Religion, religiosity, and the social-emotional integration of Muslim youth

• Applicant: Dr. Lars Leszczensky
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 394466172

Why do Muslim immigrant-origin youth have fewer German friends than non-Muslim ones? And why do they identify less strongly with Germany? The planned project aims to answer these questions in order to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms that drive the social-emotional integration of Muslim youth. In particular, it will investigate whether Muslim religiosity hampers integration, a hypothesis often claimed but not sufficiently studied.At the heart of the investigation are comprehensive longitudinal secondary data analyses. Based on three complementary panel studies (CILS4EU, FIS, NEPS), the process of social-emotional integration of young Muslims in Germany between 11 and 20 years will be studied. In detail, it will be examined to what extent religion and religiosity matter for friendship choices and the development of national identification of young Muslims. Furthermore, it will be tested whether non-Muslim youth exclude their Muslim peers, and, if so, what consequences this has for their social-emotional integration.To gain a deeper understanding of these processes, two additional methodological approaches will supplement the quantitative analysis. Group discussions with friendship cliques will serve to establish the extent to which religion and religiosity affect the collective orientations of youth and determine their identity development. In choice experiments, Muslim and non-Muslim adolescents will choose between fictional peers with varying religion and levels of religiosity. This allows for assessing the importance of these characteristics for friendship choices.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants