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Transnational marriages of migrants in Western Europe tend to be seen as hampering integration. In response, policies have been tightened, despite little knowledge on transnational marriages and the effects of such measures. This paper investigates the role of individual preferences and contextual factors such as family reunification policies, group size and development levels of the regions of origin in partner choice of the children of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. We draw on a novel dataset collected in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Our findings suggest that transnational marriages are partly associated with contextual factors such as a rural origin and family reunification policies. The analysis indicates higher rates of transnational marriages under open family reunification policies, providing tentative evidence of policy effects. On the individual level, the choice of a partner from the parents' origin country is associated with religiosity.

The 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.

All European countries are confronted with claims by Islamic groups for religious rights in the public domain, as well as counterclaims by those who want to deny Muslims such rights. Examples are controversies over mosque construction, religious education and the right to wear headscarves and burqas. We show that across European countries there are striking differences in the kind of rights for Muslims around which public conflicts centre. Issues that are highly controversial in some countries are entirely absent from the debate in other countries. We explain these differences with reference to national path dependencies resulting from existing church–state arrangements and immigrant integration policy traditions. Using the method of political claims analysis, we conducted analyses of the German, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian, French and UK media debates on religious rights for Muslims, based on a selection of 30 national newspapers for the period 1999–2008.

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