Explaining religious differences in immigrants' gender role attitudes: the changing impact of origin country and individual religiosity

Abstract

Religion is often perceived as one of the main barriers to immigrant integration in Europe. By focusing on the contested area of immigrants' gender role attitudes, this study analyses data of first- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origin countries and of different religious affiliations in comparison to the native population. It shows that higher levels of religiosity can explain immigrants' more traditional attitudes to some extent, but that origin country socialization acts as an important additional determinant of attitudes of the first generation. Among second-generation migrants, only Muslims continue to hold more traditional attitudes. Acculturation for longer-staying migrants is partly explained by declining religiosity, with some evidence for a decoupling of attitudes from religious beliefs among female migrants in particular. Intergenerational change, on the other hand, cannot be attributed to a decline in the role of religiosity.

Keywords:

• acculturation
• gender
• immigration
• integration
• Islam
• religion

Notes

1. Gender roles are understood here as the normative expectations of the roles and behaviours that men and women should engage in. They are not considered to be fixed, but rather constructed and maintained through routine behaviours (West and Zimmerman 1987). Gender roles are frequently articulated as ‘difference’ rather than a hierarchy. However, the emphasis on the role of women in the private sphere maintains inequalities in access to decision-making positions and economic resources (Charles 2011).

2. EU fifteen countries, EFTA states Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, nine new member states Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia.

3. Models not presented here that use the GDI or an attitudinal measure based on the World Value Survey instead of the GEM show very similar results.

4. Models estimated without these missing values show highly comparable results, indicating that this substitution did not bias results.

5. This finding adds to the current debate about the relative stability and even revival of religiosity among the second generation (Diehl and Koenig 2009) versus its decline between first and second generations (see Maliepaard, Lubbers, and Gijsberts 2010; Smits, Ruiter, and van Tubergen 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antje Röder

ANTJE RÖDER is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin.