Muslim migration : global and local analyses

Abstract

This thesis focuses on global Muslim migration and consists of three related studies. The first study examines the general patterns of global Muslim migration and investigates how these patterns are shaped by the contexts of both sending and receiving countries. The results reveal two different streams of Muslim migration; the first corresponds to migration flows from Muslim-majority countries to Muslim-majority countries, while the second corresponds to migration flows from Muslim-majority countries to non-Muslim-majority countries. The findings also indicate that the characteristics of sending countries are more likely to be associated with the flow of Muslim migration than the characteristics of receiving countries. After providing a general overview of Muslim migration patterns, the second study focuses on the receptive context of immigration in Muslim-majority areas. It examines how attitudes towards immigration are shaped by contextual factors, especially the cultural context. The findings show that attitudes towards immigration in Muslim-majority countries are substantially different from those in Western countries. Meanwhile, the cultural context of individual countries significantly shapes people’s attitudes toward immigration in Muslim-majority countries, of which the pattern also varies from that in Western countries. Additionally, individual features, such as educational level and national pride, present different relationships with attitudes toward immigration in Muslim-majority than in Western countries. The final study examines the adaptation of Muslims in non-Muslim-majority areas, focusing on Muslim migrants’ economic integration in a major East Asian city. This study pays attention to the colonial context, addressing the impact of colonial legacies on contemporary inter-group relations. It analyzes the income inequality between South Asian groups (including the Muslim-majority Pakistani group) and the local Chinese population in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (here within referred to as “Hong Kong”). The findings indicate that income inequality patterns vary across Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority South Asian groups, which are primarily based on compositional differences in demographic and socioeconomic features rather than on skin color or belonging to a Muslim-majority group. Overall, the studies in this thesis expand our understanding of global Muslim migration by analyzing crucial patterns of migration and integration within diverse contexts while highlighting the significance of incorporating cultural and post-colonial perspectives into relevant theoretical frameworks.