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Rabat – Due to the British labor market’s “Muslim penalty,” Muslims in the UK have a substantially higher unemployment rate than their white, British, Christian counterparts, a recent study has confirmed.
After adjusting for criteria such as its respondents’ age, place of residence, education, and whether or not they have children, the study also found that British Muslims’ “sociocultural attitudes” (cultural and religious practices) do not contribute to their low employment chances. Instead, the study’s findings revealed that characteristics such as religion, gender views, and civic activity had a minimal impact.
“In challenging this narrative, which problematises Muslims and their faith, the study lends support to the overwhelming evidence from field experiments that shows anti-Muslim discrimination towards Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim to be a significant barrier to them accessing work,” underlined Samir Sweida-Metwally, the study’s author.
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“‘Sociocultural variables,’ such as gender attitudes, language proficiency, and the extent of inter- and intra-ethnic social ties, are not a convincing source of the unexplained ethno-religious differences in labour market participation and unemployment among Muslim men and women,” Sweida-Metwally concluded.
The study also discovered that country of origin or “perceived Muslimness” is another significant element that increased Muslims’ unemployment risks.
While white British Muslims and Christians did not have remarkably different rates of unemployment and inactivity, Arab non-religious men have the highest risk of unemployment or inactivity.
Titled “Does the Muslim penalty in the British labour market dissipate after accounting for so-called “sociocultural attitudes?,” Sweida-Metwally’s paper draws on ten years of data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, a yearly survey of around 100,000 people from 40,000 families that gathers information.
