1

Immigrant Generation, Religiosity, and Civic Engagement in

Britain

Siobhan McAndrew

David Voas

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis, Ethnic and Racial Studies,

37/ 1 (2014), Special Issue: ‘The First and Second Generations Compared: Generational Change in

Britain’, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/ DOI:10.1080/01419870.2013.808755

Abstract

Immigrant integration appears to be generational in the United States, and further facilitated by

religious involvement. We examine whether similar patterns exist in Britain. We find evidence for

secularization across minority ethnic groups, measured by private religious practice and religious

salience. Communal religious practice appears robust to generational decline. Ethnic minority

members of the second generation exhibit lower social trust; for the 1.5 generation, being more

religious is associated with lower trust. However, members of the 1.5 and second generation are

more civically-involved than the first and religiosity further increases civic involvement. While

anecdotal accounts suggest religiosity has a particularly dissociative effect on the second generation,

we find no evidence for this. In sum, successive generations of ethnic minority respondents appear

to be secularizing; successive generations are more civically-involved than the arriving generation,

although less trusting; and immigrant religiosity promotes civic integration.

Keywords: Civic Engagement, Ethnic Minorities, Generations, Integration, Religiosity, Trust.

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Introduction

International migration has altered British society over the past half-century, increasing its ethnic

and religious diversity, and raising interest in immigrant incorporation. The literature on immigrant

adaptation has identified generational processes as the means by which immigrants integrate

(Rumbaut 2004). Religion is thought to play an additional and important role in immigrant

integration in the US, providing newcomers with group identity and practical support. Places of

worship are important repositories of social capital in the United States (Putnam et al. 2003, p. 120),

and may serve a similar role in Britain.

However, religion may also hinder integration into wider social and civic life. Religions

promote particular basic values; govern time use; and regulate food and alcohol consumption, dress,

dating and family formation. Immigrants’ social networks may foster a reactive religiosity reducing

‘bridging’ social capital. Further, religious norms may shape some socio-political attitudes and

behaviours directly, for example regarding the obligation to civic engagement.

Our purposes are twofold: examination of immigrant religiosity, and its effects. First, we

examine how religiosity varies by generation among different immigrant groups. Reactive religiosity

is thought to be apparent among second generation South Asians in particular, and a cause of as

well as reaction to failure to integrate. Secondly, we examine how generational and ethnic status

and religiosity affect social trust, civic engagement, and volunteering. We also investigate whether

religiosity acts differently for different generations – namely, whether it moderates generational

effects.

How Religion Integrates and Differentiates

Religion may integrate migrants in three ways: through providing a cultural identity consonant with

a new national identity; in enabling socio-economic participation; and by reinforcing values

promoting social order. Hirschman summarizes the social function of religion for immigrants as ‘the

search for refuge, respect and resources’ (Hirschman 2004, p. 1228). In the US ‘immigrants and their

children became Americans… by settling in neighborhoods, joining associations, and acquiring

identities of ethnic Americans defined more by religion than by country of origin’ (Hirschman 2004,

p. 1209). The implied mechanism is the substitution of religious for national difference. Religious

involvement is associated with higher educational achievement and occupational prestige, and

negatively related to ‘downward assimilation’ (Portes and Rumbaut 2006, p. 323).

However, Britain is notably secular: religious belief is non-existent or fuzzy (Voas and Ling

2010). Religious decline has occurred via generational change. 46 per cent of children with two

parents belonging to the same denomination inherit their parents’ religious affiliation; 22 per cent of

children with one religious parent do so; while 91 per cent of children of parents without a religious

affiliation follow them (Voas and Crockett 2005, p. 21). A high proportion of Britons report a

religious affiliation on official surveys and the decennial census (68 per cent of England and Wales in

the 2011 Census); often, though, this is to indicate cultural or ethnic heritage, and responses are

affected by question wording (Voas and Bruce 2004). Reported practice is also low. Only 8.4 per cent

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of white respondents to the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey reported at least weekly

attendance, compared with 31.1 per cent of ethnic minority or mixed respondents.

