Religious discrimination in young Muslim assimilation in Spain: Contributions to Portes and Rumbaut’s segmented assimilation theory

Abstract

This article aims to consider the role of religion in the integration process of children born to immigrants in host societies (second generation) in Spain using the theory of segmented assimilation of Portes and Rumbaut and Portes, Aparicio and Haller. It is based on an exploratory qualitative research project conducted in a medium-sized city in Catalonia that examined the integration of young people of different origins and the role religion played in this process. To do so, we proffer a religious discrimination hypothesis: a scenario in which Islam, but not other religions, can become a significant barrier to positive assimilation. According to the results, this ‘religious stigma’ scenario occurs in the majority of the young Muslims who were interviewed and across many aspects of their lives.

Introduction: Segmented assimilation theory as a framework for the debate

Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut (1996, 2001, 2006, 2014) have been analysing the phenomenon of migration to the United States for decades, both at the level of longitudinal statistics and through ethnographic studies of specific communities. One of the central themes of their research has been second generations, that is, children of migrants and the process of their integration into host societies, an area of research around which they have built their model of ‘segmented assimilation’. For Portes and Rumbaut (2001; Portes and Rivas, 2011), the theory of segmented assimilation of second-generation immigrants, that started with the classic paper of Portes and Zhou (1993), is an attempt to build a nuanced and complex model of analysis from a structuralist perspective, which gives priority to the results of integration of second-generation groups in relation to equality of opportunity and equity in the education system and labour market. This structuralist perspective, unlike the cultural perspective, places less value on the results in cultural, linguistic and political terms. Structuralist perspectives take an ‘optimistic’ view that points to the benefits, opportunities and advantages of second-generation groups (second-generation advantage) and a ‘pessimistic’ view that focusses on the exclusions and inequalities that these groups experience (generations of exclusion). Portes and Rumbaut expound a theoretical and analytical perspective, their segmented assimilation, that from a complex view locates three levels of analysis (and prediction) with regard to which variables articulate most significantly the processes and results of second-generation integration. As they themselves put it, ‘This view does not focus so much on whether or not children of immigrants are assimilating but rather into what segment of the host society they assimilate’ (Portes et al., 2016: 22).

The first level of analysis involves the three exogenous variables that have the greatest impact on the process of integration, that is to say ‘the principal resources (or lack thereof) that immigrant families bring to the confrontation with the external challenges confronting their children’ (Portes et al., 2009: 2). They are, according to these same authors: (a) the human capital (formal education and occupational skills) that immigrant parents possess; (b) the social, political and legal context that receives them – also known as the different ‘modes of incorporation’ that the government, society and community offer the immigrants and something that will be highly relevant to the analysis of our research (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001); and (c) the structure, composition and networks of the family.

The second level of analysis involves the obstacles to successful integration, which Portes et al. (2009) distil into three: (a) racism from the native population, especially for non-white immigrants, which affects the self-esteem and aspirations of the children of immigrants which we will also see in the results of our research; (b) a labour market that is segmented (bifurcated) or in the form of an hourglass, that drives the second-generation youth towards either well-paid, high-value-added jobs with promotion prospects or towards low-paid, socially undervalued or repetitive manual jobs with little social mobility; and (c) the existence of alternative models of integration involving criminal or illicit behaviour (drugs, gangs, etc.). Finally, the third level of analysis involves the resources that the families possess to overcome these obstacles and facilitate a good integration of their offspring. The authors, once again, divide them into three types: (a) the human capital of the parents and the extended family; (b) a favourable or at least neutral ‘mode or context of incorporation’; and (c) the volume and quality of social capital of their ethnic, religious or territorial community.

Out of the interaction between these three levels of analysis – exogenous factors, obstacles and resources – emerge three ideal types of assimilation: consonant acculturation; selective acculturation and dissonant acculturation. As the authors explain,

The children of professionals and other high human capital immigrants frequently undergo a process of consonant acculturation where parents and children jointly learn and accommodate to the language and culture of the host society. Others from similar backgrounds or with lower levels of human capital but ensconced in strong co-ethnic communities undergo selective acculturation, where learning of English and American ways takes place simultaneously with preservation of key elements of the parental culture. Alternatively, youths from working-class migrant families that lack strong community supports may experience dissonant acculturation where introjection of the values and language of the host society is accompanied by rejection of those brought and associated with their parents. (Portes et al., 2009: 4)

To these three models of segmented assimilation, we can add a fourth model that seems very relevant to our research and that the authors call ‘downward assimilation’, ‘because the learning and introjection of American cultural ways do not lead, for these youths, into upward mobility but precisely the opposite’.

