Revisiting the Integration Paradox: Higher Education and Perceived Discrimination Among Jews

Research on migrants and ethno-racial minorities documents that those with higher education often report more experiences of discrimination, usually attributed to heightened expectations of equal treatment, increased exposure to majority institutions, and greater awareness of subtle forms of discrimination. This process is referred to as the “integration paradox”. While this paradox has been examined extensively among migrants and ethno-racial groups, and recently among women, it remains unclear whether similar mechanisms operate among other minorities. Jews constitute a particularly interesting minority to test this phenomenon, as anti-Jewish hostilities and antisemitic incidents are frequent despite low public visibility and relatively high levels of education among Jews on average.

To fill this gap, this study examines the relationship between higher educational attainment and perceived personal discrimination on religious grounds among Jews in Europe and the US, based on data from the second survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU 2018 and PEW’s Jewish Americans in 2020 survey. Our findings show that, unlike prior research on ethnic minorities and women, higher education is, on average, associated with lower levels of perceived discrimination among Jews. Deeper analyses reveal that this is mostly the case for those who are religious or visibly Jewish, e.g., by regularly wearing a Kippa. In contrast, there is no significant education effect for those who are not religious or not visible as Jews in everyday life. These results suggest that visibility does not have a uniform effect across minority groups and that the social conditions under which minority status becomes salient are central to understanding when education reduces or amplifies perceptions of discrimination.

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