Beyond attendance, which has particular social functions, ethnic minority respondents to

surveys are also more religious. This may be because the sending society is more religious, or

because immigration encourages religiosity (Voas and Fleischmann 2012). Figure 1 below is

indicative. Putnam and Campbell calculated a religiosity index using the US ‘Faith Matters’ survey

(Putnam and Campbell 2010, p. 18); we use a similar approach using its British replication via the

2008 British Social Attitudes survey. We then compare the religiosity of ethnic minority and mixed

respondents with Whites. Non-White respondents comprise 10.3 per cent of the sample. We use

similar items: importance of religion in daily life, importance of religion to the respondent’s sense of

who they are, frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, and strength of belief in God

(Putnam and Campbell included a sixth item unavailable in the British sample). Non-white

respondents comprise 0.4 per cent of the lowest decile of religiosity, but 38.7 per cent of the

highest.

Figure 1. Percentage of Each Religiosity Decile by Ethnicity

Source: Economic and Social Data Service, British Social Attitudes Survey 2008.

Notes: Design weight applied. Unweighted N = 1944.

While the ‘ethnic majority’ exhibits low and declining religiosity, anecdotal evidence

suggests that succeeding generations of some ethnic minority groups, particularly South Asian

Muslims, are more religious than their parents. Urban Britain may provide more opportunities for

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religious expression than the sending society; religious fundamentalism may also express a reaction

against modernisation. Finally, migration often implies a move from being close to the norm to being

unusual whether as a member of a religious minority, or as highly religious at all. Such migrants must

take active measures to transmit religiosity to their children, rather than relying on wider society

(Kelley and de Graaf 1997).

There may also be a phenomenon of ‘reactive religiosity’, an extension of the concept of

‘reactive ethnicity’ (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Much of the British population report dislike of the

highly religious; for Muslims in particular, hostility to Islam has increased over the past three

decades, reaching back to the Rushdie affair of 1989, and especially following the 2001 and 2005

terrorist attacks. Religion, moreover, often reflects and reinforces ethnic heritage (Putnam and

Campbell 2010, pp. 316-317). While Islam is a global religion, mosques in Britain are often

differentiated along ethno-national lines (Naqshbandi 2006).

It is also possible that immigrant religiosity is fostered by discrimination and disadvantage.

Migrants may take this into account when making the migration decision, but their children,

educated in Britain, are more likely to assess their relative position according to host country norms.

The second generation and the better educated among Turks and Moroccans in Europe report

higher levels of discrimination than the first generation and less well educated (Fleischmann et al.

2011, p. 644). Educational credentialisation and self-employment provide strategies to overcome

this; another is accessing the psychological and often material security provided by religious

involvement. Finally, qualitative studies suggest religiosity is harnessed by women pursuing

education and employment:

Girls felt that their parents were concerned if they saw Asian girls wearing western dress to

college. Traditional Asian dress signified that a girl subscribed to the values and codes of

behaviour of their community. It thus provided an assurance to parents and could be used in

negotiating permission to attend college (Dale et al. 2002, p. 957).

Immigrant Religiosity and Civic Life

Religion may serve further social ends. Researchers have had particular interest in its role in civic life

for host and arriving populations alike, as a source of social capital (Wuthnow and Hackett 2003).

Churches are ‘an important incubator’ for civic skills and community interests (Putnam 2000, p. 66).

Conversely, popular accounts in Britain cite religion as a source of disengagement, with concerns

that South Asians in particular ‘live in impoverished ethnic ghettos, participate in non-mainstream

religions, and politically organise via ethnically and religiously motivated networks’ (Maxwell 2006,

p. 736, citing media sources). Putnam and Campbell find that in the US social trust increases with

religious attendance and that more religious Americans are more civically-active (Putnam and

Campbell 2010, pp. 456-469).

Whether the relationship holds equally for immigrants is less clear. A separate US study

found that social trust correlated with ethnicity and education, but not minority religious affiliation,

with some evidence of political alienation for religious minority respondents, especially non-black

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Muslims (Wuthnow and Hackett 2003, p. 665). Similar results were found in Canada, with non-white

migrants slower to integrate. The effect of religiosity reflected ethno-religious attachment rather

than the content of religious norms, with no differential effect across different faiths (Reitz et al.

2009, pp. 721-722).