The role of religion in segmented assimilation theory

The relation between the theory of segmented assimilation and religion has developed progressively. Over the years, as a result of both the dynamic of their own research and other analyses, Portes and Rumbaut have been placing greater relevance to religion when it comes to analysing the processes and results of the socialization of children of people who migrated to the United States and their incorporation into the host society. Thus, although we may initially say, along with Warner (2007), that Portes and Rumbaut failed to take sufficiently into account ‘the inference that religion may be a crucial ingredient in selective acculturation’ (2007: 104) within the research team itself, Zhou and Bankston (1998) began to theorize and analyse the role of religion in selective acculturation at the end of the 1990s. Shortly afterwards, in the third wave of longitudinal research by Portes and Rumbaut (2006), religion was incorporated in the questionnaire. Furthermore, in the latest edition of their classic Immigrant America (Portes and Rumbaut, 2014), one of the chapters is on religion, which makes it a relevant component when it comes to analysing the processes and results of what these authors have theorized as ‘segmented assimilation’ (2014: 299–342). It is here that Portes and Rumbaut make their current position on the role of religion in the processes of second-generation integration clear. We can say that they place religion as a relevant factor but that, habitually, it acts as a secondary influence on migratory processes – as a variable that gives nuance to and adjusts the migratory processes and results.

More specifically, with respect to the results of their research on the relation between religion and segmented assimilation of second-generation groups in the United States, they argue that

If the first of the three Rs – refuge – has been a key function of religious affiliation for recently arrived immigrants, for their offspring, the other two – respect and resources – become paramount as they seek to move ahead in what is now their country. (Portes and Rumbaut, 2014: 315)

And in this process,

When second-generation children continue observing the faith of their parents, certain benefits associated with selective acculturation become apparent: there is a common universe of meanings shared across generations, more open channels of communication between the two generations, and a system of beliefs and norms antithetical to downward assimilation. (Portes and Rumbaut, 2014: 316)

Despite this general tendency, Portes and Rumbaut also state that these patterns are not generalizable to all religions in the same way. Thus, it seems that the effects of religion that are most resilient and most linked to higher educational achievement relate above all to Christians and Jews. And in contrast, in the case of Islam (Portes and Rumbaut, 2014: 335), they say,

For unlike the canonical story of linear religious affiliation leading to respectability and eventual upward mobility, the rise of mosques and the presence of a population that prays in them has been viewed with increasing alarm, if not downright hostility, by the surrounding native population.

It thus seems that there are elements of clear contention on the part of both the non-Muslim and the Muslim North American population; and this has an impact on the processes and results of integration of second-generation Muslims. In the words of Portes and Rumbaut (2014),

The typology of linear and reactive religion and its effects becomes problematic in the case of Islam. Linear adherence to the religion of migrant parents may perpetuate estrangement from the American social mainstream, especially if parents subscribe to the more oppositional and resentful strand of this religious ideology. All evidence indicates that this pattern is exceptional, but, when this is not the case, second-generation Muslims may still react to discrimination and lack of mobility opportunities by embracing the preaching of radicalized imams. (2014: 337)

But does this diversity of patterns in assimilation that are motivated, at least in part, by religious elements in the United States also occur in other contexts, like Spain? Portes et al. (2016), in their specific study of Spanish Legacies, assert that ‘Unlike the situation in Spain, children of immigrants in America are more challenged by a racialized social system that makes their integration into the native white mainstream problematic’ (2016: 137). And they warn that ‘This situation fosters, instead, higher perception of discrimination and the internalization of pan-ethnic labels under which these children are routinely classified by American institutions as well as by the general public’. And not only that but also: ‘In the worst case, the process leads to reactive ethnicity, with youngsters refusing to abandon their parents’ nationalities as markers of self-identification’. They conclude, however, that according to their study, ‘little of this occurs in Spain’.

In response to these results, this article asks whether or not these patterns of assimilation where religion becomes a central obstacle to success for second-generation groups occur in Spain. That is to say, we wish to ask whether there are second-generation youths in Spain who, depending on their religion, experience different modes of integration. And more specifically, we wish to focus on young Muslim children of foreign descent and ask whether Islam is a relevant element in the assimilation process or not. The results of our qualitative and exploratory research need to be contextualized in Vic (province of Barcelona), a medium-sized city of 45,000 inhabitants in the interior of Catalonia (Spain). Our research seeks to ascertain whether, delving further into the perspective and results of Portes et al. (2011, 2016); in Spain, religion can become, depending on the particular cases, a major variable, a relevant element in the processes and results of second-generation assimilation. And whether, in the specific case of Islam, this religion can be (a) a key and transversal variable, in this case negative, in the processes and results of assimilation and (b) also a key variable for understanding processes of integration that move towards a downward assimilation. These are the two dimensions of the hypothesis of ‘Islam as a religious stigma’ that has guided our exploratory research, always in dialogue with and attempting to deepen the relevant contributions of Portes, Aparicio and Heller.

