Muslim Acculturation in a Catholic Country

Abstract

The literature suggests that religion may play an important role in the acculturation process of immigrants by contributing to the maintenance of the heritage culture and preventing identification with the mainstream. With few exceptions, studies on this topic have focused on religion as a whole by assessing specific aspects or dimensions (such as religious identification, beliefs, and practices) and creating a composite measure without analyzing the contribution of each dimension to the acculturation process. In this study, the relationships between specific religious dimensions and acculturation were assessed with a sample of 282 Muslim immigrants who were recruited in the northern part of Italy. Two regression models show that religious identification drives the maintenance of Muslim culture but is unrelated to the acculturation to Italian culture, whereas beliefs and practices do not contribute to heritage acculturation but are negatively associated to acculturation to the host culture.

Keywords

acculturation religion Vancouver index of acculturation religious identification religious beliefs religious practices

The concepts of religion and culture are closely intertwined. Religions themselves can be considered forms of culture because they include all key aspects of cultures, such as shared values, principles, symbols, and habits (e.g., Saroglou & Cohen, 2011, 2013). More specifically, religion is a part of the larger cultural whole by which people manage their degree of belonging, including ethnic belonging. Although religion and ethnicity differ depending on the society, cross-country empirical evidence has highlighted the relationships among religiousness, ethnic and national identity, and pride. For example, when compared with their non-religious peers, young Catholic and Protestant Europeans who are highly identified with their religion show stronger national pride (Campiche, 1997), more intense feelings of belonging to their region or country, and a weak European or cosmopolitan identity (Belot, 2005).

Psychologists’ interest in religion has taken several forms. Studies have produced a vast amount of evidence showing how religious beliefs contribute to physical and mental health, interpersonal and intergroup relationships (e.g., Friedman & Saroglou, 2010). The psychology of intergroup relations has deepened the construct of religion based on a perspective that sees religion as a marker of group belonging and identification (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). A closely related research domain focuses on the link between religion and acculturation among first- and second-generation immigrants. The results highlight an overall negative relationship between identification with a religious group and the adoption of the host country’s national culture and identity and a positive relationship with the maintenance of cultural origin (e.g., Friedman & Saroglou, 2010; Güngör 2007; Saroglou & Mathijsen, 2007).

Although religion is a crucial element in the acculturation process, and although religion plays an unequivocal role in the construction of multiple identities (Burris, Branscombe, & Jackson, 2000; Saroglou & Mathijsen, 2007), few scholars have investigated the connection between these two concepts (see, among others, Goforth, Oka, Leong, & Denis, 2014; Güngör, Bornstein, & Phalet, 2012). In a large international study of immigrant youth in 13 immigrant-receiving countries, Berry, Phinney, Sam, and Vedder (2006, 2010) found a relation between religious preference and young immigrants’ acculturation. Specifically, they found differences in the acculturation profiles between youths from Judeo-Christian and Eastern religions and Muslim youths. The former groups showed a prevalent integration profile (i.e., relatively high involvement in ethnic and national cultures). In contrast, Muslims showed a prevalent ethnic profile (i.e., high orientation toward one’s own ethnic group, high ethnic identity, ethnic language proficiency and usage) but almost no national profile (i.e., a strong orientation toward the society in which they were living). In 2010, Saroglou and Friedman found that among Muslim immigrants, the association between religion and psychological acculturation was mediated by the perception of the cultural gap between their heritage and Western heritage. These results are particularly interesting because they trace Muslim immigrants’ reduced acculturation to “the combination of group membership and specific religious beliefs in a societal context that is hostile to those beliefs” (Friedman & Saroglou, 2010, p. 193).

All of the above-cited studies agree that religion is a multicomponent construct that includes individuals’ emotions, cognitions, and behavior (Hill & Hood, 1999) and has practical and individual (spiritual) features. Social scientists tend to identify three main religious dimensions: religious identification (attachment to one’s religious identity), beliefs (orthodoxy, or the knowledge and acceptance of religious doctrines), and practice (the observance of religious rules and rites, including dietary practices and worship; see Saroglou, 2011 for a review). Despite the multidimensional theoretical approach to religion that characterizes almost all studies on this topic, the role of different religious components on the acculturation process has not been examined. In a study on intercultural religious transmission among Muslim immigrants in Belgium, Güngör, Fleischmann, and Phalet (2011) found that cultural maintenance fully mediated the relationship between religious socialization in childhood and religiosity in adulthood. In this study, the three religious dimensions were considered a measure of religious transmission to the next generation. To the best of our knowledge, other studies interested in the relationship between religion and acculturation orientations (Friedman & Saroglou, 2010; Goforth et al., 2014; Güngör et al., 2012; Saroglou & Mathijsen, 2007) have used a single measure without distinguishing the role of each of the religious components.

