National disidentification and minority identity: A study among Muslims in Western Europe

Abstract

Host national disidentification in which immigrants explicitly distance themselves from society is problematic for a cohesive national community and is likely to hamper immigrants’ successful host society integration. Among Sunni Muslim immigrants of Turkish origin living in Germany and the Netherlands we tested whether (a) an empirical distinction between national disidentification and identification can be made, (b) whether higher perceived group discrimination of Muslims (“reactive religiosity path”) and (c) stronger Muslim self-centrality (“intrinsic religiosity path”) are associated with stronger host national disidentification, to the extent that they are associated with a stronger commitment to religious identity content. Disidentification was found to be a separate construct and both the reactive religiosity path and the intrinsic religiosity path were found to be related to higher levels of disidentification, mediated by religious identity.