Religion and integration: does immigrant generation matter? The case of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands

In the public debate on Islam and Muslim immigrants in West-European host societies, the assumption is often made that religiosity forms a barrier to immigrants’ integration. On the basis of a dataset with 1776 Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands, this study assesses whether the association between religiosity and multiple outcomes of integration differs for the first and second generation. This study finds that religiosity and adaptation to Western liberal sexual and marital norms, host language proficiency, and native friendships are equally intertwined for second- and first-generation immigrants. However, religiosity does not hinder the educational attainment of the second generation, while it does amongst the first generation. The multidimensionality of religiosity is important, since religious identification, attendance, and worship relate differently to integration outcomes as well as for immigrant generations.