Islam, opinion climates, and immigrant party loyalties in Western Europe

Abstract

This article examines how religion – particularly Islam – and anti-immigrant opinion climates influence the patterns of partisanship among first-generation immigrants in Western Europe. It suggests that Muslim propensity to become partisans and identify with Christian democratic parties depends on anti-immigrant opinion climate in their host country. The analyses based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002–2019 in 19 West European democracies reveal that while Muslims are indeed less likely to become partisans in anti-immigrant host societies, the opposite is true in hospitable opinion climates. Moreover, compared to other immigrants, Muslims are less likely to identify with Christian democratic parties, but this relationship is substantively small and limited to highly anti-immigrant countries. In contrast, Muslims are more likely to align with socialist parties at all levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. These findings have important implications for debates on immigrant political integration and the future of electoral alignments in Western Europe.

Keywords:

• Muslims
• Islam
• religion
• partisanship
• anti-immigrant attitudes
• opinion climate

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this study was presented at the workshop ‘Actors without an Arena?’ in Berlin, Germany, 2022. I thank the workshop participants, particularly Sabrina Mayer, Arndt Leininger, Laura Morales, Floris Vermeulen, Johannes Bergh and Nicole Martin, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2016, Europe – defined as 28 EU countries, plus Norway and Switzerland – was home to 25.8 million Muslims (4.9% of total population) (Pew Research Centre 2017).

2 The gap in social issue preferences between Muslims and non-Muslims in Western Europe is particularly pronounced in urban areas, in part because migrants sort themselves into conservative co-ethnic enclaves and also because preferences between Muslims and non-Muslims living nearby have become more polarized (Dancygier 2017: Ch. 3).

3 In Muslim countries, Islamists have often enjoyed an electoral advantage because they are automatically assumed to be more honest, fair, and incorruptible than other political actors (Cammett and Luong 2014: 201).

4 Estimating my models on sub-samples of foreign-born individuals who are more likely to be under-sampled in the ESS data – that is, those who do not speak their host country’s official language at home, non-citizens, and more recent arrivals (that is, those who arrived ten or fewer years ago) – reveals even stronger results with respect to my key variables (Table B7a,b in the Online appendices).

5 The country and survey-round combination produces 134 macro-level units.

6 39% of foreign-born respondents (with at least one foreign-born parent) reported having partisanship compared to 54% of native-born individuals.

7 For information on parties in each party family by country, see the Online appendices (Table A2).

8 I focus on partisanship rather than voting in part because many first-generation immigrants are non-citizens and do not have a legal right to vote in their host country’s national elections. Excluding foreign-born non-citizens (54% of my sample) would reduce the generalizability of my findings to first-generation immigrants. Moreover, partisanship has been shown to play a critical role in motivating electoral behavior, including voting turnout and vote choice (e.g. Campbell et al. 1960; Green et al. 2002) as well as in shaping how people receive and interpret politically relevant information (e.g. Bartels 2002; Jerit and Barabas 2012; Zaller 1992). Thus, because both foreign-born citizens and non-citizens may become partisans in their host country and because, once acquired, partisanship shapes people’s subsequent political behavior and orientations, it constitutes a central aspect of immigrant political integration.

9 See Table A1 in the Online appendices for information by country.

10 I use attendance of religious services to capture the effect of religious institutions above and beyond individual religiosity. Research shows that mosques play an important role in mobilizing Muslims politically because they enable political candidates to reach a large audience quickly and efficiently, and religious leaders often instruct their followers which parties to support (Dancygier 2017: 89).

11 My ideal measure would focus on people’s attitudes towards Muslim immigrants rather than immigrants in general. However, such questions are not available in the ESS data. Moreover, existing research suggests that, as most migrants arriving to Western Europe are Muslim, immigration and Islam have become almost synonymous (Casanova 2007: 61; Cesari 2011; Zolberg and Woon 1999).

12 The results using non-believers as the reference category for Muslims are available in the Online appendices (Table A4).

13 Other variables are held at their means and dichotomous variables at their medians.

14 In comparison, the marginal effect of being male (vs. female) on the probability of having partisanship is .054 points, while moving from the minimum to the maximum value of income (on a scale from zero to three) yields an increase of .049 points.

15 The results using non-Muslims or non-believers as the reference category for Muslims are the same (Table A5a,b in the Online appendices).

16 I focus on the range of pro-immigrant opinion climates where Muslims are more likely to become partisans than Christians, as shown above.

17 These models also include all controls (not shown).

18 Moreover, there is no evidence that being a Muslim interacts with immigrant integration policies in shaping the patterns of partisanship among foreign-born individuals (Table B4c,d).

19 I used the median value among foreign-born respondents to divide the sample.

20 Far-right parties are, of course, an exception.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aida Just

Aida Just is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of Bilkent University. Her research focuses on comparative public opinion, political behaviour and political parties, particularly with respect to the issues of representation, legitimacy and immigrant political integration. [[email protected]]