Conference "Islamic Migrants in Russia, Europe and America"
December 15, 2011 LCSR (HSE) organized the conference "Islamic Migrants in Russia, Europe and America" in St. Petersburg. The lectures were given by well-known researchers - Mark Tessler and Kenneth Kollman. This is the first visit of this experts to Russia, where they presented their latest research, hosted in collaboration with scientists of HSE.
December 15, 2011 LCSR (HSE) organized the conference "Islamic Migrants in Russia, Europe and America" in St. Petersburg. The lectures were given by well-known researchers - Mark Tessler and Kenneth Kollman. This is the first visit of this experts to Russia, where they presented their latest research, hosted in collaboration with scientists of HSE.
Kenneth Kollman, professor at University of Michigan, presented a report “Studying Muslims in Europe”.
Professor Kollman and his colleagues held several separate researches on Muslim migrants in London (and Manchester), Madrid and Berlin. The first pilot study was conducted in these cities in 2004. In each city different sampling schemes were used, as the question of finding appropriate respondents was not clear. Moreover, two different methods of surveying were used. The telephone survey was held in the Great Britain and in Madrid and Berlin researchers used in-personal interviews. During the pilot stage both qualitative and quantitative approaches was applied. There were 141 telephone interviews of Bangladesh migrants in London, 205 in-personal interviews of Moroccan migrants in Madrid and 235 interviews of Turkish in Berlin. In Madrid and Berlin interviewers were segregated by sex: the male interviewers asked men and female interviewer had a conversation with women. Professor Kollman admits that the pilot stage conducted cannot be considered as a cross-national study as different methodology and different samples were used. So these are tree different studies and it is not possible to make a comparison of results of studies in London, Madrid and Berlin.
Comparing to survey instrument used in 2004, the one in 2010 was shorter and more formalized. The questionnaire consisted of 6 sections, including questions on basic personal information, self-identification, political attitudes, immigration experience, health and previous experience of being interviewed. Also, other methods of sampling were used. For example, random routes sampling schemes were used in Madrid. Of course, many problematic issues have been occurring during this survey. For example, one of the main problems in Madrid research was differences in Spanish dialect which Moroccan migrants speak. Professor Kollman notices that the researcher should take into account that certain words mean not the same in different languages.
One of the main aims of professor Kollman’s study is comparison between immigrants in the U.S.A and in Europe. It has been found out, that religion helps Christian immigrants to feel comfortable in the U.S.A. The question is if religion is a barrier for migrants in Europe or not. The questions included in the questionnaire were dedicated to belief system and religious practices of migrants in the host country.
It has been found out that religion influence people’s live strategies. The stronger the religious attitudes, the less respondents feel themselves at home at the host country. The more often religious practices show the same tendency. Also gender is a part of the story: women attend the mosque more rarely then men do. Moreover the small, but significant effect of discrimination and religiosity on feeling at home was found out. In Germany there is an effect of religiosity on discrimination. Religiosity matters least in Germany and most in Britain, according to the results of Professor Kollman’s study.
Mark Tessler, professor at University of Michigan, gave a public lecture “What do ordinary citizens in the Arabs World want: secular democracy or democracy with Islam?”
Mark Tessler claims that the recent uprising in the Arab world makes clear that ordinary citizens in the Muslim Middle East are concerned about and have strong views about the way their societies should be governed. They try to take charge of their societies and to chart their own course and define their own destiny. Therefore, they want governments that are accountable and democracy is central for the thinking of huge majorities. The major question arising is what predisposes people to favor or not to favor an important role of Islam in political process.
14 Arab countries were studied by Mark Tessler. He uses the data from the 2 waves of the Arab Barometer (2006 and 2011) covering about 25000 respondents. According to the obtained results, 36.6% Arabs want democracy with Islam, 47.8 prefer a secular democracy, 8.2% would like to live in a country with a secular authoritarian regime and 7.4% want Islamic authoritarianism. Support for democracy is higher in the first wave (41%) in comparison with the second wave (33%). Preferences of democracy with Islam have also declined.
Regime evaluation, cultural values and respondents’ educational level were selected as the main drivers and predictors of whether Islam should have an important role in democracy or not. Cultural values imply attitudes to gender equality in this case. According to the results of the study, those people who are more traditional are more likely to favor Islam in political process. In regimes where there is strong connection with Islam people would like to have an Islamic government. Men and older women in secular regimes such as Egypt and Tunisia prefer Islamic democracy. Moreover, the better people are educated, the lower support for democracy is across countries. Low educational level predicts lower support of democracy among older people in secular regimes.
Mark Tessler emphasized that these are only preliminary results of his work. He is planning to make further steps in development of his project. Namely, he is going to separate analysis for each survey, perform 2-level analysis to identify conditioning effects of country and temporal characteristics, to test additional individual-level hypotheses and new independent variables (e.g. level of tolerance, economic situation, civic engagement) and to expand the database by including non-Arab countries.