The role of ethnic school segregation for adolescents’ religious salience

Abstract

Public concerns over the possible effects of school segregation on immigrant and ethnic majority religiosity have been on the rise over the last few years. In this paper we focus on (1) the association between ethnic school composition and religious salience, (2) intergenerational differences in religious salience and (3) the role of ethnic school composition for intergenerational differences in religious salience. We perform analyses on religious salience, one five-point Likert scale item measuring religious salience among 3,612 16-years old pupils in Belgian secondary schools. National origin was used as a proxy for ethnicity. Ethnic minorities in schools with a higher share of ethnic minorities tend to be more religious. This relation holds for Muslim as well as other religious and ethnic minorities.Ethnic school composition also moderates the relationship between migrant generation and religious salience: second generation migrants tend to be more religious in ethnic minority dominated schools. For ethnic Belgians the association is moderated by their religious affiliation: Catholics tend to be more religious while non-affiliated ethnic Belgians are less religious in schools with a higher share of ethnic minority pupils.

School Context and Ethnic Minority Adolescent Religiosity: A Longitudinal Study

“…The results from this longitudinal study hence support previous cross‐sectional studies on the effects of ethnic concentration in schools and neighborhoods (De Hoon and Van Tubergen ; Van der Bracht et al. ; Voas and Fleischmann ).…”

“…Most schools with high proportions of ethnic minority pupils are Muslim‐migrant‐dominated schools (Van der Bracht et al. ), and Muslim pupils have, in general, a higher level of religiosity than ethnic majority pupils (De Hoon and Van Tubergen ). For these highly religious pupils, ethnic and religiously concentrated schools might function as a religious microcosm that is separated from the secularized environment in Western European countries.…”

“…Therefore, the general level of religiosity is higher in schools with more ethnic minority pupils (Van der Bracht et al. ).…”

“…Although there are some studies that found a positive association between ethnic concentration and adolescent religiosity (De Hoon and Van Tubergen ; Van der Bracht et al. ), these were based on cross‐sectional data. As a consequence, these studies were not fully able to separate selection from causation: ethnic minority pupils with high levels of religiosity might attend schools with a higher proportion of co‐ethnic and co‐religious pupils.…”

Conditions for identity development among religious immigrant youth

“…A vital dimension of identity is the identification with religion and the religious group (von Brömssen 2012; Ng Tseung and Verkuyten 2013; Vikdahl 2018, 2019), although religion may be stronger in some contexts than others (Forrest-Bank and Dupper 2015). Studies indicate that schools with a majority of religious students (including a variety of ethnicities) impact on religiosity regardless of the specific particular composition of religions (Van der Bracht et al 2016). Research show that parents and family are of great importance for young peoples' religious identity (Gunnoe and Moore 2002;Hyde 1990;Mason, Singleton, and Webber 2007;Kay and Francis 1996;Smith and Lundquist Denton 2005;Vikdahl 2018Vikdahl , 2019.…”