Research

In view of the ZfTI’s task of constructively helping to shape the immigration society, the following projects with a major political and public impact are particularly noteworthy among those completed between 2018 and 2019:

In 2018 in the programme area of Education, Upbringing and Health in Migration, the ZfTI was commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Training (MSW) in NRW to carry out the scientific monitoring of Islamic religious education, which was introduced in NRW as a regular school subject in 2012, in cooperation with the Institute for Islamic Theology at the University of Osnabrück. Ultimately, the lessons received a high level of approval from Muslim pupils, their parents and Islamic teachers. What was remarkable was that the pupils were very open to knowledge about other religions; in this respect, the lessons were not associated with isolation or religious self-centredness. The evaluation made a decisive contribution to the success and perpetuation of a core project of state integration policy in NRW.

In 2018 in the same programme area, the result of a three-year research project in cooperation between the ZfTI, UDE and Ruhr University Bochum was published, the “Atlas on Visual Multilingualism in the Ruhr Metropolis”, which is based on the analysis of more than 25,000 signs and on surveys in Bochum, Dortmund, Duisburg and Essen.

In the programme area Social Integration and Data Infrastructures, the ZfTI has conducted an analysis of the social integration of Muslims in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Great Britain on the basis of the data from the 2017 Religion Monitor. The results of this survey were widely discussed, since it became clear that Muslim religiosity, especially among women, could be seen as an obstacle to integration, but that the effect of this obstacle is usually overestimated and depends not least on the social conditions that Muslim women encounter. This was the first comparative study in this field. In 2018, the ZfTI subsequently on behalf of the German Conference on Islam elaborated both consensual and controversial findings in a systematic analysis of selected empirical-quantitative social-science studies on the connection between Muslim religiousness and social integration. The study was published in open access journals in 2019.

In the same programme area the Institute has, since 1999 on behalf of the NRW state government, regularly conducted a survey of people of Turkish origin on their living situ­ation. On 23 June 2018, the results of the 2017 multi-topic survey, which had, as an exception, been carried out not only in NRW but throughout Germany, were presented at a state press conference and met with a significant response. Particularly against the background of an intensified public debate on the integration and identification of immigrants in Germany, the thematic focus of the survey on the political participation and political identification of people of Turkish origin proved to be highly relevant, because cross-border political orien­tations are often met with mistrust and are associated with social disintegration, especially in the case of support for the Erdoğan regime in Turkey. The ZfTI results show a political orientation towards Turkey that is largely independent of the process of social integration, with support for the AKP favoured by the perception of a lack of political participation in Germany. The results have been widely and scientifically evaluated, including in the context of the 2nd InZentIM Conference in Essen in 2018, and since 2019 have been incorporated into the model project on political education in the immigration society which is running at the Institute.