Religion, Immigration, and Refugees – Editorial to the Special Issue

International humanitarian crises face millions of refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants around the world. Ongoing crises exist in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, South Sudan, Congo, Burundi, Nigeria, and among the Rohingya (in Myanmar) crossing into Bangladesh. But also the potential host countries, especially in Europe, face major problems, not least because of growing xenophobia in the population.

Inspired, in part, by the breadth, depth, and immediacy of immigration crises around the world, and in an effort to better understand the roles of religion and spirituality, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion issued an open call for papers. The five peer-reviewed articles in this special issue provide a window into the difficulties that immigrants and refugees face. Of these five peer-reviewed articles, four focus on predictors of negative attitudes toward refugees, immigrants, or asylum seekers using meta-analytic methods (Deslandes & Anderson), experimental manipulation of contextual religious cues (Ben-Nun Bloom), implicit measures (Cowling & Anderson), and traditional self-report methods (Carlson). One article in this special issue focuses on the well-being of refugees and immigrants (Çetin).

Using traditional survey methods, Çetin found a positive relationship between measures of religious participation and social inclusion (r = .27) among Muslim refugees and immigrants in Turkey. A majority of the refugees surveyed were from Syria. A small, indirect effect of religious participation through social inclusion on existential well-being was also observed. Although the sample was fairly small (n = 97) and obtained in language classes, the findings speak to the importance of religious participation for social connectedness and well-being among refugees striving to adapt to a new language and culture.

Among Jewish passersby in Jerusalem, Ben-Nun Bloom and her collaborators found “that two contextual religious cues in noisy, real-world settings were associated with decreased anti-immigration attitudes toward members of religious ingroups and that these cues mostly had no effect on attitudes toward religious outgroups” (p. 84) and that “the ingroup favoritism effect of the contextual cue was moderated by participants’ religiosity, such that these effects were found among more (but not less) religious participants” (p. 89). As the authors discuss, these studies are important because they show effects of religious priming in a unique location (Jerusalem), among an understudied religious group (Jews), and in a nonstudent sample. More research using experimental methods in real-world contexts across world religions and cultures is welcome.

Carlson and her colleagues found unique associations between self-reported negative feelings toward Syrian refugees and dimensions of personality, religious commitment, and religious orientations among a large convenience sample of Americans (n = 1,205). Respondents self-reported their positive and negative feelings toward Syrian refugees (e.g., admiration, acceptance, hostility, superiority). At the bivariate level, self-reported Agreeableness was the strongest correlate with negative expressed feelings toward Syrian refugees (r = −.34). When the Big Five personality dimensions were statistically controlled, a very small correlation was found between religious commitment and the emotional component of prejudice (r = .13). When personality dimensions were statistically controlled, Quest religious orientation (β = −.27) and extrinsic religious orientation (β = .22) were also linearly related to negative expressed feelings toward Syrian refugees. The religious orientations did not appear to correlate with prejudice until the Big Five personality dimensions were statistically controlled. A future study could attempt to replicate these findings and investigate if one of the personality dimensions (e.g., Agreeableness) suppresses the relationship between dimensions of religious orientation and prejudice toward Syrian refugees.

Cowling and Anderson examined prejudice toward asylum seekers among Christian and Muslim participants in Malaysia (and toward Muslim and Christian asylum seekers). They found that Muslims expressed more negative attitudes toward asylum seekers than did Christians. In Study 2, they experimentally manipulated the religious identity of the asylum seeker and found evidence of religious intergroup prejudice on an explicit measure of prejudice (i.e., Malaysians reported more negative attitudes toward asylum seekers who were a different religion than they were). However, more implicit prejudice toward asylum seekers was found among Christians than Muslims. Use of both implicit and explicit measures of attitudes is fairly unique in studies about religion and prejudice. A biopsychosocial approach to religion and intergroup evaluation could help identify how relatively automatic underlying psychophysiological processes contribute to the expression of attitudes on explicit measures or behaviors in meaningful contexts.

Finally, Deslandes and Anderson reported a meta-analytic effect that “religiously affiliated samples report more negative attitudes than non-religious affiliated samples, and this effect was often stronger when the target groups were refugees rather than immigrants” (p. 128). Also, across studies, it appears that Muslims expressed more negative attitudes toward migrants than Christians. Recall that Cowling and Anderson also found that Muslims in Malaysia expressed more negative attitudes toward Christians than Christians in Malaysia did toward Muslims. This tendency needs to be investigated more carefully—perhaps from social identity or system justification perspectives. One possibility is that individuals in the culture’s majority religious culture derogate individuals in the culture’s minority religions. For example, Europeans were more likely to accept Christian than Muslim asylum seekers (Bansak, Hainmueller, & Hangartner, 2016). In some areas Muslims are the target of discrimination moreso than people in other world religions (see the Rohingya emergency summarized on the United Nations Refugee Agency website: http://unhcr.org).

Taken together, these special issue articles highlight the role that religion plays in immigration. This is not the first special issue about immigration, nor will it be the last. For example, the Journal of Social Issues (December 2018) published an outstanding volume about “the reception of immigrants and refugees in Western countries: facilitators and inhibitors of positive relations” (see Jetten & Esses, 2018; https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15404560/74/4). Simply put, religion is one of several factors that facilitate and inhibit the welcoming of immigrants and refugees in Europe (see Bansak et al., 2016; Streib & Klein, 2018) and in other countries around the world. Religion and religious dimensions appear to account for some variability in attitudes toward immigrants.

In closing, as we consider converging evidence for religious ingroup favoritism (Ben-Nun Bloom) and religious intergroup prejudice (Cowling & Anderson; Deslandes & Anderson), I encourage readers not to overgeneralize from relatively small samples in one country to an entire population. It’s likely a mistake to assume that all individuals in a majority world religion are prejudiced toward members of the nondominant religion or lower status groups. However, across diverse cultures, a reliable tendency appears to be that members of majority groups disparage members of minority groups (whether a group’s identity is defined by ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, politics, sexual orientation, or another aspect of identity).

I could go on, but instead I will finish by commending the authors of these articles on jobs well done. Along with my colleagues on the editorial board, we hope you find this special issue educational, empowering, and perhaps even inspiring.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.