What happens to the religious identity, belief, and practice of Muslims who settle in Western countries? Do they, or their children and subsequent generations, gradually become more secular? Or do they react against the dominant ethos and perceived prejudice by becoming more religious? We review recent research that touches on these questions. Most Muslim immigrants outside the United States come from rural areas of less developed countries where religiosity is higher than in the receiving societies. Residence in areas of high coethnic concentration, support from religious communities, and religious endogamy help to maintain religious commitment. The situation is more complicated for the second generation. Western culture has an influence, but structural integration does not necessarily reduce religiosity. Some children of immigrants try to follow a “real” Islam that has been purified of culturally specific practices. Hostility toward Muslims may lead some to react by increasing their own religious involvement.

Comparing levels of discrimination across countries can provide a window into large-scale social and political factors often described as the root of discrimination. Because of difficulties in measurement, however, little is established about variation in hiring discrimination across countries. We address this gap through a formal meta-analysis of 97 field experiments of discrimination incorporating more than 200,000 job applications in nine countries in Europe and North America. We find significant discrimination against nonwhite natives in all countries in our analysis; discrimination against white immigrants is present but low. However, discrimination rates vary strongly by country: In high-discrimination countries, white natives receive nearly twice the callbacks of nonwhites; in low-discrimination countries, white natives receive about 25 percent more. France has the highest discrimination rates, followed by Sweden. We find smaller differences among Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Germany. These findings challenge several conventional macro-level theories of discrimination.

This article presents a multilevel analysis of 1363 male and female first- and second-generation immigrants’ unemployment rates. In addition to individual characteristics, the effects of macro-characteristics of 13 destination countries in the EU and of more than 100 origin countries of the immigrants are analysed. Immigrants are found to be more often unemployed in countries where natives have higher unemployment rates. Immigrants’ unemployment rates are lower in countries with a larger segment of low-status jobs, with higher immigration rates and with a higher GDP per capita. Destination countries’ integration policies and welfare state regimes do not affect the unemployment risk of immigrants. At the level of origin countries, immigrants from more politically stable and free, more developed and more wealthy societies are found to be less often unemployed. Immigrants coming from Islamic countries have higher rates of unemployment, while those originating from Western Europe are less likely to be unemployed.

In light of the religious vitality of Muslim immigrants in historically Christian and highly secularized West-European societies, this study addresses three related questions: (a) How does childhood religious transmission affect adult religiosity among second-generation Muslims? (b) How do acculturating groups as proximal acculturation contexts affect effective transmission? and (c) How do second-generation acculturation orientations affect the transmission process? Using the cross-cultural TIES (“The Integration of the European Second Generation”) surveys among adult community samples of Turkish and Moroccan Belgian Muslims in two cities ( Ns = 500 and 481), cross-cultural Structural Equation Models were tested in the four groups to estimate the paths from childhood religious transmission to adult religiosity and acculturation orientations as latent dependent variables. As expected, (a) religious transmission was generally effective for religious identification, beliefs, and practices across groups, yet (b) transmission was most effective in the Turkish Belgian groups as acculturation contexts with high collective cultural continuity. And finally (c) across groups and religious dimensions, individual orientations toward heritage culture maintenance strengthened effective transmission, and host culture adoption played a minor role. We conclude that the religious life of the second generation is part of a continued orientation toward the heritage culture in acculturating families and communities.