Muslims in their European societies of settlement: a comparative agenda for empirical research on socio-cultural integration across countries and groups

ABSTRACT

Islam has become the key site for demarcating boundaries between majority populations and individuals of immigrant origin across Europe. This article outlines a research agenda on the socio-cultural integration of Muslims in their Western European societies of settlement. Integration issues with regard to Muslims have especially tended to focus on cultural and religious aspects. This raises questions. First, does culture/religion matter in shaping Muslims’ relative disadvantage in the socio-economic domain? Alternatively, does Muslim social disadvantage result from majority society's discrimination and bias against religious/cultural difference? Second, religious and cultural difference seems to matter in its own right. Do Muslims identify with their countries of settlement and accept the core liberal democratic values and norms? Or do persistent socio-cultural ‘gaps’ between Muslims and non-Muslims result from intolerance by the majority population? The article outlines a theoretical approach and empirical research programme. The framework is cross-national comparative, including France, Germany, Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. The main data source is a survey that includes four groups of Muslims from distinct countries of origin (Turks, Moroccans, former-Yugoslavians, and Pakistanis) plus a majority sample, which facilitates cross-group, cross-national comparison. This introduction concludes by introducing contributions that address a specific question embedded within the overall framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Muslims
• Islam
• integration
• culture
• religion
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

EurIslam—Finding a Place for Islam in Europe: Cultural Interactions between Muslim Immigrants and Receiving Societies (2008–2012), funded by the European Commission seventh framework programme theme SSH-2007-3.3.1 (Cultural interactions and multiculturalism in European societies) [grant agreement no.: 215863].

Notes

1. This article draws on many outputs from the collective project from the original proposal onwards and so the authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of researchers from the project teams, each of which is represented in the contributions to this Special Issue. In addition, Jonathan Laurence advised the team throughout.

2. For recent contributions on this, among many others, see, Koopmans (2013, 2015), Joppke and Torpey (2013), Alba and Foner (2015a: Ch. 6), Joppke (2015) and van der Noll and Saroglou (2015).

3. EurIslam—Finding a Place for Islam in Europe: Cultural Interactions between Muslim Immigrants and Receiving Societies (2008–2012), funded by the European Commission seventh framework programme theme SSH-2007-3.3.1 (Cultural interactions and multiculturalism in European societies), Grant agreement no.: 215863.

4. Refer to www.eurislam.eu for more information on the survey and for a link through which to download the data and accompanying codebook.

5. See report led by Jacobs (2011) at: http://www.eurislam.eu/var/WP4_Integrated_report_on_survey_analysis.pdf

6. On this indicator research extended also to other countries, see Koopmans, Michalowski, and Waibel (2012).

7. See the contributions by the team members to the Ethnicities Special Issue edited by Cinalli and Giugni (2013).

8. See, for example, Bolognani and Statham (2013) on the case of British Muslim organisations.

9. For full details on response rates, sampling and decisions, and booster samples, see EURISLAM Codebook for Survey-data (WP-III) version by following link at www.eurislam.eu version published 6 October 2015.

10. Subsequently, each paper received at least four anonymous reviews, two selected internally from within the EurIslam team and two from the wider academic community, and has undergone at least two rounds of revision. Note that this rigorous procedure was implemented because one of the co-editors is also editor of the journal. The Editor's own contribution was handled by the Deputy Editor and received four double blind peer reviews.

11. For an exception, see TIES, The Integration of the European Second Generation Project initiated by Crul, Schneider, and Lelie (2012) and Crul (2013): http://www.tiesproject.eu/component/option%2ccom_frontpage/Itemid%2c1/lang%2cen/index.html.