjunction with the British Social Attitudes Survey to examine differences between Muslim and non-Muslim Britons on religiosity (practice, belief, salience) and moral and social issues regarding gender, abortion, and homosexuality. Muslims are more religious than other Britons, including both British Christians and religious “nones.” Muslims also are more conservative than other Britons across the range of social and moral attitudes. Multivariate analysis shows, however, that much of the difference on moral issues is due to socioeconomic disadvantage and high religiosity among Muslims. Although being a highly religious group in an otherwise secular country renders Muslims distinctive, factors that predict social conservatism among all Britons—high religiosity and low SES—apply similarly to Muslims.

While in the American context religion is seen to facilitate immigrant incorporation by providing both spiritual and socioeconomic resources, in Europe high levels of religiosity are theorized as a barrier for immigrant incorporation into the secular mainstream. This is particularly salient for Islam, Europe's largest minority religion. In this study, we use the 2008–2009 England and Wales Citizenship Survey to compare levels and predictors of religiosity between Muslim and non‐Muslim first‐generation immigrants and their native‐born counterparts. Overall, Muslims are more religious than non‐Muslims. The results show that among non‐Muslims, the foreign‐born are significantly more religious than the native‐born; among Muslims, however, nativity has no impact on religiosity, indicating the native‐born are as highly religious as the foreign‐born. Additionally, although education is associated with reduced religiosity among non‐Muslim immigrants and native‐born, for Muslims it has no significant impact. Muslims across diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds show strong religious adherence. Results suggest that pathways to secular, mainstream norms do not operate in the same manner across Muslim and non‐Muslim immigrant groups.

A substantial literature has found that religiosity is positively related to individuals' civic engagement and informal helping behavior. Concurrently, social networks as sources of information and encouragement have been suggested as the mechanism underlying phenomena including successful job searches, improved health and greater subjective well-being. In this paper we use data from the Portraits of American Life Study (PALS) to examine whether religiously based social networks explain the well-established relationship between religion and civic engagement. We test potential mechanisms including beliefs, affiliation, and social networks, and we find that having a strong network of religious friends explains the effect of church attendance for several civic and neighborly outcomes. We suggest this phenomenon may exist in other, non-religious, spheres that also produce strong friendship networks.

Universities often promote their diversity as a selling point, but are students of different races at these universities integrated socially? Using theories on social energy, I examine racial segregation among university students. Quantitative data were collected on student residence patterns and social groupings formed at lunch tables at a case study university. In addition, interviews were conducted with 25 students. Students are substantially more segregated than chance predicts. Blacks and Hispanics are particularly segregated. Interviews reveal that these students spend large amounts of social energy coping with prejudice and discrimination as well as functioning in a student culture they find unwelcoming and foreign. Social energy drains on minority students from discrimination and an unwelcoming campus culture reduce energy left for interracial interaction, making these racial groups more segregated. The study highlights the need for understanding segregation as a function of the interaction of out-group preferences, in-group preferences, and the larger social context.

The debate about racial residential preferences has two open questions. First, are neighborhood racial preferences truly racial, or is race a proxy for socio-economic factors? Second, are in-group or out-group preferences more salient? Using the Houston Area Survey, we employ a factorial experiment to assess the effect of racial composition on neighborhood desirability independent of crime, school quality and property values. We survey whites, blacks and Hispanics to examine in-group vs. out-group preferences. Results show that independent of proxies, whites find neighborhoods less attractive as the proportion black or Hispanic increases; the proportion Asian has no impact. Racial composition has little effect on Hispanics' and blacks' neighborhood preferences. We find no evidence of in-group preferences; rather, results suggest that whites express negative out-group preferences toward black and Hispanic neighborhoods.