The question remains: does immigrant religiosity further social and civic integration? Various

findings suggest so. In Britain, minority ethnic status is related to having a smaller range of social

contacts; having a religious affiliation is associated with a larger range. Ethnicity and religious

affiliation predict engagement in religious (but not other) organisations; this in turn predicts higher

social trust. The downwardly-mobile also have higher engagement in religious organisations,

compensating for decline in social status (Li et al. 2008, p. 401). Maxwell found South Asians to

exhibit higher trust than White respondents to the Citizenship Survey, and significant differences

between South Asians and Black Caribbeans in positive national identification and social and political

trust (Maxwell 2008, pp. 395, 403). He cites a community worker comparing the young Black British

with British Asians: ‘They have no “Caribbean” culture to identify with the way the Asian kids have

their religion’ (Maxwell 2008, p. 399). These findings corroborated his earlier research suggesting

that ‘Muslims and South Asians have actively built integrated networks, have trust in mainstream

political institutions, and are committed to being a part of the larger British community’ (Maxwell

2006, p. 736).

Overall, religion may segregate but also mobilise: South Asians exhibit both high levels of

trust and electoral participation rates (Cutts et al. 2007). It is plausible that second generation

immigrants feel more disengaged: their reference group is the host society, so that ethnic and

religious penalties feel particularly unjust; further, the host country norm for younger cohorts is

relative disengagement (see Russell et al. 2002 with regard to electoral turnout). In addition, the

studies cited above do not control for religiosity. Religious affiliation, the usual control, may capture

attachment to the ethno-religious group rather than the effects of religiosity - a distinction noted

elsewhere and where effects work in countervailing directions (Storm 2011). Finally, religiosity may

moderate generational effects on trust and engagement - questions we shall next consider.

Data and Methods

To test for generational effects in religiosity, and the effect of religiosity on trust and engagement,

we look in closer detail at the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES). It allows us to

examine ethnic minority members of South Asian, African and Afro-Caribbean origin in detail. For

further details, see the article by Heath and Demireva in this volume.

We first examine how religious affiliation and religiosity differ by generational status and

ethnicity. Rumbaut’s 2004 typology is a standard: those arriving between the ages of 13 and 17 are

considered the ‘1.25 generation’, between 6 and 12 ‘1.5’, between birth and five ‘1.75’, and those

born in the host country ‘2.0’. However, secondary education ends earlier in Britain; we therefore

considered those arriving before the age of 16 as ‘1.5 generation’ because they should have received

some formal education in Britain. Those arriving later are considered first generation; their migration

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was probably at least partly voluntary. Of those providing the requisite information on country of

birth and age of arrival in Britain, 46.5 per cent are first-generation, 17.4 per cent 1.5 generation,

and 36.1 per cent members of subsequent generations (unweighted n = 2665).

We investigated how religiosity varies by generational status and ethnic category, first via

exploratory analysis, then using multivariate regression analysis. We interpreted the effects of

generation and ethnic group by conducting pairwise contrasts of predictions generated by the model

results (predictive margins), and then assessed the specific effect of generational status within

ethnic group (conditional marginal effects). Finally, we used probit regression analysis to assess the

effects of religiosity and generational status on three measures of civic health: social trust, civic

engagement and volunteering. Descriptive statistics, variable codes and question wordings for the

variables of interest are given in the Appendix.

Measuring Religiosity

Reported religious affiliation can serve as a minimal indicator of religiosity. The survey asked,

‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’, to which 90.2 per cent agreed. For

the first generation, affiliation rates are high across the five ethnic groups; only 4.6 per cent

comprise religious ‘nones’. For the succeeding generations, there is high retention among Indians,

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, but generational decline for Black Caribbeans and Black Africans. Table

1 summarizes.

Table 1. Percentage of Ethnic Group Belonging to a Religion (%)

All Black Caribbean

Black African

Indian Pakistani Bangladeshi

First generation

95.4 80.1 96.5 95.4 99.7 99.0

1.5 generation

90.7 71.4 92.4 92.3 94.6 98.9

Second generation

82.8 58.6 80.0 91.2 95.5 97.3

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study.

Notes: Proportions based on weighted counts.We then investigated how religiosity varies by

generational status and ethnicity. Those respondents indicating a religious affiliation were asked

‘How important is your religion to you?’, which we interpret as religious salience. Response options

ranged from ‘not important at all’ to ‘extremely important’, which we scored from 1 to 5; mean

scores are presented in Figure 2.

For all except Black Africans, the 1.5 generation appears more religious than the first; for all except

Pakistanis, the second generation is less religious than the first and 1.5 generations. We next

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investigate how far these differences are significant, controlling for confounding factors such as

education.

Figure 2. Religious Salience by Ethnicity and Generation

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study, http://bes.utdallas.edu.

Notes: Proportions based on weighted counts (using weight devised to analyse each group separately).

