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AbstractThe key question of this paper is whether social integration, both for minority (migrants) and majority groups (natives) in Western Europe, varies across contexts of exit (ethnic origins) and contexts of reception (Western European countries); and if so, how does religious identity and practice serve to mediate these contextual differences? To investigate this question I draw on the international comparative dataset EURISLAM which includes comparisons between Muslim migrants of ex‐Yugoslav, Turkish, Moroccan and Pakistani origin with majority group members of Belgium, Britain, Germany and Switzerland. Social integration is measured through attitudes towards intermarriage across Muslim/non‐Muslim lines. As results show, ethnic groups differ in their probabilities to approve of intermarriage. Especially migrants from the former Yugoslavia encounter a significantly lower approval of intermarriage by natives. However, approval of intermarriage is closely tied to religiosity. Once religiosity is controlled for, all migrant groups become significantly more positive about intermarriage than natives. Following theories on in‐group favouritism and the homophily principle, we find that religious identity among migrants and practice among both natives and migrants are associated with reluctance to intermarry. Policy makers are advised to take note that contextual differences in perceived social integration of immigrant groups could be confounding other factors, including how differences in religiosity affect social integration. Migrants' significantly higher approval of intermarriage after controlling religiosity implies that policy makers may conceivably have to shift attention from migrants to natives and undertake some action in order to enable a greater intercultural understanding.

What role do intermarriages (i.e., interethnic marriages) play in immigrants' life satisfaction? Only a few studies have addressed this question. While intermarriages are associated with upward mobility for immigrants, they are more likely to get divorced than intramarriages (i.e., marriages among co-ethnics), which suggests either a positive or negative association between intermarriage and immigrants' life satisfaction. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2018), we estimate three-level hybrid models to investigate immigrants' life satisfaction in inter- compared to intramarriages across the family life course. After controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, we find that intermarried immigrants had lower life satisfaction, especially after the birth of their first child. This result suggests that the socialization of children might be a more contentious issue in intermarriages. Overall, these findings illustrate that marriage types and the life course should be considered in future studies on immigrants' life satisfaction and integration.

AbstractThe Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DİTİB) runs more than 900 mosques in Germany and circulates Friday sermons in these mosques. Our analysis provides a nuanced depiction of the link to the homeland by conducting qualitative and quantitative content analyses of 481 sermons from 2011 to 2019. To what extent are relations with Turkey reflected in the sermons? And how is the concept of "home" reflected in those sermons? While homeland-related issues constitute a minority overall, the concept "home" occurs in five different contexts within these sermons: First, sermons directly refer to the homeland and norms connected to it. Second, implicit links are created by discussing events in Turkey. Third, leaving the homeland is described as an integral part of the history of Islam. The last two contexts discuss Germany as a "new home", and build links to Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) through its foundation.

Immigrant children in Europe remain in a position of educational disadvantage. Most studies underscore the role of the parents' education level and their socio-economic status in the educational achievement of their children. This paper adds to the literature by exploring other factors that reduce or contribute to educational inequality among immigrant children. Using research from the United States as a reference point, we specifically examine religiosity as a device for social mobility. Religiosity may be conducive to educational attainment in two ways: (1) religious organizations may provide guidance, support and beneficial social norms that foster the formation of social capital and sanction deviant behaviour; (2) religious participation may induce an internal locus of control that encourages students to focus on learning and resist counterproductive peer influence. Other scholars argue that ethno-religious in-group ties can be a mobility trap when human capital and socio-economic status in an immigrant community is low. Using the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we take a cross-sectional perspective to test these arguments for Christian and Muslim students of immigrant origin living in Germany. Our analyses reveal that religiosity is primarily relevant for Muslims' mathematical test performance. We find that students and parents' religiosity are not necessarily a barrier to good mathematical test performance. Yet our multidimensional measure of religiosity consisting of religious engagement, praying and subjective religiosity allows us to uncover distinct relationships depending on the form of religiosity. Christians' and Muslims' frequency of praying is positively linked to academic performance. Self-rated religiosity, however, is correlated with worse performance. Finally, we find that religious community engagement is related to better academic performance only when the share of co-ethnics in a residential area is low.

This paper studies attitudes toward abortion among the second generation of Turkish migrants and their native counterparts in six western and northern European countries. We focus on Turkish migrants because they not only constitute one of the largest immigrant groups, but are also hypothesised to be culturally and demographically very distinctive from the native group. We used data from the project on "The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES 2007-08)" from Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. The sample consisted of 4,761 respondents aged 18 to 35, 49.5 percent of whom were children of Turkish migrants born in Europe and 51.5 percent belonged to the respective non-migrant comparison groups. Unlike in other surveys, the question regarding attitudes toward abortion in the TIES questionnaire distinguished between "medical" and "non-medical" reasons for abortion, with the possible answers being "never", "in specific cases" and "always". We carried out multinomial logistic regression analyses and investigated three research questions: 1) Departing from assimilation theory, we examined whether the attitudes of migrant descendants differed from those of their non-migrant counterparts. Our results show that both groupings under study expressed a range of attitudes, and that abortion for medical reasons was more accepted than abortion for non-medical reasons. However, second-generation Turks were more likely than the natives to say that they would never accept abortion. 2) We investigated the extent to which the societal climate and the integration context of the respondents influenced their attitudes toward abortion, while assuming that we would find cross-country variation in these attitudes. Our results reveal that among natives, levels of acceptance of abortion are lowest in Germany and highest in Sweden and France. We found a similar country pattern for women and men of the second Turkish generation. 3) We explored the degree to which the respondents' family contexts (childhood backgrounds as well as current socio-demographic variables) influenced their attitudes toward abortion. While these factors partially explained the variation within the Turkish second generation and within the native comparison group, the country differences remained significant. We conclude that attitudes toward abortion in the Turkish second generation are influenced by their family backgrounds, but also by their socialization experiences in European receiving countries. These findings suggest that cultural assimilation processes are occurring, but not to the point where the attitudes of migrant descendants have converged with the attitudes of natives in the respective destination country.

What are the attitudes of Europeans with or without immigrant backgrounds toward abortion? Who opposes or approves of the practice? To investigate these questions, we draw on the EURISLAM survey, which gathered data on nonmigrants and non-Muslims (majority) in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland as well as on Muslim minorities of immigrant origin (from Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, and the former Yugoslavia) who are resident in these European countries. Taking assimilation theory as our point of departure, we hypothesize that the societal climate towards abortion in the country of residence explains the attitudes of the Muslim minority. Regression analyses reveal that minorities partly adopt the country-of-residence attitudes: French residents are the most accepting of abortion, while German residents are the least. We also examine whether the level of religiosity explains denominational differences in attitudes toward abortion. Within and between countries, there remain attitudinal differences between Muslims, Christians, and atheists, and these cannot be entirely explained. These differences are likely to persist across immigrant generations.