The Age-Sex Structure of Religion as a Determinant of the Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in Maroua

Abstract

We set out to find out how the sex-age structure of religion of internal migrants influences their integration in the socio-economic activities of Maroua. We used the exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling method to collect data in which each new referral provided us with more data for referral until we got enough number of subjects for the sample. We concluded that: if one is a Muslim, one will have a stable and progressing business because Muslims maintain a good relationship with their neighbors and they also practice a relationship of solidarity. However, the socio-economic activities of Catholics, Pentecostals and Protestants suffer because they lack the cultural capital that Muslims enjoy. However, age plays a major role: when they are 45–54 years old, the income of the internally migrated Muslims and Catholics drastically decline while that of Pentecostals and Protestants increases. Older Muslims and Catholics earn basically very low income unlike Protestants who earn very high salary. The income inequality among men is much higher than that among women. Generally, men have a more conflictual relationship with their neighbors than women and women diversify their relationship with the natives more than men.