To measure generational change, we would ideally create a religiosity index valid across

ethnic categories. What constitutes a high level of religious practice and strength of religious

attachment differs by faith, however. Among Christians, denominations have different requirements

regarding church attendance. The Five Pillars of Islam include prayer five times a day, but communal

prayer at a mosque is not formally required, and many are not accessible to women: 54 per cent in a

2008 survey (Hart Dyke 2009, p. 20). The EMBES survey offers two further indicators besides that for

religious salience: frequency of communal religious practice, and of private religious practice (see

Appendix).

Exploratory factor analysis suggests the three measures load onto a single factor capturing

40 per cent of their variance, interpretable as ‘generalized religiosity’.1 The standardized item alpha

is 0.66, respectable for a three-item index, but shy of the usual 0.70 threshold. We estimated a

single-factor measurement model to test whether the three items captured the same construct of

latent religiosity by ethnic group; while the model fit looked acceptable when not differentiating by

ethnic group, we could not establish metric invariance across groups. This creates a dilemma. It

would be simpler to have a single indicator of religiosity to explain its generational change and social

and civic effects. However, what constitutes religiosity differs just enough by ethnicity to raise

questions about the validity of a single scale. We therefore examine each indicator of religiosity

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separately; but when explaining the effects of religiosity, we use an index created via common factor

analysis, for parsimony and because we are at that point interested in the effects of religiosity rather

than its structure. This follows Reitz et al’s approach when investigating religiosity and integration

(Reitz et al. 2009).

Immigrant Generation, Ethnicity and Religiosity

We examine generational decline and how it varies with ethnicity via multivariate

regression, with our three indicators of religiosity as joint dependent variables.2 We investigate the

effects of ethnic and generational status on the three indicators setting first-generation Pakistanis as

the base.

Table 2. Multivariate Regression of Religious Salience, Communal Religious Practice and Private

Religious Practice (Parameter Estimates)

Religious salience

Communal Practice

Private Practice

Variable Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient

Constant 4.415** 3.697** 4.742**

Female 0.079* -0.413** 0.399**

Married 0.095* 0.127+ 0.192**

Age -0.002 0.007* 0.004

Employed -0.035 0.093 -0.118+

Full-time student 0.014 0.279* 0.150

Years of education -0.001 0.007 -0.003

1.5 generation 0.021 0.261 -0.214

2nd generation -0.021 0.091 -0.376**

Black Caribbean -0.224* 0.037 -1.001**

Black African -0.045 0.450** -0.262*

Indian -0.433** -0.259* -0.741**

Bangladeshi 0.066 0.048 0.276+

Black Caribbean * 1.5 generation

-0.137

-0.358 0.351

Black Caribbean*2nd generation

-0.516** -0.526* 0.061

Black African*1.5 generation -0.027 -0.292 0.209

Black African*2nd generation -0.235+ -0.322 -0.161

Indian*1.5 generation -0.066 -0.438 -0.257

Indian*2 generation - 0.153 -0.296 -0.409*

Bangladeshi*1.5 generation -0.054 -0.385 -0.104

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Bangladeshi*2nd generation -0.192 -0.265 -0.487*

N 2197 2197 2197

R2 0.121 0.065 0.154

F (20, 2176) 15.032 7.527 19.796

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study: authors’ analysis. Notes: +Significant at the 0.1 level;

*0.05 level; **0.01 level. Base category is Pakistani, first-generation, male, unmarried, not full-time

employed, and not in full-time education in all three models.

Because the regression results for generational status and ethnicity are conditional on the

interaction terms, we interpret their overall effect by comparing predicted outcomes, but note the

following from Table 2. The correlation of residuals confirms that the three religious indicators are

related, most likely to a latent religiosity. The highest correlation is between that for religious

salience and private practice, perhaps because of the sample’s high proportion of Muslims. Being

female is associated with higher religious salience, lower communal practice, and higher private

practice. Being married is significant and positive in all three equations. Being older, or a full-time

student, is associated with greater communal practice, while working full-time is associated with

significantly less private practice. Full-time education, surprisingly, has no significant effect, perhaps

because education promotes secularity for some but higher religiosity for others.