This religious discrimination hypothesis that we put forth seeks to ascertain whether, in an exploratory way, we can understand that (a) Islam might be a significant negative variable that transversally affects all areas of life in processes of assimilation due to religious discrimination. And that, nuancing Portes et al. (2016), it affects most young second-generation Muslims, not a minority (2016: 137). And that (b) Islam is a highly relevant variable when it comes to understanding paths of downward assimilation, and not a minor variable. In reality, this hypothesis is not entirely new since, for example, Portes et al. (2016) themselves already see this phenomenon when they explain that ‘by reason of religion, immigrants from predominantly Muslims countries, such as Morocco and Pakistan, can be expected to meet a less welcoming reception in Catholic Spain than those from Christian and, especially, Catholic countries’ (2016: 87). This notion has also been put forth by other Spanish researchers (for example, Cachón, 2009; Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), 2015; Flores, 2015). The novelty lies in the fact that, in this preceding research, religious discrimination related to Islam is seen as an infrequent or residual phenomenon that some young people experience occasionally. As Portes et al. (2016) say, ‘little of this occurs in Spain’ (2016: 137). Our hypothesis, on the other hand, is that, especially and only or fundamentally in the case of Islam, the majority of second-generation young Muslims in Vic – in a global, transversal and generalized fashion – are being ‘religionalized’ or discriminated against due to their condition as Muslims, in all life areas and throughout their processes of assimilation (sub-hypothesis (a)). And this is a key element when it comes to understanding the process of downwards assimilation within this collective (sub-hypothesis (b)).

We believe, along with Portes and Rumbaut (2014), that these two dimensions of our religious discrimination hypothesis are related above all to a context of ‘negative segmented reception’ where there is racism and above all religionism in the native population; a clearly segmented labour market and specific cases of negative integration through proximity with radicalism. Let’s consider this in more detail. Islam has been and is, especially since the terrorist attack in Barcelona in August 2017, the most controversial and most reported religion in the media in Catalonia and all Spain. As García-Romeral and Griera (2011), Burchardt et al. (2015) and Astor and Griera (2016) have analysed so well, Islam has become the ‘other’ in capital letters with whom, in an almost obsessive way, there is a constant comparison and contrast throughout the country. A discourse that refers to a (supposed) social harmony that Islam and its believers come to fracture with ideas, practices and beliefs that are foreign and alien to ‘us’ has become predominant. An approach that, far from the perspective of religion understood as a personal and collective right to practise, does not hesitate in blaming ‘the other – Islam’ for having broken an (imaginary) pre-existing social harmony and for which it therefore seeks to single out, dissolve or expel. On a European level, this reality has also been analysed by different authors in relation to the effects it has on living in an anti-Islam context on second-generation groups (for example, Güngör et al., 2011; Scheible and Fleischmann, 2013). In the face of this reality, exacerbated no doubt by the terrorist attacks in Barcelona, the ability of group, family, ethnic and religious cohesion to counteract religious discrimination is greatly undermined in a context where the reception of young people of Muslim families of foreign origin is highly negative, selective and transversal.

With respect to its concrete reality in Vic, we find the explicitly racist party ‘Plataforma per Catalunya’, which is especially powerful in Vic where, in 2011, it became the second most voted party and achieved five councillorships out of 21. This party focusses its whole racist and religionist discourse against Islam. But not only that, as we have mentioned and as has been thoroughly analysed (Burchianti and Zapata-Barrero, 2014; Hernández-Carr, 2011, among others), these political parties have also managed to generate a widespread discourse in Spain (CIS, 2015), according to which the ‘clash’ between ‘Catalan – Spanish values’ and the ‘values of Islam’ is inevitable and affects every area of life and every process of socialization. Furthermore, it should be recognized that their perspective has managed to establish itself clearly in the collective representation of Islam in Catalonia and Spain. As an example of this, we only need to remember that, according to the report of the European Institute of the Mediterranean’s Observatory of Islamophobia, 60% of news about Muslims in Spain can be considered Islamophobic (Rojo and Vidal, 2018). This supposed clash, irresoluble and impossible to manage, arose with great force in the classic controversies around the use of the veil, eating halal meat in schools, the ‘submission’ of women, and so on (Griera, 2016). These debates have arisen throughout Europe and have also appeared in our field work (Göle, 2014).

