Paper for next Irtiqa Friday Journal Club

by Salman Hameed

In the last journal club, we looked at the religiosity of Turkish and Moroccan-Dutch Muslims in the Netherlands. We will continue on a similar theme and look at the religiosity of immigrants across Europe in a paper by Tubergen and Sindradóttir: The Religiosity of Immigrants in Europe: A Cross-National Study. It was published in the Journal of Scientific Study of Religion in June 2011 (Volume 50, Issue 2, pages 272–288). As usual, if you don't have access to the paper and are interesting in reading it, you can drop me an e-mail and I can send you a pdf copy.

Here is the abstract:

The Religiosity of Immigrants in Europe: A Cross-National Study

by Tubergen and Sindradóttir

This study examines cross-national differences in the religiosity of immigrants in Europe utilizing three different measures of religiosity: religious attendance, praying, and subjective religiosity. Hypotheses are formulated by drawing upon a variety of theories—scientific worldview, insecurity, religious markets, and social integration. The hypotheses are tested using European Social Survey data (2002–2008) from more than 10,000 first-generation immigrants living in 27 receiving countries. Multilevel models show that, on the individual level, religiosity is higher among immigrants who are unemployed, less educated, and who have recently arrived in the host country. On the contextual level, the religiosity of natives positively affects immigrant religiosity. The models explain about 60 percent of the cross-national differences in religious attendance and praying of immigrants and about 20 percent of the cross-national differences in subjective religiosity. 

I will post my comments on the paper on Friday and will be looking forward to your input as well (for comments, please do read the paper or at least skim through it).

Check out past Irtiqa Journal Clubs here.