It is difficult to gauge the net effects of the main and interaction terms for ethnicity and

generational status from the model results. We therefore use the results to predict the three

outcomes for a representative individual: one who is male, married, working full-time, aged 39 and

with 14 years of full-time education (the latter two being sample means).3 We then compare the

predicted scores for each group in turn to Pakistanis averaging over generations; then the 1.5 and

second generations with the first, averaging over ethnic groups. We finally compare scores for the

1.5 and second generations with those for the first generation within ethnic group.4 Table 3 reports

the contrasts.

Table 3. Predicted Religious Salience, Communal Practice and Private Religious Practice: Pairwise

Comparisons.

Pairwise contrasts of predictive margins at representative values

Overall Effects Religious Salience Communal Practice

Private Practice

Black Caribbean vs Pakistani -0.418** -0.161 -0.944**

Black African vs Pakistani -0.120* 0.309** -0.283**

Indian vs Pakistani -0.493** -0.435** -0.937**

Bangladeshi vs Pakistani -0.022 -0.100 0.098

1.5 generation vs first generation

-0.027 -0.028 -0.176*

Second generation vs first generation

-0.213* -0.189* -0.544**

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Within-Group Effects

1.5*Black Caribbean vs first -0.111

-0.158 0.165

Second-generation Black Caribbean vs first

-0.529** -0.499** -0.286+

1.5 generation Black African vs first

-0.015 -0.053 -0.010

Second-generation Black African vs first

-0.265* -0.254 -0.543**

1.5 generation Indian vs first -0.038 -0.170 -0.454*

Second-generation Indian vs first

-0.161* -0.197 -0.763**

1.5 generation Pakistani vs first 0.016 0.246 -0.238

Second-generation Pakistani vs first

-0.021 0.077 -0.397**

1.5 generation Bangladeshi vs first

0.001 -0.144 -0.334+

Second-generation Bangladeshi vs first

-0.177 -0.191 -0.876**

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study: authors’ analysis. Notes: +Significant at the 0.1 level;

*0.05 level; **0.01 level.

Across the three measures of religiosity, Black Caribbeans, Black Africans and Indians are

significantly less religious than Pakistanis, while Bangladeshis are not. The exceptions are in

communal practice: Black Caribbeans do not practice significantly less than Pakistanis; Black Africans

practice more frequently. Being a member of the 1.5 generation rather than the first has a

significant negative effect on private religious practice, although the results within ethnic group

suggest this is driven by Indian respondents. Being second-generation has a significant negative

effect on all three measures.

The effect of generation within each ethnic group provides specific evidence for

generational decline. It is clearest for private practice, perhaps the most stringent test of religious

commitment, holding across all five ethnic groups. For religious salience, there is evidence of

generational decline for Black Caribbeans, Black Africans and Indians, while second-generation

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis appear as likely as those of the first generation to report that religion is

important to them. Communal religious practice, perhaps because of its social function, is not

affected for groups other than Black Caribbeans, suggesting resilience of public worship in the host

country.

The attention devoted to the religiosity and integration of South Asian Muslims in Britain

motivates closer examination of this group. Tables 2 and 3 show that the generational effects for

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are not large; however, they may have additionally lost statistical

significance for two reasons. First, the number of controls in the model is relatively large, so that we

lose statistical power. We therefore repeated the multivariate regression analysis for Pakistanis and

Bangladeshis only. Given the lack of significant differences between Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in

the earlier analyses, we removed the control for ethnicity and associated interaction terms. The

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second generation then exhibited significantly lower religious salience than the first at the 0.05 level

of significance, while second-generation communal practice remained at similar levels to the first.

A further feature of the survey was that the religious salience and practice items were only

posed to those indicating a religious affiliation; however, it would be useful to take account of those

who have secularized to the extent of rejecting a religious affiliation. We therefore imputed scores

for religious salience, communal practice and private practice, assuming that they would report that

religion is ‘not at all’ important to them and that they do not practice communally or privately. In

these models, the contrast between the second generation and first in terms of religious salience is

found at the 0.01 level of significance. These additional analyses suggest that secularization

processes are in operation for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis just as with the other ethnic groups, even

if the generational effects are substantively more modest.

The results overall find a consistent drift away from private religious practice and religious

salience. Its extent is conditional on ethnic group membership, and takes a full generation to

progress. There is no such change in communal practice for groups other than Black Caribbeans. We

particularly note the following. It has hitherto been unclear whether second-generation Muslims in

Britain are on average more or less religious than their parents. There is no evidence here to suggest

they are significantly more religious, although many individuals undoubtedly are. While religion

remains avowedly important to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis of the 1.5 and second generations,

there is nevertheless some evidence of decline for the second. Private practice exhibits clearer

slippage. Younger generations may have to be more pragmatic about maintaining prayer alongside

study and work commitments, practising less often but no less meaningfully. Alternatively,

consistent private practice may simply be a more exacting measure of religiosity than religious

salience or communal practice.

