Parental Religious Transmission after Migration: The Case of Dutch Muslims

In a secular host society where Islam is not reinforced outside the family or ethnic community, little is known of the extent to which Muslim immigrants succeed in transmitting their religion to their second-generation children. Parents are generally found to be important religious socialisation agents for children, but this has rarely been studied in a migration context. In this article we study parental religious transmission, taking into account the child's educational attainment and social contacts with Dutch friends as possible inhibitors. On the basis of data from 641 parent–child dyads, we find the expected positive relation between the parents’ and the child's frequency of religious attendance and their respective attitudes toward religious homogamy and religious schools. Turkish-Dutch parents are more effective than Moroccan-Dutch in transmitting religious attendance, in line with higher levels of social cohesion in Turkish immigrant communities. Having Dutch friends and higher levels of education has little influence on the transmission of religious values from parents to children. The effective transmission of religion is a strong explanation for the continuously high religious involvement in the Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch communities.