In the face of this supposed ‘clash’, the racist and religionist organizations choose to frontally attack Islam and all its manifestations. As a result, in the municipal election campaign of Vic, both in 2011 and 2015, the slogan of Platform for Catalonia was ‘Catalans first’ (Primer els de casa) and the photo of their electoral posters was a (supposed) Muslim woman wearing a burka – an unequivocal symbol that placed them as their enemy. In the 2011 elections, this campaign enabled Platform for Catalonia to win almost 3000 votes, 5 councillorships out of 21, and become the second largest party of the town council with almost 20% of the vote. Thus, this local context with clear racist and, especially, anti-Islam elements, is a highly significant variable when it comes to analysing the integration process of second-generation groups. Because, as Xie and Greenman (2011) mention, both processes and consequences of assimilation should depend on the local social context in which immigrants are embedded. We believe that this geographical specificity is one of the added values of our exploratory research: without taking into account that processes of assimilation occur in local contexts with specific characteristics, an in-depth understanding of how these occur in a concrete and precise way is more difficult.

Research, methodology and data

Introduction

To verify the hypothesis, we have presented in an exploratory way, in dialogue with the research of Portes, Rumbaut, Aparicio and Haller, we designed a qualitative research project with the aim of getting to know and understand how the assimilation processes of children with parents of foreign origin unfolds, and the role of religions in this process. Our research was carried out in Vic, a city of near 45,000 inhabitants that is situated 70 km from Barcelona in the direction of the Pyrenees. Vic began to receive immigrants long before the rest of Catalonia and Spain at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s due to the work that the meat industry, above all, offered. This first foreign immigration was mainly from Morocco, more specifically the Rif region (Nador). For three decades, thousands of people emigrated from this area to Catalonia, where currently 200,000 Moroccans live. In Vic (2017), 32.42% of residents are foreigners (10,727 out of a total of 43,964), while this value is 15.98% in the rest of Catalonia. Out of a total of 43,964 citizens, more than 3000 (almost 7%) are Moroccans, which are easily the largest foreign community. They are followed by people from Ghana (3.5%), India (2.3%) and China (1.7%). In this context, with a significant presence of racism and discrimination against foreigners and, especially, Muslins as we have seen, we wanted to find out about the experiences of young people with parents of foreign origin that had emigrated to Vic and that were members of non-Catholic (the historically predominant religion in the area) religions in their social and relational dimensions, as students, and so on. Our exploratory research was carried out within the hermeneutic paradigm that seeks to understand the visions and experiences of the research subjects (Denzin, 2012) through qualitative research and by means of the data collecting technique of the semi-structured interview. The interviews were conducted in 2017 with nine young people of 15–16 years of age (the last year of compulsory secondary education), of a mixed secondary school in Vic. They are from families of foreign origin that profess Islam and Sikhism or are Pentecostals from Africa (Ghana) and Latin America. These religions were chosen because they are ones that have the most members – apart from Catholicism – both in the city of Vic and in Catalonia. In all four cases, in Vic where the field work was carried out, we are in the presence of what Griera (2008) called ‘ethnic religions’ since, de facto, each one of them is linked to people that come from just one country, almost exclusively. Below we explain the field work carried out with the nine youths and with other agents to compare and triangulate their opinions, visions and experiences. Their recruitment was done through a mixed secondary school teachers, and all interviews were done there after parent’s approval, in the same school and in a safety climate. All names are anonymized.

• (a) Interviews with nine youths in the 4th year of ESO (compulsory secondary education) in a secondary school in Vic (age in brackets).

•  • Sikh girl (15). Her parents from Panjab work in the meat industry and completed secondary education.

•  • Sikh boy (15). Father from Panjab is unemployed, used to in the meat industry; mother is a shop assistant. Both completed secondary studies.

•  • Muslim girl 1 (15). Father from Morocco is off work and completed secondary education. Mother is a housewife with primary education.

•  • Muslim girl 2 (15). Parents from Morocco (Nador). Father has a disability pension and mother is a housewife. Parents have primary education.

•  • Muslim boy 1 (15). Parents born in a village in the Rif region (Morocco). Father works at a gravel pit, mother is a housewife. Both have primary education.

•  • Muslim boy 2 (16). Parents from Morocco (Nador) and without studies. Father is retired due to medical issues and mother is a housewife.

•  • African Pentecostal girl (16). Father from Ghana died 12 years ago. Mother is a housewife. Both with primary education.

•  • African Pentecostal boy (16). Father from Ghana works in the meat industry and mother is a housewife. The father has primary education and the mother secondary education.

•  • Latin American Pentecostal boy (16). Father in the military in Honduras (separated) and mother carer of the elderly. He has military studies, she professional (secretary).

• (b) Interviews with five parents. One for each religious tradition and two for the African Pentecostal girl.

• (c) Interviews with five religious’ leaders. One for each religious tradition and two for Islam.

• (d) A discussion group with teachers of the 4th year of ESO (eight teachers and the director) of a mixed secondary school in Vic.

• (e) A discussion group with peers, four boys and a girl, of the 4th year of ESO with parents of native origin.

