Thursday, April 14, 2016
Orchestra Room (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
This paper seeks to find the relationship between religion and attitude toward immigrants in host countries. More specifically, it focuses on the problem of how the mainstream religion in the United States and France has an influence on the national perception of immigrants and immigration policy targeting Muslim immigrants. France has an interesting combination of two traditions in regards to religion – national belief in Laïcité and a large population who self-identified as Catholics – while the U.S. publicly finds its national inheritance in Protestantism. The literature of “Clash of Civilization” claims that religious difference among groups will raise hostility against each other. Then can we infer that the Christianity as the American “quasi-national” religion has a negative influence on the attitude toward the Muslim immigrant? Similarly does “no-national religion” in France reduce hostility against the anti-Muslim immigrants? Are those kinds of attitude towards Muslim immigrants reflected in the government policy? The result of analysis of public opinion data shows that believers of national mainstream religion, Catholic for French case and Protestant for American case, are more likely to have negative attitude toward immigrants in general but the coefficient for the U.S. case is not significant. In regards to policy – e.g. religious practice in public school – the American case shows a higher level of tolerance toward Muslim immigrants. I conclude that dominant religion has the different effects on the life of Muslim immigrants in the U.S. and France.
