Integration into Europe: Identifying a Muslim EffectClaire Adida – Stanford UniversityDavid Laitin – Stanford UniversityMarie-Anne Valfort – Paris I, SorbonneFor presentation at the December 11-12, 2009 meeting of the Working Group on AfricanPolitical EconomyI. IntroductionThis paper introduces a solution to a previously intractable measurement problem on apolitically sensitive social issue – that of the integration of Muslims into Europe. The resultingmeasure, if valid, would tell us if Muslim immigrants and their descendents in country x facehigher barriers to social and economic integration than if everything about these migrants werethe same except for their religion.1The importance of answering this question cannot be understated. The social and politicalrelations between Europe and the Muslim world are fractious.2 Attacks in Madrid (March 2004)and London (July 2005), and riots in suburban Paris in November 2005 and November 2007,have all been attributed to “Muslims”.3 Political parties in Europe (for example the FrontNational in France, which placed second in the presidential elections of 2002), have mobilizedopinion against a Muslim threat to Europe. Relations between the countries and societies of theEuropean Union and the Muslim World have therefore become politically consequential on anumber of dimensions – foreign policy in regard to the Middle East; new membership into theEU; and the vast migration of Muslim populations into EU states.Several recent studies reveal ambiguous findings for Muslims in Europe. On the onehand, the Pew poll of 2006 found that “while there are some signs of tension between Europe'smajority populations and its Muslim minorities, Muslims there do not generally believe that mostEuropeans are hostile toward people of their faith.” 4 Moreover, 91% of French Muslims expressfavorable opinions of Christians. Furthermore, the Pew report claims, “Substantial majorities ofMuslims living in the European countries surveyed say that in [the two years after bombings in 1 . This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Muslim Integration into EU Societies:Comparative Perspectives”, Grant SES-0819635, David Laitin, PI.2 . See Caldwell (2009) for an exposition of tensions between Muslim populations now living in Western Europethat puts much of the blame on the attitudes and behaviors of the Muslims themselves. See Sniderman andHagendoorn (2007) for a sophisticated survey approach that finds deep prejudices against Muslims.3 . Although objective analysts such as the International Crisis Group reported no direct connection between theFrench riots and Islam (see Xavier Ternisien “La France et son islam, vus d’ailleurs” Le Monde, March 11, 2006), itis not lost on the general French population that “most of the rioters were of Muslim origin” (Xavier Ternisien “Les‘barbus’ dans le 9-3” Le Monde, November 17, 2006), and leads to the question of whether higher barriers toeconomic and social advance to Muslims might have been an indirect determinant.4 . The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press is a public opinion research organization that studiesattitudes toward politics, the press and public policy issues.Spain and London, and the Cartoon Crisis in Denmark5] they have not had any personally badexperience attributable to their race, ethnicity or religion.”6Yet Europe – with states defined by their historic nationalities, all of them in theChristian tradition – is seen by many observers as having a special problem with Islam goingback to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans and the Reconquest of Spain in the 15thcentury. Thus there is throughout the continent a myth of a “Christian Europe” that is maintaineddespite its virtually complete secularization in the past century. It manifests itself clearly in theapplication of Turkey into the EU (as opposed to Bulgaria), where suspicions run high.7 Even thePew survey, which in general presented very positive feelings by Muslim migrants into Europe,notes that “over a third of Muslims in France ... say they have had a bad experience as a result oftheir religion or ethnicity,” and 39 percent of the Muslim respondents in France agree that “mostor many Europeans are hostile to Muslims.”8French policies to incorporate Muslims into a docile and accommodative pressure grouphave often backfired. Under Minister of Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, the Conseil Français du CulteMusulman (CFCM) was created in 2005 as a representative body for Muslims living in France.Yet it quickly turned into an arena of contentious politics: “Although this council was supposedto provide an alternative to foreign interference in French Islam,” John Bowen (2009, 26) notes,“it in fact has had the opposite effect. The Algerian, Moroccan, and Turkish consulates saw the2003, 2005, and 2008 council elections as opportunities to ratchet up control over theirconstituents by promoting slates associated with each of the home countries, and they did indeedmobilize these residents of France to vote for their slate.”. Moreover, in France, 76 percent of thenon-Muslim respondents expressed concern over Muslim extremism in their country. Even in thehighly tolerant Netherlands, the Muslim issue has wreaked political havoc, with a near populistrevolt against Islamic immigration. On November 2, 2004, the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was 5 . Cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicted the prophet in an unflattering manner set off a wave of proteststhroughout the Islamic world as well as crystallized anti-Muslim feelings, to the benefit of a new right party (theDanish People's Party) that evokes anti-Muslim sentiments. See Dan Bilefsky “Cartoon Dispute Prompts IdentityCrisis for Liberal Denmark” International Herald Tribune (February 12, 2006).6 . For full results, see Pew Global Attitudes Project, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=831. Workby Lawrence and Vaisse (2006, pp. 43-44, 58-9, 66) in France reports similar results. Muslim immigrants, they find,are not all that different from the historic nationalities of European states. In general, they find, the degree of anti-Islamism in police recorded incidents in France is much lower than anti-Semitic ones with a much larger relativeMuslim population in France. Those who are Islamophobic tend also to be anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant ingeneral. They conclude, at least for France, that there seems to be no specific