Religion, friendship networks and home visits of immigrant and native children

Abstract

Using data from a school survey of N=1190 children at the age of 10 in N=20590 directed dyads and p* models for network data, we investigate the impact of religion on migrant and native children’s friendships and visits at home. Deriving hypotheses from the formation of religious in-groups, our analyses show that having the same or a different religious affiliation as well as regularly attending worship has an impact on having a tie in friendship networks. Visiting alter’s home depends more on similarity in worship attendance. These results indicate that religious diversity can be an additional factor increasing actual levels of immigrant–native segregation in social networks.