The Civic Effects of Religiosity and Generational Status

So far we have reported the correlates of ethnic minority religiosity, with a focus on immigrant

generation and ethnic group membership. We now turn to the impact of religiosity and immigrant

generation for social and civic health, using three measures. The EMBES includes the standard

Generalized Trust Question (GST), which aims to force a binary choice between reporting whether or

not most people can be trusted (see Table A1). We group those replying spontaneously to the trust

question that ‘it depends’ with those replying ‘you can’t be too careful’, to distinguish the most

highly trusting. We examine civic and social engagement using, first, a measure of political and

community involvement: ‘Over the past few years, have you volunteered to get involved in politics

or community affairs?’ This has a binary response. Volunteering is captured via the following

question: ‘Over the past few years, how active have you been in a voluntary organisation, like a local

community association, a charity, or a sports club?’ Respondents can reply ‘very’, ‘somewhat’, ‘a

little’ or ‘not at all’. We distinguish here between those replying ‘a little’ or more, versus those not at

all active, to create a binary measure of involvement.

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We then apply probit regression analysis to the three indicators, controlling for religiosity,

and retain generational and ethnic terms. To investigate whether religiosity is particularly associated

with engagement for the younger generations, we interact generational status with religiosity. To

gain coverage of the unreligious, we impute a religiosity factor score for those without a religious

affiliation, who were not posed further questions regarding religion, assuming that they would

report the lowest levels of salience and practice. Table 4 provides the results.

Table 4. Probit Regression of Generalized Trust, Civic Engagement and Voluntary Activity (Parameter

Estimates)

Trust Civic engagement

Volunteering

Constant -1.000** -2.304** -1.573**

Female -0.186** -0.094 -0.087+

Married 0.123+ -0.055 -0.037

Age (years) 0.004 0.009** 0.003

Employed 0.101 0.101 0.060

In full-time education 0.163 0.097 0.192

Full-time education received (years)

0.008 0.038** 0.044*

Black Caribbean -0.088 0.023 0.360**

Black African -0.194* 0.227* 0.451**

Indian -0.049 -0.077 0.272**

Bangladeshi -0.077 -0.049 -0.020**

1.5 generation -0.077 0.329** 0.350**

Second generation -0.156* 0.357** 0.463**

Religiosity 0.088 0.197** 0.184**

Religiosity*1.5 generation -0.229* -0.129 -0.117

Religiosity*Second generation -0.079 -0.013 0.022

N 2568 2629 2629

Pseudo R2 0.021 0.040 0.055

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study: authors’ analysis. Notes: +Significant at the 0.1 level;

*0.05 level; **0.01 level. Base category is Pakistani, first-generation, male, unmarried, not full-time

employed, and not in full-time education. The coefficients report the change in the probit index for a

one-unit change in each predictor.

For civic engagement and volunteering, the effect of being 1.5 generation rather than first, or

second rather than first, appears positive. Religiosity also has positive effects in these models,

although just shy of significance in the case of social trust. The interaction terms are not significant,

except for the trust equation where that for the 1.5 generation is negative. This might arise because

those experiencing culture shock during youth take refuge in religion, with causality therefore

running from lower trust to greater religiosity.

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The effect of each term is, however, conditional on the value of the others and its own

value. We therefore use the model results to calculate predicted probabilities, to interpret the net

effects of religiosity and generation. Our representative case is again male, first generation,

Pakistani, married, working full-time, and of mean age and years of education. Looking first at trust,

the net effect can be more easily understood by graphing the results for each decile of religiosity for

each generation (see Figure 3). For our representative figure, to be more religious and first

generational is to be more likely to report that most people can be trusted. Being a member of the

1.5 generation rather than the first has a positive effect at low levels of religiosity; the gap declines

as religiosity increases. The second generation looks like the first at low levels of religiosity, but the

religiosity gradient is apparently flat. However, the confidence intervals for each generation’s results

(available on request) are wide and heavily overlap; further, the main effect of religiosity is

insignificant with results for the interaction terms ambiguous. We therefore consider that

generational effects are more important here than those arising from religiosity.

