A comprehensive examination of precarity among Muslim immigrants in Europe

Jovanović, Marko (2023) A comprehensive examination of precarity among Muslim immigrants in Europe. In: MUSLIMS OF THE UK AND EUROPE VII. Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, pp. 109-128. ISBN 978-0-9573166-8-3

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Abstract

Muslim immigration to Europe and their integration happens to be a long-standing question. It was during the economic reconstruction after the Second World War that large-scale immigration of Muslims to Western Europe started, as they were sought as low-paid guest workers who were there to stay only temporarily as long as they were needed to rebuild the war-torn economies of receiving countries. European states expected them to return to their homelands eventually when the need for their labour ceased to exist. The global economic recession that came after the Arab-Israeli war in 1973 and the oil boycott made European countries stop importing workforce. Due to new circumstances, in order to solve the question of unneeded and unqualified immigrant guest workers, some countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and France even offered them financial help to return to their home countries, but it didn’t happen. The predominantly male labourers mostly chose to stay regardless of the unfavourable economy (Haddad, 1999). They preferred to stay jobless and live off social welfare in Western Europe, over the risk of going back to their homelands where they would face unemployment in struggling third-world economies. It should be emphasised that these new economic conditions have directly increased resentment of immigrants as they were no longer seen as needed cheap labour but as competition in the unfriendly job market. Eventually, Muslims and other immigrants in Western Europe were allowed to bring their families to join them in Europe. This led to significant shifts as in the 1970s they grew from mostly male temporary guest workers living away from the public eye to become permanently settled family commu- nities. Muslim men were now accompanied by their wives and children. In the following decades, immigration continued with the arrival of those looking for work and better life opportunities, pursuing education, but also those fleeing from turmoil in the Middle East, Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world (Haddad, 1999).

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