Aims and Hypothesis

In the current study, we aimed to assess the association between specific religious components, namely, identification, beliefs and practices, and identification with heritage and/or mainstream cultures. Specifically, we study the relationship between religion and the acculturation of first-generation Muslim immigrants in Italy. Following Friedman and Saroglou (2010), this theoretical focus requires that we examine religion as an independent variable and acculturation as an outcome measure.

On the basis of the previously discussed literature, the present study considers religion a relevant element in Muslim immigrants’ acculturation. This is partly because religion influences identity processes and partly because religion represents a challenge for Muslim immigrants in European countries. Indeed, these immigrants “have to negotiate a place for the cultural systems of their countries of origin—usually marked by the force and predominance of religion—within the cultural systems of their adopted European countries often marked by secularization” (Saroglou & Mathijsen, 2007, p. 178). In the present study, identification is defined as the attachment to one’s religious group, and beliefs are conceptualized as a personal dimension regarding faith matters. Finally, practices are conceived as the adoption of prescribed behaviors.

We hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between the three components and the maintenance of the heritage culture.

Hypothesis 2: There is a negative relationship between the adoption of mainstream culture and the practices component of religion. This dimension, composed of traditional clothes, prayers, and dietary habits, is likely the most difficult to negotiate because of its impact on the relationship with the secularized outgroup.

Method

Procedure

Participants were recruited through snowball sampling in two cities of the northern part of Italy in the autumn and winter of 2014. We contacted the participants through cultural secular associations, schools of Italian language, and personal contacts. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire that took approximately 20 min. Participants choose which linguistic version to complete among Italian, French, and English; 93% chose the Italian version.

Participants

This study enrolled 282 Muslim immigrants (M = 58.7%) whose age ranged from 18 to 74 years (M = 35.5; SD = 11.9). All participants came from the North-Africa Mediterranean area (Morocco: 73%; Egypt: 12%; Tunisia: 7%; Algeria: 5%; other countries in the area: 3%), and their mean residence time was 10 years (range = 0-36; SD = 7.9). The mean of their years of education was 11.3 (range = 0-24; SD = 5.2). Participants’ employment status in Italy was 37% unskilled works, 15% skilled works, 33% unemployed or homemaker, and 10% student (other works conditions: 5%).

Instruments

The participants rated items and answered questions about different topics. The indicators in our analyses were the following.

Acculturation

The Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA; Ryder, Alden, & Paulhus, 2000) was used. The scale assesses various aspects, such as participation in cultural traditions, social activities, values, and entertainment of both the host (10 items) and the heritage (10 items) culture. Items were scored on a 4-point Likert-type format. The two items dealing with marriage were excluded from the analysis because participants found it difficult to answer the item “I would be willing to marry an Italian person” (host culture version). The Cronbach’s alphas were .87 and .84 for the nine-item Host and nine-item Heritage subscales, respectively.

Religious dimensions

To assess the identification dimension, we used a modified version of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure–Revised (MEIM-R, Phinney & Ong, 2007), in which, “ethnic group” was substituted by “religious group.” Our choice was based on the above-discussed overlap between religions and cultures (Saroglou & Cohen, 2013) and was supported by the findings of Ashdown, Homa, and Brown (2014). The MEIM-R consists of six items scored on a 4-point Likert-type format. The Cronbach’s alpha was .82. To assess religious belief and practice, we used four items from the Comprehensive Measure of Islamic Religiosity (CMIR; Tiliouine & Belgoumidi, 2009). For the beliefs dimension, we used “I rely on God’s help in hard times” and “I take the Prophet as a model in my life” (Cronbach’s alpha = .78). The two items used as indicators of the practices dimension were “I usually dress in accordance with my religion” and “I usually recite some traditional prayers” (Cronbach’s alpha = .69). The four items’ response codes ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (always).

Socio-demographic information

At the end of the questionnaire, the participants were asked to provide socio-demographic information (gender, age, years of education, residence time in Italy, state of birth, and employment status).

Data Analysis

To evaluate the relationship between acculturation and religion, two multiple regression models were performed that defined the acculturation scores as dependent variables and the three religious scores (identification, practices, and beliefs) as independent variables. Regression coefficients were adjusted for the following covariates: gender, years of education, employment status, and percentage of lifetime spent in Italy. The variance inflation factor (VIF) was used to evaluate the presence of multicollinearity, using a cutoff of 2.5. R² statistics was used to assess model fit. The data were analyzed by SPSS 22.

Results

All the correlations reported in Table 1 were statistically significant, and their signs were coherent with theoretical expectations. Specifically, the three religion dimensions were positively correlated with themselves and with heritage acculturation scores, although they showed a negative correlation with mainstream acculturation scores.

Table 1.

