The happiness of European Muslims post-9/11

Abstract

We examine the happiness trajectory of Muslims living in European countries following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, using six rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS). We find a decline, and then a subsequent return to average happiness among the general Muslim migrant population relative to others after 9/11. However, a small subgroup of Muslims, young male Muslim immigrants from Middle East, report a persistent low level of subjective well-being. This may be seen as a potential source of a threat on integration of Muslims and hence social cohesion and peace in European countries. Our findings persist after controlling for perceived discrimination, migrant status, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, as well as fixed effects for year and country of residence.

Caught between Cultures: Unintended Consequences of Improving Opportunity for Immigrant Girls

“…All of these girls are in the same grade in school, but those born in the six months before January 1, 2000 are pre-policy observations, while those born in the six months after January 1, 2000 are post-policy. The first thing to notice is that immigrant girls have higher life satisfaction compared to natives girls, a pattern also observed by other researchers in recent years (Zorlu and Frijters 2019). The second thing to notice is that native girls born before and after the cutoff have similar life satisfaction, which is perhaps not surprising since the reform did not apply to them.…”

Wellbeing in local areas: how trust, happiness, social distance and experience of discrimination differ in the perceived ethnic enclave

“…High presence of co-ethnics or other non-majority residents can have positive effects on the well-being of migrants and minority individuals (Jonsson and Demireva 2018;Bécares et al 2011;Schofield et al 2016). There has been some evidence with ESS data that where minorities live matters for subjective well-being (Zorlu and Frijters 2019) although individual predictors such as income should matter most (Bartram 2011). With UK data Liang et al (2019) show that the negative impact of the increased share of migrants is pronounced among those without a job and Yan et al (2019) show that there are important differences between migrants and the 2nd generationheterogeneity driven by generational status and economic status is important and we will explore it in this study as well.…”

“…Social trust has been extensively studied and treated almost as a universal measure of community well-being and prosperity (Uslaner 2018). Subjective well-being also can be used as an indicator of a vibrant society (Zorlu and Frijters 2019). High levels of social distance expose the cracks in the relationship between different ethnic groups and are a signal of ethnic tensions (Smith et al 2014;Goldschmidt and Rydgren 2018), often seen as responsible for segregation and failed attempts at integration.…”

The Day after the Bomb: Well-being Effects of Terrorist Attacks in Europe

“…Their results suggest that while the well-being of Muslim teenage girls declines after the bombings, no effects are found for Muslim teenage boys. Zorlu and Frijters (2018) make use of six rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) to examine the happiness trajectory of Muslims living in European countries following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. They show that happiness among the general Muslim migrant population declines and subsequently returns to average relative to others after 9/11, with the exception of Muslim young males coming from the Middle East, who continuously report a lower level of subjective wellbeing.…”