they’re not well represented in larger surveys. I thought it would be a unique opportunity to analyze data on a representative sam- ple of Muslim Americans. I wanted to document the immigrant experience because immigrants are a group we don’t know a lot about and about whom people sometimes have negative ideas. I wanted to be able to show what Muslim Americans’ trajectories are like as immigrants.
EASTERN: It’s often said that the United States is one of the more tolerant countries towards immigration. Would you say that’s true?
AJROUCH: Oh, absolutely. What America has going for it is the fact that it is a land of immigrants. Most everybody can trace their ancestry to some immigrant family member who came here. Other countries, like the European nations, are not countries of immigrants; they have a long history of native peoples, so when immigrants come in, I think it’s much more threatening. Tere have been some periods in our history when we have not been very tolerant, but generally it’s a country that was meant to be one of immigrants. I think the commitment we have to religious free- dom and the separation between church and state is something that really is an enormous advantage—not just for the country as a whole, but for the individual people living here as well.
EASTERN: Do you think there is a tendency among many Ameri- cans to assume that all Arabs are Muslim, and that all Muslims speak Arabic?
AJROUCH: Yes, I do. Tere’s a lot of confusion about religion and national origin. It’s true that the majority of Arabs are Muslims in the Arabic-speaking world, but the majority of Muslims in the world are actually South Asian. Muslim immigrants, who make up about 8 percent of the immigrant population in the U.S. today, are quite diverse and come from different countries.
EASTERN: Would you say that Muslims have a harder time integrat- ing themselves into American society than other immigrants?
AJROUCH: I predict that my study will not show that. Tis analysis is not comparative, but we can compare it with other studies to learn something about trends and outcomes. Data from a 2007 Pew Research Center study shows that Arabs and Muslims have a higher education level than the average white American, which would indicate a lot of integration and success. Tey’re an inter-
esting group. Especially in the post 9-11 world, they’ve become targeted as a group to fear and discriminate against, but their trajectories in the United States haven’t followed the same paths as typical minority groups’. Nothing so far in the analysis has shown that. My goal is to show that Muslim immigrants should be looked at as just another immigrant group--that they’re not a group that’s threatening to the United States.
EASTERN: Your project description mentions that there are some specific dimensions and elements of the immigration experience. Can you expand on that?
AJROUCH: We’re measuring integration by looking at language proficiency, socio-economic integration, and political integra- tion. One of the analysis goals is to look at trends and outcomes depending on where the immigrants come from: the Middle East, South Asia, or Africa. We also have some from Europe. So we are looking at the kinds of factors that they bring with them: what we call pre-immigrant experiences. How many of them had exposure to English before they came here, and does this expo- sure predict their integration efforts here? What kinds of jobs did they have before? Were they active politically? What conditions brought them here? Did they come here for family reunification? Did they come here because there was a job opportunity and the job sponsored them? We’re hypothesizing that those experiences may influence how successful they are. Te idea is really to look at the drivers that are predicting their integration outcomes. We’ll also be able to get some indication of length of stay and what kind of influence that has on integration.
EASTERN: What will you do with the results? What do you hope to contribute to the field?
AJROUCH: I’d like to be able to publish the results and disseminate them, maybe not just through scholarly conferences. I think it might be worthwhile to write an op-ed piece and publish it in major newspapers, reflecting on the Muslim immigrant experi- ence. I’m predicting that their experiences will be very similar to other immigrants’ experiences, that they’re just going to be an- other immigrant group. I think it’s going to be important to show those similarities, because there’s a preconceived notion that somehow Muslims can’t integrate into American society because their religion is so different. But most Muslims see their religion as very compatible with Christianity. To them, Islam is just the next chapter in the Abrahamic faiths. 3
Eastern | SPRING 2013 17
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