Is Muslim Students’ Educational Success Hampered By Their Religiosity? Evidence from Germany

Religion has received extensive attention as a factor influencing immigrants’ integration but empirical evidence is scarce. This is mainly because disentangling students’ social, ethnic and religious background is difficult. This paper examines the role of religion in explaining ethnic educational inequalities in Germany. The paper starts out with discussion specifying theoretical arguments on how three indicators of individual religiosity – denomination, individual belief and religious participation - might affect educational achievement among immigrant students. Using data from the first wave of the “Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in four European Countries” the paper tests key arguments on the influence of religion on the educational attainment among 14-year-old immigrant and non-immigrant students at German schools. Compared to other ethno-religious groups, Muslims display lower rates of educational achievement – a well-known finding from previous research. However, this can be largely explained by their social background and language skills and is largely independent from their levels of individual religiosity. We also find very little evidence that high levels of religiosity hamper migrants’ achievement of resources that are known to affect educational success, i.e. educational aspirations, social ties to majority members and language skills. Interestingly, individual religiosity has a positive effect on the educational achievement among Protestant students, whether with or without a migration background.