This document summarizes key points from a workshop on socio-cultural integration held on June 21, 2012. It discusses three main challenges: [1] Support for democracy and free speech is fragile among both Muslim and non-Muslim populations in Europe; [2] Muslims with more connections to non-Muslims (bridging social capital) feel more accepted, but societies need to encourage interactions between groups; [3] Educational systems remain highly segregated, especially for Muslim students, limiting opportunities to build social connections across groups.

1. Thursday 21 June 2012, 11h-12h
workshop group 1 (studio 1, Flagey)
Workshop socio-cultural integration:
shared core values and mutual contacts
Dirk JACOBS
Université Libre de Bruxelles

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. School segregration
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
NL DE CH UK BE FR
National majority
99,0% 98,5% 97,6% 81,7% 95,8% 96,0%
Ex-Yugoslavian
9,6% 14,8% 19,6% 17,1% 20,8% 9,7%
Turkish
15,5% 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%
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