Decline, Revival, Change? Religious Adaptations among Muslim and Non-Muslim Immigrant Origin Youth in Norway

Jon Horgen Friberg,Erika Braanen Sterri

doi:10.1177/0197918320986767

Abstract

This article explores religious adaptation among immigrant-origin youth in Norway, using the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in Norway (CILS-NOR). To capture different dimensions of religious change, we distinguish between 1) level of religiosity, measured by religious salience and religious practices, and 2) social forms of religious belief, measured as the level of rule orientation and theological exclusivism. We compare immigrant-origin youth in Norway with young people in their parents’ origin countries, using the World Value Survey. We then compare immigrant-origin youth who were born in Norway to those who were born abroad and according to their parents’ length of residence in Norway. As expected, immigrant-origin youth from outside Western Europe—and those originating in Muslim countries in particular—were more religious than native and western-origin youth and more rule oriented and exclusivist in their religious beliefs. However, our results suggest that a process of both religious decline and religious individualization is underway among immigrant origin youth in Norway, although this process appears to unfold slower for Muslims than for non-Muslims. The level and social forms of religiosity among immigrant-origin youth are partially linked to their integration in other fields, particularly inter-ethnic friendships. We argue that comparative studies on how national contexts of reception shape religious adaptations, as well as studies aiming to disentangle the complex relationship between religious adaptation and integration in other fields, are needed.

Highlights

Over the last century, Western European populations, which have traditionally been mostly Christian, have undergone a process of secularization (Bruce 2011)
In contrast to the United States, where religious backgrounds and levels of religiosity are more similar between natives and immigrants (Simsek et al 2018), in Europe, this difference between native secularity and the much stronger religiosity of Muslim immigrants in particular has come into focus as a “bright boundary maker” and a major barrier for immigrant integration and acceptance (Alba 2005; Alba and Foner 2015)
While religious individualization is often seen as an alternative to secularization (e.g., Davie 1994), other scholars regard it as a sub-component of the secularization process (Pollack and Pickel 2007)

Summary

Introduction

Western European populations, which have traditionally been mostly Christian, have undergone a process of secularization (Bruce 2011). Chen and Jeung (2012), for example, argue that religion may come to replace ethnicity as the most important identity marker for today’s second-generation Muslim immigrants in Europe, complicating traditional narratives of secularization Based on these alternative theories, we should expect religious beliefs among immigrants and their children to remain vital and measures of religiosity to not necessarily correlate with measures of integration in other domains. Research on children of immigrants suggests that institutional features of Norwegian society—including a generous universal welfare state, low levels of socio-economic inequality, and a publicly funded comprehensive and open education system—may be conducive for upward mobility among the second generation (Hermansen 2016, 2017) This combination of low native religiosity and a favorable socio-economic context of reception should lead us to expect that the forces of secularization, as predicted by the classic secularization and assimilation theses, have a relatively wide scope to play out. We use a dummy indicating those with few or no native friends, based on those who reported “most of them” or “all of them.”

Methods

Findings

Conclusion