ABSTRACT
Research on Muslims in the United States poses serious challenges. This is in part because federal law forbids collections of official data on religion by government agencies such as the Census Bureau, and non-governmental surveys such as the General Social Survey (GSS) often have small Muslim subsamples. While there are some quantitative data on first-generation (immigrant) Muslims in the United States, particularly after 9/11, there is little available on the second generation. Although the American Community Survey (ACS) does not collect information on religion, we construct a proxy using place of birth, ancestry, and race data in order to create a large subsample (n=148,060) from predominantly Muslim countries. Using the 2010-2014 ACS 5-year estimates, we compare and contrast demographic and socioeconomic profiles of immigrant (first-generation) and native born (second-generation) Muslims. To study cultural integration, we turn to the PEW Muslim American Survey (2011). Findings suggest a pattern of socioeconomic progress among the second generation, relative to the first. In contrast, social and cultural integration lags behind, in part due to experiences of discrimination.
