Dirk JACOBS

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Workshop socio-cultural integration: shared core values and mutual contacts

Thursday 21 June 2012, 11h-12h

workshop group 1 (studio 1, Flagey)

Support for democracy

Empirical facts in the survey:

Support for democracy is fragile, not only among Muslims in Europe (where support for democracy is lower than among non-Muslims) but also among the non-Muslim ethnic majority population

Support for free speech is actually often lower among the national majority non-Muslim groups than for most ethnic minority Muslim groups

Challenge:

There is a need to strengthen support for democracy, not only among Muslims in Europe but also among the majority population. Support for our democratic system is rather fragile. Free speech seems, however, to be more of a problem for non-Muslims than for Muslims.

Bridging social capital

Empirical facts in the survey:

Muslims with a lot of bridging social capital feel more accepted. Non-Muslims with few bridging social capital show less acceptance of Muslims as fellow citizens. Muslims have more bridging social capital than non-Muslims.

Challenge:

How can we stimulate the creation of bridging social capital between Muslims and non-Muslims in our fairly highly segregated societies, particularly among the non-Muslims?

Currently, the educational system is too segregated to facilitate widespread contacts (see next slide). Other venues for creating bridging social capital are equally needed.

School segregration

NL DE CH UK BE FR

National majority99,0% 98,5% 97,6% 81,7% 95,8% 96,0%

Ex-Yugoslavian9,6% 14,8% 19,6% 17,1% 20,8% 9,7%

Turkish15,5% 37,5% 18,4% 17,8% 23,8% 14,5%

Moroccan 13,4% 25,0% 50,0% 41,2% 13,0% 16,2%

Pakistani 34,8% 12,3% 38,5% 22,2% 23,3% 26,9%

Proportion of people who went to school in country of residence and had only a minority, few or no pupils of the outgroup in their class

Although this is a bit less the case in the UK, members of the national majority group very rarely find themselves in a class with a lot of Muslim fellow pupils. A substantial part of Muslim pupils find themselves in segregated schools