Which social contacts with natives matter? Attitudes towards gender roles of Muslim immigrants and their children in Western Europe
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| Author | Ka U. Ng |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13095 |
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Correspondence
Ka U. Ng, McGill University, Montreal,
Quebec, Canada.
Email: ka.u.ng@mail.mcgill.ca
Abstract
Social contacts with mainstream individuals play a central
role in acculturation. Yet, research has paid little attention
to examining whether social contact with natives is linked
to egalitarian gender role attitudes among Muslim immi-
grants and their children. Using a unique data set including
4584 Muslim immigrants and the second generation in six
western European countries (EURISLAM), the study inves-
tigates whether public- and private-sphere social contacts
with natives are associated with attitudes towards women's
employment and men's domestic roles. The findings show
that immigrants and their children who report stronger
private-sphere social ties, that is native friends and
family members, hold more egalitarian attitudes towards
women's employment and men's domestic roles. However,
public-sphere social contacts (at the workplace and in the
neighbourhood) are not associated with these attitudes.
These results support theories stating that private-sphere
social contact with natives is important in gender role ideol-
ogy acculturation among Muslim families.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Which social contacts with natives matter?
Attitudes towards gender roles of Muslim
immigrants and their children in Western Europe
Ka U. Ng
DOI: 10.1111/imig.13095
Received: 1 June 2022 Revised: 2 November 2022 Accepted: 9 November 2022
INTRODUCTION
In Western Europe, the public policy and academic research debate on the cultural integration of immigrants and
their children have firmly established religion as the most influential factor in assimilation (Foner & Alba, 2008;
Zolberg & Long, 1999). While values and norms in Western Europe have become considerably more liberal over
the past decades, many non-Western migrants with Muslim backgrounds and their children are considered to hold
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© 2022 International Organization for Migration.
Int Migr. 2023;61:221–239. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig
more traditional attitudes than natives and Western migrants, especially on gender and family issues. A growing body
of sociological literature points to the possible role of religion in explaining the maintenance of traditional gender
role attitudes among Muslim immigrants and their children, including the influence of the origin- and host-country
gender norms (Ng, 2022), the religious doctrine and practices of Islam (Norris & Inglehart, 2012) and the high levels
of Muslims' religiousness (Diehl et al., 2009).
Besides the influence of origin-country gender norms and Islamic doctrine, the acculturation process may
also be shaped by the socio-cultural context of the destination countries, such as hostile institutional environ-
ments and discrimination (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Portes & Zhou, 1993). Particularly in the Western European
context, the “bright boundary” between natives and Muslim immigrants and their children exacerbates public
opinion that Muslims are unassimilated in Western society (Alba, 2005; Zolberg & Long, 1999). This social closure
may, in turn, encourage Muslims to develop an ethnic boundary strategy that actively opposes the destination
societies and limits social contact with natives (Wimmer, 2008; Wimmer & Soehl, 2014). From this perspective,
gender traditionalism among Muslim immigrants and their children does not exist primarily because they are not
culturally assimilated, but rather because the social closure and lack of social contact with natives has blocked
the acculturation process. While the role of social contact with the mainstream in Muslim assimilation has been
discussed as a possible mechanism in explaining acculturation in gender-related attitudes in previous empirical
studies (see Ng, 2022; Soehl, 2017), these have paid little attention to directly examine the link between social
contact with the mainstream and traditional gender role ideologies (for a partial exception, see Maliepaard &
Alba, 2016).
In the present article, I address this research gap by investigating the association between different dimensions
of social contact with natives and gender attitudes. While existing research examines the influence of social contact
with the natives in a single dimension (Maliepaard & Alba, 2016), such as the group-level neighbourhood composi-
tion, I measure social contact with the natives in multiple dimensions, including in the workplace, neighbourhood,
friends and families. In fact, existing studies on generational populations suggest that different levels and types
of social exposure, such as schools and workplaces, shape individual gender attitudes differently (Bolzendahl &
Myers, 2004; Davis & Greenstein, 2009). The first contribution of this paper, therefore, is to extend our under-
standing of what dimensions of social contact with natives shape Muslim families' gender attitudes in the migration
context.
Second, while previous studies primarily focus on one dimension of gender attitudes (e.g. Maliepaard &
Alba, 2016; Ng, 2022), current research analyses attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic
work. Recent studies on the general population suggested that these two dimensions of gender attitudes may
change at different paces and under different mechanisms (Goldscheider et al., 2015; Lappegård et al., 2021).
These studies broadly suggest that the change in attitudes towards women's employment is closely linked to
broader socio-economic changes, such as economic incentives for women's labour force participation, while the
change in attitudes towards men's domestic roles is more linked to the diffusion of values and norms in the
private sphere, such as within family and between friends. Engaging this debate, this paper provides the first
quantitative empirical evaluation on whether different dimensions of social contact with natives are associated
with different attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic roles among Muslim immigrants and
their children.
I draw on a data set that contains a large sample size of Muslim immigrants and their children in six western
European countries (EURISLAM). The EURISLAM provides measures of social contacts with natives and gender atti-
tudes in various private and public settings. Models used logistic regression to investigate the association between
gender role attitudes (attitudes towards women's employment and men doing domestic chores), and four dimensions
of social contact with natives (workplace, neighbours, friends and family members) in Muslim migrant families. The
results show that social contacts with native friends and family members are positively associated with egalitarian
attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic roles. However, social contacts with natives in the
workplace and neighbourhood are not associated with gender role attitudes.
NG
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