Figure 4 depicts the predicted probability of having volunteered in non-political

organizations. For the first generation, moving from the first centile of religiosity to the last is

associated with a doubling (17 to 34 per cent) in the predicted probability of having volunteered for

our representative case. For the second, it is associated with an increase from 30 to 53 per cent.

Results are similar for the political volunteering measure (available on request).

Figure 3. Effect of Religiosity on Generalized Trust by Generation

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study.

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Figure 4. Effect of Religiosity on Volunteering by Generation.

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study.

We now briefly turn to the question of whether ethnic minority members in Britain are

becoming more like or unlike Whites in their trust and civic engagement with each generation. The

main 2010 British Election Study offers a social trust question with different response options (a 0-10

scale) which does not allow a direct comparison with EMBES respondents. However, the 2010-11

Citizenship Survey posed the GST to a population sample with a large ethnic booster, further asking

respondents their own and parental countries of birth, allowing us to distinguish immigrants.5 For

civic and voluntary organisation participation, we compare EMBES respondents with White

respondents to the 2010 British Election Study.

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Figure 5. Generalized Social Trust by Ethnicity and Birth Cohort

Source: Economic and Social Data Service, Citizenship Survey 2010-11. Notes: Survey weight applied. Unweighted N = 15531.

Figure 6. Participation in Civic and Other Volunteering by Ethnicity and Birth Cohort

Source: British Election Study 2010 (post-election in-person survey) and Ethnic Minority British

Election Study, http://bes.utdallas.edu. Notes: Survey weights applied. Unweighted n = 1396 (BES

data); 2769 (EMBES, civic participation): 2775 (EMBES, other volunteering).

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Whites appear more trusting than ethnic minority members; and rates fall for Whites and

first-generation ethnic minority immigrants by successive cohort.6 For the earlier cohorts, the second

generation is generally less trusting than the first, excepting first-generation Black immigrants born

in the 1990s (which has a higher proportion of Africans and forced migrants than earlier cohorts).

However, trust rises with cohort for the second generation, suggesting a movement to a host

country norm. For the youngest cohort, differences between Whites and Asians of both generational

groups are not statistically significant; those between Whites and Blacks remain so. Participation in

volunteering rises for successive cohorts of ethnic minority and White respondents alike, and among

the youngest cohort, Whites are overtaken by ethnic minority respondents. Turning to civic

engagement, Whites do not clearly lead among any cohort, and among the post-1989 cohort first-

generation ethnic minority immigrants participate most, followed by the second generation, then

Whites. We cannot be conclusive regarding whether differences here are driven by cohort or age

effects, and note that we do not control for education or other socio-demographic factors. We can

say, however, that for each successive age group, differences between ethnic minorities and the

White majority are declining in terms of social trust and volunteering. Where emerging for civic

engagement, the gap is arguably beneficial.

The results overall show that successive generations are more involved, and religion does

appear to school immigrants into civic life. The attenuation of generalized trust for the second

generation raises some concern; it may however be that the second generation is integrating into

host country levels, a finding noted for political trust (Maxwell 2010). The failure of religiosity to

foster generalized trust is of some surprise given the call to altruism of many religious teachings.

Further investigation of the relationship between perceived discrimination and trust for this sample

would be insightful, as would a closer comparison of immigrants and the host community taking

socio-demographic differences into account.

Conclusion

Scholars have found that successive generations of migrants to the US become more like Americans

of less recent immigrant origin. Complementary work suggests that religious institutions integrate

migrants into American society. We examined whether these propositions hold for Britain, which is

both more secular than the US, and where national identity is less associated with a shared

immigrant experience.

We assessed whether succeeding generations of ethnic minorities in Britain exhibit reactive

religiosity or lower levels of religiosity than the first generation, and find a secularization pattern,

contingent upon ethnicity and the type of religiosity under investigation. Communal religious

practice, however, has not changed substantially from one generation to the next.

We then examined how generational status and religiosity foster social and political

engagement. Religiosity is associated with greater civic engagement and volunteering, while effects

on generalized trust are insignificant (and for the 1.5 generation, negative). Generational effects

appear to be away from trust for successive generations, but towards greater civic involvement and

17

volunteering. There is no evidence that the religiosity of the 1.5 and second generations in particular

has unwelcome effects on social and civic life.

Overall, religious involvement appears beneficial for civic life in secular Britain as in the more

religious US. Further, secularization processes appear underway for ethnic minority communities.