The areas of analysis that were presented in the interviews and in the discussion groups were as follows: (a) relational networks and role of religion in their set up, (b) secondary school and religion, (c) gender and religions, (d) conflicts due to religion and (e) external religious symbols. The Atlas.ti programme was used to work on all the data collected, and they were analysed via thematic analysis and the contrast and triangulation of responses searching for initial saturation points of information. We felt that in exploratory research like ours, the best methodological approach was that of thematic analyses to identify patterns of themes, life experiences and perspectives among the young people with respect to their experience of religion. With Braun and Clarke (2013), we understand that the language that young people use is not just a simple mirror of the religious, family and social reality that they experience; rather, it is a (re)construction of their own life and of the role religion plays in it where there are many hidden elements taken for granted that can be identified, codified and analysed, in this case by themes. And that enable us to understand, at the same time, specific experiences, elements and situations, as well as possible structural realities of racism, religionism, discrimination and so forth.

Data analysis

Below we analyse the data gathered during the field work, presenting the accounts of the young people as the centrepiece and the other sources as elements of contrast.

Relational network

The first area in which we wished to corroborate our hypothesis of (a) an experience of religion-based discrimination in the processes of integration that (b) can lead to downwards assimilation in the case of young (second-generation) Muslims in Vic was the relational network of young people. A network that is understood and seen above all from their experience, and also from that of the other people interviewed (teachers, peers, parents and religious leaders). Here, the first thing that we would like to highlight is that in all the interviews of the nine young people there is one common phrase, without exception, which becomes a kind of mandatory mantra that they all wanted to stress as being key: ‘I hang out with anybody’. With this we wish to make very clear and emphasize that religion and/or culture/ethnicity does not become a barrier, an in-out or us-them separation for them. As Muslim boy 1 said, ‘who I hang out with has nothing to do with religion’. Or in the words of the African Pentecostal girl, ‘I hang out with friends who are black like me and, of course, they are Christians, and also with Chinese people, Catalans, Moroccans . . . I basically get on with everyone’. Muslim girl 1 asserts this ‘youth doctrine of tolerance’ when she says, in response to our questions about religion as a possible organizational axis of adolescent geographies, of distance and proximity: ‘I have friends who are Catalan, Spanish, black, from different cultures and I don’t mind that. I believe that we are all equal and that we should respect the different religions and cultures’. As the latest youth surveys show (Soler, 2012), being a young person in Catalonia and Spain is intimately linked with an attitude of tolerance. Neither young people with foreign parents nor those with parents of native origin hesitate when it comes to stating that their own religion, that of others, agnosticism or atheism is never a cause for creating a barrier, division or distance.

However, not everything is an idyllic as it first seems. Throughout the interviews, relational conflicts rooted in religion or ethnicity appear and, usually, young Muslims are at the centre. One example is when the Sikh temple leader says that ‘our young people never have conflicts . . . except when sometimes young Moroccans have attacked young Sikhs’. Another example is when the Muslim parents we interviewed explained how their daughter was judged negatively by both teachers and her schoolmates when she decided to wear a veil at school: ‘Everybody told her that it was a mistake, that she should take it off’. Or when one of the Muslim leaders explained that young Muslims, especially girls, ‘receive negative comments due to the issue of the veil’. Thus, we can see that, despite the young people’s discourse of total tolerance, the public display of religion can easily become a barrier, an obstacle and cause of conflict between young people. As Burchardt et al. (2015) put it, it seems that young Muslims break a rule that is taken for granted in secular Catalonia: that religion is something invisible and private (Estruch, 2005; Griera, 2012; Luckmann, 1971). When it enters the public space and is reflected on the body, in images and in behaviour, it is negative (Göle, 2014). And this, even though formally tolerance is the explicit norm, structures and organizes the adolescent relational geographies – geographies in which young Muslims, or a large part of them, are often marginalized, labelled as conflictive or problematic.

School and religion

In this area of analysis, we wish to highlight the possible conflicts that the different research subjects have experienced at secondary school in relation to religion. For example, some of the pupils, and also the families, have pointed to conflicts that arise when a teacher has offended a pupil in relation to them being the child of foreigners and/or their religion. It should be noted that, in each case, the pupil said that these are specific cases associated above all, once again, to Islam, and never the usual atmosphere of the school. For example, Muslim boy 1 explained that

Sometimes a teacher has made some commentary that has offended many of us a lot. One teacher said that we immigrants, that we wouldn’t be anything without the people from here, and racist comments like thanks to them we have a lot of things. I think this came up out of the question of speaking Catalan, that one boy said who wants to learn Catalan if when they leave Catalonia nobody speaks it; and then the teacher got angry and began to say these things.

