Religious Identification, Beliefs, and Practices Among Turkish Belgian and Moroccan Belgian Muslims

Abstract

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.

Union formation and dissolution among immigrants and their descendants in the United Kingdom

“…A large body of literature has examined various aspects of immigrants' lives in Europe, including their employment and education (Adsera and Chiswick 2007;Kogan 2007;Rebhun 2010;Rendall et al 2010), health and mortality (Sole-Auro and Crimmins 2008;Wengler 2011;Hannemann 2012), residential and housing patterns (Musterd 2005;Arbaci 2008), legal status and citizenship (Seifert 1997;Bauböck 2003;Howard 2005), and linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity (Foner and Alba 2008;Gungor, Fleischmann, and Phalet 2011). The recent literature has also exhibited an increasing interest in the study of family dynamics and patterns among immigrants and their descendants.…”

Religious change of new immigrants in the Netherlands: The event of migration

“…In the past decades, however, this has changed and particularly in the past few years, there has been a tremendous increase in studies on immigrants' religion, both in the United States (Akresh, 2011;Alanezi and Sherkat, 2008;Massey and Higgins, 2011), Canada (Connor, 2008(Connor, , 2009b and in Western Europe (Connor, 2010;Diehl and Koenig, 2009;Fleischmann et al, 2011;Güngör et al, 2011;Maliepaard et al, 2010Smits et al, 2010;Van Tubergen and Sindradóttir, 2011;Voas and Fleischmann, 2012).…”

Ethnicity and Migration in Europe

“…At the same time, there is also evidence of integration, combining sustained religiosity with majority culture contact and adoption. For instance, the religious attachment of second-generation Turkish-Belgian Muslims was compatible with positive attitudes toward adoption of the Belgian majority culture (Güngör et al, 2011). To conclude, the evidence on the psychological viability of strong religiosity in bicultural Muslims is mixed and likely to vary with the prevailing diversity climate.…”

“…Sustained religiosity is well documented for the Turkish and Moroccan second generation in several European countries (Güngör et al, 2011). Religious continuity was related to the religious socialization of the second generation within closeknit immigrant families and communities.…”