Pearson’s Correlation and Descriptive Statistics of Religion Dimensions and Acculturation.

	Identification	Practices	Beliefs	Heritage culture	Mainstream culture
Identification	1
Practices	0.319	1
Beliefs	0.259	0.589	1
Heritage culture	0.519	0.332	0.310	1
Mainstream culture	−0.207	−0.462	−0.401	−0.294	1
M	3.10	3.40	4.43	3.31	2.73
SD	0.76	1.35	1.00	0.61	0.79

Note. Correlations were all statistically significant (p < .001).

The association between religious components and acculturation scores was assessed by two regression models in which gender, years of education, employment condition, and the percentage of lifetime spent in Italy were used as control variables. Overall, the regression analysis performed well. As shown in Table 2, the R² statistics were good in both models. Gender was not statistically related to any of the acculturation scores. Years of education showed a statistically significant positive association with the host culture, and percentage of lifetime spent in Italy was significantly related to both forms of cultural identification. Specifically, the longer the lifetime spent in Italy, the lower the score on the heritage culture and the higher the score on the mainstream culture dimensions. With regard to employment status, only the association between student condition and heritage culture scores was statistically significant. In particular, being a student, compared with the reference category unemployment/homemaker, was negatively associated with the maintenance and enhancement of heritage culture. Moving to the statistically significant association with the religious dimensions, identification scores (MEIM-R) were positively related to those of the heritage culture, and both practices and beliefs scores were negatively related to Italian culture. In terms of beta coefficients, the strength of association was greater for practice scores (−.29, p < .01) than for belief scores (−.13, p < .05).

Table 2.

Multiple Regression Results (n = 258).

	Heritage culture (R² = .38)		Italian culture (R² = .34)
	B	Beta	B	Beta
Intercept	2.36**		3.16**
Female	0.01	0.01	−0.02	−0.02
Education	−0.01	−0.02	0.02**	0.14
% of lifetime in Italy	−0.01**	−0.23	0.01**	0.25
Skilled works^a	0.05	0.03	0.01	0.01
Unskilled works^a	0.05	0.04	0.06	0.04
Student^a	−0.32**	−0.15	0.25	0.09
Identification	0.30**	0.38	0.02	0.02
Practices	0.05	0.12	−0.16**	−0.29
Beliefs	0.01	0.02	−0.10*	−0.13

Note. VIF = variance inflation factor.

Reference category = unemployed or homemaker; VIF values in both models were < 2.0.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Discussion and Conclusion

The aim of the current study was to investigate the associations among identification, beliefs and practices, and attitudes toward both the heritage and host cultures in a group of Muslim immigrants.

Regression analyses showed that, as hypothesized, the identification dimension was related to the maintenance of the heritage culture, whereas no relation emerged between cultural maintenance and the other two dimensions.

The expected negative association between practices and identification with the host culture was found. The strength of the relation was high and was comparable with that of a well-known predictor of acculturation, the percentage of lifetime spent in the host country (Miglietta & Tartaglia, 2009; Ryder et al., 2000). A negative relation, albeit weaker than the previous one, was also observed for the beliefs dimension.

Consistent with the literature (Berry et al., 2006, 2010), the study highlighted the relevance of religion for the acculturation process and the role of group identification in the maintenance of the culture of origin. Beliefs and practices are negatively associated with mainstream culture adoption, likely because they make salient the cultural differences between the heritage and mainstream cultures. As Güngör and colleagues (2011) affirm, “Through similarity (e.g., religious dress codes) and synchronicity (e.g., daily prayers or breaking the fast), religion powerfully shapes shared social realities within religious communities” (p. 1357). In other words, religion plays key meaning-making and world-making functions that may help to prevent faithful people from experiencing the “risks” associated with the alternate values and religion offered by the host Western societies.

Contrary to our expectation, beliefs and practices were not associated with the maintenance of the heritage culture. More precisely, beliefs and practices were positively related to heritage when the relation was assessed through Pearson’s correlation, but this relation vanished when controlling for the identification dimension in the regression model. These results suggest that the identity dimension of religion contributes to the maintenance of the heritage culture, whereas the behavioral and spiritual dimensions do not.

Overall, this study contributes by illuminating the different roles played by the components of religion in Muslim immigrants’ acculturation process. However, this research suffers from some limitations, particularly its cross-sectional research design, which prevents a causal understanding of the pattern of findings. Moreover, the investigated sample was not balanced with respect to the respondents’ country of origin (Moroccans were over-represented). Finally, the indicators of Muslims’ religious beliefs and practices should be improved to consider the differences between Islamic teachings and Islamic practice among the various Muslim ethnic groups.

