The Long-run Effect of 9/11: Terrorism, Backlash, and the Assimilation of Muslim Immigrants in the West

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the 9/11 attacks affected the assimilation rate of Muslims in the United States. Terror attacks by Islamic groups are likely to induce a backlash against Muslims, thereby raising their costs of assimilation. We find that Muslim immigrants living in states with the sharpest increase in hate crimes also exhibit: (i) greater chances of marrying within their own ethnic group; (ii) higher fertility; (iii) lower female labour force participation; and (iv) lower English proficiency. These findings shed light on the increasing use of terror and concurrent rise in social tensions surrounding Muslim immigrants in the West.The terror attacks on the United States in 2001 impacted the world in many ways. The shock and the loss of life were the most acute and immediate effects. Soon after, the economy was affected by the damage, disruption of air travel, and increasing uncertainty in the security situation and world financial markets. Major military campaigns were subsequently launched in Afghanistan and Iraq, creating new tensions and alliances between countries. It is safe to say that the 9/11 attacks transformed the economic and diplomatic landscape on a global scale. In this paper, we examine how the 9/11 attacks affected the Muslim community within the United States.In particular, we investigate the general idea that terror attacks by radical Islamic groups are likely to induce a backlash against the Muslim community as a whole, raising their costs of assimilation. Evidence for a backlash after 9/11 is supported by the data on hate crimes against Muslims, which went from 28 to 481 reported incidents from the year 2000 to 2001. A similar backlash against Muslims took place all across Europe (Åslund and Rooth, 2005;Hanes and Machin, 2012;Schüller, 2012). We empirically examine whether this backlash slowed the rate of assimilation by exploiting variation across states in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Using individual-level data from the Census and American Community Surveys from 1990-2010, our results show that Muslim immigrants living in states which experienced the sharpest increase in hate crimes after 9/11 also exhibit: (i) greater chances of "intra-marriage" (marrying someone who also originates from a Muslim country); (ii) higher fertility; (iii) lower female labour force participation; and (iv) lower English proficiency.Interestingly, the higher rate of intra-marriage is coming at the expense of marrying outside of the ethnic group, rather than a general increase in the marriage rate. All of these patterns are consistent with a less-assimilated outcome, since Muslim countries are characterized by very low Accepted ArticleThis article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. rates of female labour force participation and high fertility rates compared to natives in the United States.Overall, our findings show that the 9/11 attacks induced a backlash which made the Muslim community in America more cohesive and traditional. In order to att...

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