In relation to this, Muslim girl 2 explained that ‘One teacher told us: I don’t mind if you do Ramadan, you still have to come here to work and if not, it’s your problem’. And on another occasion,

We speak about religion very often, for example the headscarf. I remember that in physical education some teachers see me with my headscarf and they always tell me to take it off. And there was one teacher who even in the classes told me to take it off, that I was prettier without it and I felt terrible. You don’t have the right to spend every class talking about me, talking about my headscarf and whenever you do something she comes out with some comment about the headscarf. It affects you and I truly think it’s a lack of respect. And she said, but do your parents force you to wear the headscarf?

The Muslim girl 1 pointed to another source of discomfort that referred to the lack of awareness and recognition of religion in the school, especially of Islam:

What surprises me is that in the whole year we haven’t gone on many excursions, outings and the last three days they decide to do outings to eat healthy lunches when they know that we can’t because we are doing Ramadan, which doesn’t mean that you don’t do it, I respect that, but that they decide to do outings for healthy lunches all three days and that graduation is with food. This affects me because I can’t have a good time with my schoolmates. But I understand why they don’t do it, but I think that they should also put themselves in our shoes.

In some way, and in contrast to the North American context, it seems that in Catalonia and Spain the model of social and educational normality is one where religions either do not exist or should be invisible and private. They cannot be represented or manifested (Beneyto et al., 2018; Collet-Sabé, 2007; García-Romeral and Griera, 2011; Göle, 2014), because this recognition of cultural and religious diversity breaks this prevailing norm(ality). Thus, the invisibilization of religions and their manifestations or, put in the negative, their habitual and transversal lack of recognition and normalization, gives credibility, we believe, to our religious discrimination hypothesis and its possible link to the downwards assimilation paths of second-generation groups. And as we said, all of this is placed in a local context, Vic, where Islam has been characterized by the extreme right, and with the electoral support of thousands of people, as a public problem or, in some cases, as the most important public problem.

Gender and religions

The topic of the relation between gender and religion has a long tradition. The feminist perspective has been, and is, critical of many of the religious traditions due to their sexist conceptions and practices. In this research, we are interested in finding out how young boys and girls experience the possible differences between genders in relation to their religion. On the level of discourse, we have found two great poles. The first, related to the mantra described above that ‘everybody is unique and everyone has the right to do what they want’, regardless of social class, gender, ethnicity or religion. As Muslim boy 1 said,

Everyone lives their religion in their own way, there are no differences between boys and girls (. . .). Everybody should be free and think and do what they like, you shouldn’t force anyone to wear the headscarf, you can’t, because we live in a free country.

It should be noted, however, that this ‘neutral’ or ‘non-problematic’ approach to the issue of the link between gender and religion has been expressed by boys but not very often or not at all by girls. In contrast, the girls have brought up conflicts around possible gender discrimination both with regard to their own communities and society in general. Young Muslims girls especially ask many questions about whether what the religious leaders say about what women should (not) do, has a religious base. For example, Muslim girl 1 said,

Yes, it’s more normal for a boy to smoke, drink and party than a Muslim girl, but Islam says that it’s the same for both men and women, it’s prohibited for both (. . .). The same happens with other different religious topics, that it is more normal for a man to do it than for a woman. It could be that even the parents think that it is more normal for a man to party than for a girl.

Awareness of the unequal way in which genders are treated, judged and so on, in Islam angers this Muslim girl 2 who believes it is unfair that the same behaviour is judged differently according to one’s gender. From the parents’ perspective it is similar. According to them,

Boys, since they are not so physically identifiable, are judged less than the girls. Girls that wear the veil, which is like the uniform of being a Muslim girl, are judged more due to the veil because it is more visible. This already identifies them and marks them out in the street, the school . . .

With respect to this link between gender awareness of the girls interviewed and the feminist demands that are socially more and more present, we feel the observations of the teachers are relevant. As one of them (Teacher 1) puts it,

I see more and more Moroccan girls becoming interested in feminism. Last year various research projects were carried out on feminism or feminism in Islam. Although there might be several boys who come and repeat messages of inequality that they see at home, the fact is that here, since we don’t enable such statements and we work on equality because it is one of the values that we work on in this and all schools, this happens less and rather I am seeing more interest among women, whether they wear a veil or not, which has nothing to do with feminism.

But not all opinions are so clear and in the same vein. As one female tutor (Teacher 3) commented in a very pertinent gender comparison:

Because you see one thing, the Sikhs, the boys, are the ones that wear headscarves and hair buns, and we don’t ever say anything to them, nobody makes any comment. In contrast, we do feel, the teachers as well, ay she is wearing a headscarf, you feel sorry, and do you ask yourself why? We think that she has taken a step backwards, you see that they don’t wear it and they arrive at the third year of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) they wear it and you say oh what has happened?