Future studies should analyze this topic by comparing immigrants from different faiths who have settled in European Union (EU) countries with different religious traditions (i.e., Protestant) or areas that are more secularized than Italy, where Catholicism is still rooted in cultural habits. In this cross-religious perspective, the Multi-Religion Identity Measure (MRIM; Abu-Rayya, Abu-Rayya, & Khalil, 2009) could be a useful tool, particularly due to its item response format that includes a “non-applicable” category for atheists and people without a religious affiliation.

Because of the distrust Muslims must face from members of host societies caused by the supposed relationship between the Muslim faith and terrorism, future research should investigate whether and how individuals’ perceptions of hostility toward Muslims or Islam may affect acculturation (Berry et al., 2010).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Abu-Rayya

H. M.

Abu-Rayya

M. H.

Khalil

(2009). The Multi-Religion Identity Measure: A new scale for use with diverse religions. Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 4, 124-138.

Ashdown

B. K.

Homa

Brown

C. M.

(2014). Measuring gender identity and religious identity with adapted versions of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure—Revised. Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 4, 226-237.

Belot

(2005). Du local au mondial: Les espaces d’appartenence des jeunes Européens [From the local to the global: Young Europeans and the spaces of the spaces of belomging]. In Galand

Roundet

(Eds.), Les jeunes Européens and leurs valeurs: Europe occidentale, Europe centrale et orientale [Young Europeans and their values: Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe] (pp. 177-203). Paris, France: La Découverte.

Berry

J. W.

Phinney

J. S.

Sam

D. L.

Vedder

(2006). Immigrant youth: Acculturation, identity, and adaptation. Applied Psychology, 55, 303-332.

Berry

J. W.

Phinney

J. S.

Sam

D. L.

Vedder

(2010). Immigrant youth: Acculturation, identity and adaptation. In Allemann-Ghionda

Stanat

Göbel

Röhner

(Eds.), Migration, identität, sprache und bildungserfolg (pp. 17-43). Beltz Verlag - Weinheim and Basel, Germany.

Burris

C. T.

Branscombe

N. R.

Jackson

L. M.

(2000). “For God and country”: Religion and the endorsement of national self-stereotypes. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 31, 517-527.

Campiche

R. J.

(Ed.). (1997). Cultures jeunes et religions en Europe [Young cultures and religions in Europe]. Paris, France: Cerf.

Friedman

Saroglou

(2010). Religiosity, psychological acculturation to the host culture, self-esteem and depressive symptoms among stigmatized and nonstigmatized religious immigrant groups in Western Europe. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32, 185-195.

Goforth

A. N.

Oka

E. R.

Leong

F. T. R.

Denis

D. J.

(2014). Acculturation, acculturative stress, religiosity and psychological adjustment among Muslim Arab American adolescents. Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 8, 3-19.

10.

Güngör

(2007). The interplay between values, acculturation and adaptation: A study on Turkish Belgian adolescents. International Journal of Psychology, 42, 380-392.

11.

Güngör

Bornstein

M. H.

Phalet

(2012). Religiosity, values, and acculturation: A study of Turkish, Turkish Belgian, and Belgian adolescents. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 36, 367-373.

12.

Güngör

Fleischmann

Phalet

(2011). Religious identification, beliefs, and practices among Turkish Belgian and Moroccan Belgian Muslims: Intergenerational continuity and acculturative change. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1356-1374.

13.

Hill

P. C.

Hood

R. W.

(1999). Measures of religiosity. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press.

14.

Miglietta

Tartaglia

(2009). The influence of length of stay, linguistic competence, and media exposure in immigrants’ adaptation. Cross-Cultural Research, 43, 46-61.

15.

Phinney

J. S.

Ong

(2007). Conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity: Current status and future directions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 54, 271-281.

16.

Ryder

A. G.

Alden

L. E.

Paulhus

D. L.

(2000). Is acculturation unidimensional or bidimensional? A head-to-head comparison in the prediction of personality, self-identity, and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 49-65.

17.

Saroglou

(2011). Believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging: The big four religious dimensions and cultural variation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1320-1340.

18.

Saroglou

Cohen

A. B.

(2011). Psychology of culture and religion: Introduction to the JCCP special issue. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1309-1319.

19.

Saroglou

Cohen

A. B.

(2013). Cultural and cross-cultural psychology of religion. In Paloutzian

F. R.

Park

C. L.

(Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 330-354). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

20.

Saroglou

Mathijsen

(2007). Religion, multiple identities, and acculturation: A study of Muslim immigrants in Belgium. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 29, 177-198.

21.

Tiliouine

Belgoumidi

(2009). An exploratory study of religiosity, meaning in life and subjective wellbeing in Muslim students from Algeria. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 4, 109-127.

22.

Verkuyten

Yildiz

A. A.

(2007). National (dis) identification, and ethnic and religious identity: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10, 341-357.