Der religiöse Wandel von Neuzugewanderten in einem säkularen Kontext und seine Beziehung zur sozialen Integration

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines how integration into various sub-domains of the receiving society, including the labor market, informal contacts, attitudes and values, and identification, is associated with religious change among recent Christian and Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands—one of the least religious countries in Europe. The analysis uses data from the New Immigrants to the Netherlands Survey (NIS2NL), a four-wave panel study of recently arrived immigrants from four countries (Bulgaria, Poland, Spain and Turkey). Using latent growth models, we identify the average trajectory of religious participation (service attendance and prayer) and identity (subjective importance of religion) of recent immigrants and examine the role of time-invariant and time-varying explanations for religious change in the early years of resettlement. We find that immigrants’ religious practices increase in the first years after arrival, following a substantial drop from pre-migration participation levels. However, this increase eventually levels off and even reverses with increasing length of stay. We observe a linear but modest decrease in religious identification over time that replicates across all origin groups. In line with expectations derived from assimilation theory, we find that migrants who are employed and hold more liberal attitudes regarding homosexuality, gender relations, divorce and abortion show a greater decrease in religiosity, whereas the opposite is true for those who identify more strongly with their origin country. The findings are remarkably similar for Muslim and Christian newcomers and suggest that all immigrants are susceptible to the secularizing forces of the receiving society. This indicates the potential for the “bright” boundary between Muslim immigrants and secular hosts to become more “blurred” with increasing length of stay and integration into “the mainstream”.