Here is one of the elements that comes up socially as a negative prejudice towards (especially) Muslim girls: the issue of the veil. If, as we will see, Muslim boys are seen as a social danger, the girls are criticized for their supposed submission that is manifested and concentrated in the veil. The implicit equation is: the veil equals submission of a woman and traditionalism. Socially and educationally it is interesting to see how the veil is usually interpreted by the native population, as we have seen in some teachers, as a clear indication of a process of dissonant acculturation, in which the host culture is rejected and that of the family non-critically reproduced. In contrast, and as authors from Vic itself like Karrouch (2004) and El Hachmi (2008) and others who are known internationally like Lamrabet (2011) and Göle (2014), the veil can be interpreted in multiple ways depending on the person, the moment, the family context, the religion connection and so forth. And it is a mistake to interpret it in just one way as a sign (often the only sign) of dissonant or even downwards acculturation.

Conflicts caused by religion

In this dimension, for example, we find Muslim boys experiencing conflict in every area they move in and with the different people they meet. One manifestation of the daily and transversal stereotypes and discrimination that affect the four boys and girls interviewed, and corroborated by their parents and religious leaders, has to do with the relation between Islam and terrorism. As Muslim boy 1 explains,

Some schoolmates make jokes about terrorism, about bombs, make these kinds of jokes and, sheesh, you get tired of telling them that that we could be the ones that are killed, and they say no, that the terrorists are Muslims. They are jokes like ‘quién vuela, Superman, quién explota, musulmán’, that’s very popular, it was made popular by Youtubers, it made me feel bad when this Youtuber said it. It’s a joke that, well makes you laugh but they think that all Muslims are the same and the ones that make the bombs are Daesh, the Sunnis have never done anything, my family are Sunnis.

This type of humour, of comments, of discrimination can arise in any context. As the same boy explains: ‘In basketball a friend that I like a lot sometimes goes too far with the jokes, and I tell him not to’. Another example of transversal, daily discrimination that is carried out by all types of people is revealed by Muslim girl 1 when she explains that

I found myself with a fairly big man and he dropped some fruit on the ground and I bent down to help him and he said ‘go away you damn moor, ¹ you are a terrorist’ and I was . . . I felt really bad, I even got goosebumps. I left but I thought it was pathetic of him because he is a big person and I couldn’t answer back, but I found it ridiculous. I told my parents and they told me that in this world there are many kinds of people and that I shouldn’t make a big deal of it.

Muslim girl 2 explained, in an example that the theory of stereotypes mentions (Tajfel, 1984), that she habitually and ‘pre-emptively’ receives discriminatory comments and attitudes before knowing the person. ‘When someone doesn’t know me there is like Islamophobia, but when they start to get to know me it’s different, they respect you and treat you totally equally’. Later we will discuss further the question of Islamophobia as an expression that distils this transversal and widespread discrimination towards young Muslims.

In this sense, it is interesting to see how the same fact is interpreted from radically opposed frameworks and criteria by the Muslim community and the native population. The paradigmatic example is the headscarf of Muslim girls. Muslim girl 1 explained it thus,

In the Muslim community you respect the people who wear a headscarf more than those who don’t. The headscarf makes you feel more respected. My parents have never forced me to do anything, what I am wearing now is because I myself have chosen to.

And then she adds, in relation to her schoolmates: ‘Yes, it depends, there are people who don’t mind what you wear, and there are people who think you are a terrorist’. In contrast, their native peers think that their schoolmates with foreign-born parents play the victim and take advantage of the fact that they are ‘different’ to do things that they (who sometimes call themselves ‘the normal ones’ in contrast to ‘those’ of foreign origin) are not allowed to do. For example, native schoolmate boy 1 says, ‘When Moroccans are told off they always use the excuse that the teachers are racist and that’s why they tell them off’. Or native schoolmate girl 1 says, ‘In my class there is a Moroccan boy who calls another “fucking moor”’. ‘If they say it to each other nothing happens, but if one day a Catalan says it to another it’s an insult, but if they say it among themselves it turns out that it’s not a problem’. It is clear that the discourse of the peers with native parents possess the power that being ‘the normal ones’, the mainstream, the habitual and expected gives them. As Fiske (1998) explains, stereotypes and prejudices depend on relations of power and status among groups. And in the case of the young Muslims, it seems clear that their schoolmates with parents of native origin have the power to classify them as the ‘others’, as those that are not ‘normal’, with the everyday and transversal consequences that this implies for the young Muslims. In this case, in the school context.

External religious symbols

Muslim girl 2 explained the conflict that she experienced related to dressing as a Muslim and the swimming pool activity at school. Once again, there appears the experience of Islam that involves significant, daily and transversal conflicts. And they are experienced by a large proportion of Muslim youths, especially by those that display their religion publicly. She explains it as follows:

In the class at the swimming pool there were four girls who wore a headscarf and some said they didn’t want to go swimming. Not me, I knew I wanted to go swimming. But in that moment the teachers, I understand that it is compulsory, but they said things that weren’t necessary like: ‘religion always has to stop you doing things’, and ‘this is a secular country, if you don’t like it go to another country’. That may not sound like much but it hurts when they say it to you because they don’t like you being here.

