Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies

by Claire L Adida, David D. Laitin, Marie-Anne Valfort

Amid mounting fears of violent Islamic extremism, many Europeans ask whether Muslim immigrants can integrate into historically Christian countries. In a groundbreaking ethnographic investigation of France’s Muslim migrant population, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies explores this complex question. The authors conclude that both Muslim and non-Muslim French must share responsibility for the slow progress of Muslim integration.

“Using a variety of resources, research methods, and an innovative experimental design, the authors contend that while there is no doubt that prejudice and discrimination against Muslims exist, it is also true that some Muslim actions and cultural traits may, at times, complicate their full integration into their chosen domiciles. This book is timely (more so in the context of the current Syrian refugee crisis), its insights keen and astute, the empirical evidence meticulous and persuasive, and the policy recommendations reasonable and relevant.”
―A. Ahmad, Choice

Genres: Politics, Religion

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2016

About the author

Claire L. Adida is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews

[Hadrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title, for one, is grandiose. A more accurate description would be 'A Series of Empirical Studies on Implicit Bias and Hiring Discrimination against Muslims in France'.

The authors conduct a series of empirical studies to see if discrimination against Muslims is separate from racial discrimination. For the purposes of their study, the authors have found a Senegalese ethnic group in France which has both Christian and Muslim members. Their study techniques are partly based on the famous 2003 study on hiring bias based on names and a study based on the Implicit Associations Test, or IAT.

The results are sobering, but not unexpected. Muslims in France experience significant labor market discrimination. There are multiple reasons for this. Some of it comes from the language barrier, some of it comes from differences in gender norms compared to the French majority, which would hurt anyone's chances of employment. But some of that comes from the fact that they are Muslim, in and of themselves.

This of course raises the question if this one ethnic group is a representative sample of the entire Muslim population in France, and whether there are additional effects on hiring and other social perceptions for other groups. But they extrapolate quantifiable effect of hiring discrimination has sobering implications for the Muslim population as a whole. Difficulty in hiring negatively effects employment and median income. The poorer minority feels as though they are second-class citizens, and the majority discriminates against the minority for a lack of education and gainful employment, compounded by resentment against the majority. It is a fluid story they tall, but I wish there was more clarification of the causal mechanisms.

The authors note other factors in an extended appendix - For example, the French constitutional establishment of secularism (laïcité), and the complicated French attitude towards Algeria and its former colonial possessions.

There is also some contention as to if this study's conclusions are entirely applicable outside of France. There is only a cursory mention of other research about the United States, and no mention at all of Canada. Take, for example, different perceptions of different ethnic groups in the United States. Would Bosnian Muslims, for example, be perceived differently from South Asian Muslims? What about Muslims who already have achieved higher education (which makes entry into the United States much easier)? What about Sikhs, who are often mistaken for Muslims?

Even so, this is a study of the hard data of prejudice. The authors produce some concrete policy suggestions - a focus on language learning, for example. But the prejudice against Muslims as they are is a pernicious issue.

[Abdullah M. M. S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, this book is not an interesting read for everyone. It’s an academic study… maybe a PhD thesis. Second, the findings of the book could not be generalized in my opinion. It’s specifically studied the case in France, specifically Senegalese French. In conclusion, I admire how daring the authors were in choosing this topic. I think similar studies should be conducted in different contexts.

[Octa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reads like one extra-long sociology article, so don't go into it hoping for an entertaining read. It is however interesting. Some of the methodology can be criticized (like the use of implicit association tests) but given the current state of the field they are to be expected. Their experimental and control group also made me raise an eyebrow but the choice is well explained in the appendix.
The book tries to have a balanced view of the causes and reasons for discrimination and lack of integration, no issue there.

It however falls short on the proposed solutions. At the state level there is clear evidence that multiculturalist policies worsen the gap between Muslim immigrants and Christian immigrants compared with assimilationist policies (multicultural policies are allowing double nationality, exceptions to dress codes, bilingual education in mother tongue, representation in media, multiculturalism in the school curriculum, etc). Yet none of the proposed solutions take this into account and it is not further discussed. A follow up research would be needed, contrasting French policies with Danemark, the only country to keep a staunch assimilationist policy.

[Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's generous to give this book three stars, and I'm struggling with how to rate it based on what the book is and what its goals might be within the discipline of sociology (which I don't know much about), and what I wanted the book to say, to take a far more critical perspective on host societies' active discrimination towards Muslim populations.

Adida and her team want to write a balanced critique, sharing blame for limited integration and marginalization, between Catholic French-borns with generations of French family members and relatively newer Muslim French. They delve into “rational” and “non-rational” explanations for discrimination. But the book fails to satisfyingly address a fundamental understanding of secularism in French society and law, called laïcité. The concept of laïcité to many people is a solid, unchanging concept dating to the formation of the law in 1905, when the demographics of France were quite different. Many French people of Christian-heritage, and regrettably the authors of this book, are unwilling to acknowledge and change how laïcité works to enshrine the rights of Catholics under the guise of secularism and ignore needs specific to other religions, for example, national holidays at Christmas, Easter and Pentacost, and no holiday for Eid, or the availability of halal meat.

This book attempts to answer the question: why are Muslims less integrated into mainstream French society? A lack of integration has serious implications, particularly economic; higher levels of unemployment and lower income levels are observed among employed populations of Muslims in France. Adida and her fellow sociologists want to determine whether this is in fact true, and thus have devised a study of two populations of Senegalese immigrants who came to France in the 1970s. The populations are similar in origin, education and socio-educational level before immigration, differing only in religion—Christian or Muslim. By controlling the confounding variable of immigration, Adida and her team ask: Is it Islamophobia or xenophobia? It’s worth mentioning that Muslims have lived in France-the current political boundaries of France, not just the empire-in significant numbers since World War I. It is a fundamental issue for whether or not you'll like this book if you believe that the sample group in these experiments can be extended to the population of French Muslims as a whole (keeping in mind that the largest group of Muslims in France has origins in North, not West, Africa), and other Christian-heritage societies.

Much of the book is what I can best describe as sociological games: picking a team leader; talking to partners and guessing facts about them i.e. whether or not they have a high school diploma; giving people money and asking them to distribute among a group of people whose faces and names they can see on a piece of paper. It makes for some difficult and detailed reading, again maybe easier if you read in this discipline often, which I don't. Adida et al answer a lot of questions I didn't have, for example, talking about confounding variables they wish they could have controlled for, while not answering some questions I did have about the specific logistics of this or that experiment.

The book dwells on a number of cultural differences between their SX (Senegalese Christian) and SM (Senegalese Muslims). The cultural differences which are used repeatedly in the book to cite "rational" prejudice are mostly gender norms, increased religiosity, and a difference in language ability (i.e. Muslim immigrants speak French worse than Christian immigrants). I take the greatest issue with the way the researchers have represented the difference in language ability. Here is what Adida et al writes about language ability in the study populations:

“As for the 2009 survey, it is also only weakly supportive of the fact that SXs show higher proficiency in French. When we asked our surveyors about the language competence (in French) of their respondents, the SXs were judged to be more competent. On a scale from 1 (signifying weak mastery of French) to 3 (signifying normal competence in French), the mean score for the SMs was 2.909 while the mean score for the SXs was 2.969. Although this is statistically significant (at the 95% confidence level), the substantive difference is miniscule.”

This took me a little re-reading to figure out, but I believe the "surveyors" who rated language ability were two ethnographers hired by the researchers. They based their language ratings on extensive interviews with To be simplistic in the same manner as the French under study, one of them had a name that I felt was Arab-Muslim, so perhaps that may remove a bias on behalf of the surveyors rating language ability. With such an important factor in the study, I was surprised that so little was said about how the determination of language score was made.

With the-yes, although statistically significant-lukewarm support for a language difference between SM & SX subjects presented here, I dislike the way this factor is used consistently throughout the book as a major, conclusive finding and justification for Muslim immigrants' disfavored status in hiring in French firms.

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid work of social science that uses a variety of methodologies, including studies and experiments, to rigorously prove discrimination against French Muslims on the basis of their religious identity. Interestingly, the discriminatory effect is found to be much stronger for religion than for race. The terminology of "rational" vs. "irrational" discrimination is an unfortunate choice, however, as is the recommendation that those with Muslim-sounding names should change them because they will experience less discrimination. The book is strong in the empirical sections, but the policy recommendations should be taken with a grain of salt.