What remains unclear from this analysis is how far religious involvement is a chosen route to the

securing of group resources and maintenance of ethnic identity, or whether it is more akin to a basic

value preceding material and political concerns. This will matter for the future of ethnic minorities in

Britain. If religion is ebbing away because of value shifts, those experiencing disadvantage in future

may lose capacity to mobilise social and political resources. If religious life is largely a means to a

more earthly end, the trend away from religion will signal that it has served those purposes, at least

for those who have chosen to leave it behind.

Notes

1 The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure is acceptable at 0.643 and Bartlett test of sphericity significant (p < 0.001); we accordingly reject the null that the correlation matrix is an identity matrix. 2 Simultaneous estimation of the three outcomes via multivariate regression, taking into account the full covariance structure, allows efficient estimates of model coefficients and standard errors. 3 It is also possible to calculate predicted values for an ‘average individual’ (for example one which is 47 per cent male and 53 per cent married) or by averaging over individuals in the sample. We chose to calculate marginal effects at representative values. 4 We use the ‘margins’ suite in Stata 11.0 to calculate pairwise comparisons of predictive margins for the separate effects of generational and ethnic status; then the conditional marginal effect of generation for each ethnic group in turn. We thus minimise the ‘multiple comparisons problem’ by restricting the number conducted. While we do not correct the p-values for the multiple comparisons, a significant omnibus F test of the joint significance of the interaction terms (not reported here) protects against an inflated Type I error. 5 The majority of the analysis conducted here uses the Ethnic Minority British Election Survey 2010. However, responses to the trust question (‘most people can be trusted’, ‘you can’t be too careful’ and unprompted responses of ‘it depends’) were not directly commensurate with that for the main British Election Study, which used a 0-10 scale. Accordingly the Citizenship Survey 2010-11 was chosen to allow a comparison with Whites. 6 We suspect differential item functioning between Whites and ethnic minority respondents for the option ‘it depends’, where response rates are considerably higher for the latter. Accordingly, we group those replying ‘most people can be trusted’ with those replying ‘it depends’. To simplify the graph we group the 1.5 with the second generation.

18

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20

Appendix

Table A1. Question Wording and Variable Codes for EMBES Measures

Variable code

Measure Question wording

bq106_1 Religious affiliation

Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion? Yes; no

eq4 Religious salience

How important is your religion to you? Extremely important; very important; somewhat important; not very important; or not important at all

bq106_4 Communal religious practice

In the past 12 months, how often did you participate in religious activities or attend religious services or meetings with other people, other than for events such as weddings and funerals? At least once a day; at least once a week; at least once a month; occasionally (but less than once a month); only on festivals; not at all

bq106_5 Private religious practice

In the past 12 months, how often did you do religious activities on your own? This may include prayer, meditation and other forms of worship taking place at home or in any other location. Five times a day; at least once a day; at least once a week; at least once a month; only on festivals; not at all

eq15 Social trust Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people? People can be trusted; you can't be too careful; it depends (spontaneous response)

bq54_2 Political volunteering

Over the past few years, have you volunteered to get involved in politics or community affairs? Yes; no

bq54_3 Other volunteering

Over the past few years, how active have you been in a voluntary organisation, like a local community association, a charity, or a sports club? Very active; somewhat active; a little active; not at all active

Table A2. Descriptive Statistics

21

Percentage (%) or mean score

N (unweighted base or count); or standard deviation

Min. Max.

Female 50.5 2787 0 1

Married or with partner

58.3 2782 0 1

Employed 48.7 2693 0 1

Full-time student 10.0 2693 0 1

Black Caribbean 15.4 668 0 1

Black African 19.2 579 0 1

Indian 35.4 593 0 1

Pakistani 21.5 673 0 1

Bangladeshi 8.6 274 0 1

Age 39.1 15.0 18 97

Years of full-time education

14.4 5.3 0 25

Belongs to a religion 90.1 2773 0 1

Religious salience 4.2 0.8 1 5

Communal religious practice

4.0 1.5 1 6

Private religious practice

4.5 1.4 1 6

Social trust: reporting ‘most people can be trusted’

21.7 2711 0 1

Civic engagement: reporting political/community involvement

16.0 2787 0 1

Volunteering: reporting at least some activity

44.1 2787 0 1

Source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study. Notes: Proportions and means based on weighted

data (using weight devised to analyse all ethnic groups together).