As we have mentioned, this type of conflict shows that, in an exploratory manner, the conflicts that young Muslims face in their process of integration are neither occasional nor anecdotal. Nor are they something that happen to a minority. The field work data seem to indicate that they are not exceptions, at least not in Vic. We, therefore, believe that the hypothesis of religious discrimination as a habitual, transversal and shared reality for most young Muslims is true, at least in Vic.

Comparison

To contrast this hypothesis we feel it is important to compare it with processes experienced by second-generation of young Sikhs and Pentecostals. And comparatively speaking, we can say that the results of the research confirm that Muslim youths in Vic have, in general, an experience of socialization that is much more affected by elements of discrimination than young people of other religions – with a negative effect that is present in every area of life: school, friendships, Internet, community, work, and so on. As a result, we propose the hypothesis that Islam, and given certain social, work, educational and political contexts like Vic, can become a transversal axis that negatively affects the process of integration of young people (downwards assimilation) and from which it is difficult to escape.

Conclusion

In this article, we have wanted to establish a dialogue with Portes and Rumbaut (2014) and Portes et al. (2016) and, through a qualitative and exploratory research project in the city of Vic, provide further nuance to their analysis of the role of religions in the process of assimilation. To do so, we have proposed the hypothesis of religious discrimination for young Muslims. A discrimination that (a) affects, or can affect, negatively all areas of the life (transversal) of young Muslims and that affects the majority, not a minority, of them. We believe that the first dimension of the hypothesis is plausible and propose continuing to deepen our knowledge of it, questioning in a concrete and contextualized manner the idea that the processes of discrimination, racialization and religionism with Islam are infrequent in Catalonia and Spain (Portes et al., 2016: 137). As the Runnymede Trust (1997) and its notion of Islamophobia or the Council of Europe (2005) points out, this negative perception of Islam as a religion and of Muslims as conflictive is not new, but it has clearly increased in recent years in Europe. And (b) while we have been unable to confirm it due to lack of data, we do, however, maintain, because of certain evidence from the research project, that the hypothesis of religious discrimination could facilitate, depending on the context as Portes and Rumbaut (2014) say, processes of downwards assimilation. With respect to the first dimension, we believe that discrimination is having significant (negative) impact on the identity construction of young Muslim people in Vic. After experiencing this habitual and transversal discrimination at school, on the street, in the labour market among other areas, the Moroccan father explained that, with respect to his three sons: ‘These things make you feel not Catalan. Because they have come across these problems in different places. Nor do they feel Moroccan . . . rather they feel of the world, international’. With respect to the second dimension, we feel that we lack data to confirm it.

In any event, if we add up all the conflicts and discrimination experienced by young Muslims that were explained in the field work, we can see the different dimensions of this discrimination that can act as a transversal obstacle present in every area of life (relational, school, neighbourhood) as a factor that facilitates not just dissonant acculturation but also, in some cases, downwards assimilation. As we have said, from the data of this exploratory research, we believe that the religious discrimination hypothesis is plausible and could be a conceptual tool for better understanding the processes of integration of Muslim youth in Catalonia, Spain and Europe. The hypothesis that religious discrimination is a social reality experienced by most young Muslims also seems plausible to us since, as we have seen, the elements of prejudice and discrimination based on religion-culture appeared in the accounts of all four young Muslims and were confirmed by their peers, in part by the teachers and also by the families and leaders of the Islamic communities. We can thus see that the three conditions that Portes and Rumbaut (2014) set for downwards assimilation to take place are fulfilled: discrimination from the native population; a segmented labour market; and some patterns of negative integration that have emerged as possible with the terrorist attack in Barcelona. Implicit in these three conditions are those that Foner and Alba (2008) consider key when it comes to understanding why religion helps integration in the case of the United States (bridge) and yet become a barrier in Europe: the religious background of immigrants; the religiosity of the native population; and the relations between the state and religious groups. After entering into dialogue with the contributions of Portes et al. (2016) and above all those they have made to the study of second-generation immigrants in Spain, we have proposed an added nuance with respect to his perception of the role of the religious variable in the segmented assimilations of these youths. We believe that, in a contextualized fashion in cities like Vic and in the case of Islam, it is probably not true that the experiences of discrimination, racism and religionism are something restricted to a small number of young people and/or a few areas of life. Quite the opposite. With the religious discrimination hypothesis, we propose understanding the experience of assimilation that Muslim youths go through from the perspective that a majority of them experience stigma, racism and prejudice towards their religion habitually and in all areas of their lives. And that we need to continue analysing whether this dynamic has significant effects in the paths of downwards assimilation.