What Factors Best Explain Adolescent European Muslims National Identification?

There is growing concern that many young Muslims feel alienated from mainstream European societies and weakly identify with their European nations. In this debate, Muslim religiosity is often portrayed as a barrier to strong national identification, because many Muslims and non-Muslims view Islam as incompatible with European norms and values. However, the vast majority of Muslim youth in Europe are of immigrant-origin, with many of them being not fluent in the host language, socio-economically disadvantaged, and segregated into ethnic minority networks. Our main goal is to determine what of these, and other, competing factors are most strongly associated with European Muslim youth identification with their European nations. We rely on rich survey data from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), which provides nationally representative samples of 15-year old adolescents in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. While religiosity is negatively related to Muslim youth national identification, it turns out not to be the most important predictor of their national identification. Instead, immigrant integration (in particular, citizenship) and segregation (native friends and perceived discrimination) variables are more strongly associated with the extent to which Muslim immigrant-origin adolescents identify with their European nations. The role of religiosity as well as those of other factors further is very similar among Muslims and immigrant-origin adolescents with other religious affiliations. Overall, these findings suggest that Muslim identification may not be as distinctive as some people believe, which has important implications for broader debates about Muslim integration.