Anti-Semitism Among Young People in Germany 2022 and 2024: The Role of Religion and Migration Background

In this paper results of two nationwide representative online surveys of young people aged 16 to 21 living in Germany on the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes are presented. Descriptive findings show relatively high and statistically significant increases of traditional anti-Semitic prejudices in 2024 compared to 2022. However there are very pronounced differences for certain social subgroups. In 2024 young people with a migration background are significantly more likely to hold both traditional anti-Semitic resentments as well as secondary anti-Israel antisemitic attitudes compared to non-migrants. Prevalence rates for of these two forms of anti-Semitism are particularly high among young Muslim migrants compared to non muslim migrants and non-migrants. Multivariate regression analyses show that the very high prevalence rates of traditional anti-Semitic resentment among young Muslims cannot be explained by their individual social discrimination experiences or perceptions of collective marginalization of their own group in German society, neither in 2022 nor in 2024. Important predictors are, in addition to a low level of education, the degree of inclination to believe in conspiracies and a rigid, fundamentalist religious belief. A high levels of individual religious faith on the other has no significant effect. Interestingly the prevalence of classic anti-Semitic attitudes is significantly higher among young muslim migrants who recently immigrated to germany (1 migration generation) in comparison to young muslims migrants who were born in Germany already (2 migration generation). However, these differences diminished in 2024: In case of young muslims the relative increases of antisemitism im 2024 are much greater among muslims of the second migration generation compared to the first migration generation. For non-muslim migrants the opposite changes of the effects of migration generation between 2022 und 2024 could be found. These developments of antisemitism particularly among young muslims in Germany was accompanied by increases of fundamentalist religious beliefs between 2022 and 2024. These changes of the prevalence of fundamentalist religous beliefs in part can explain the recent increases of antisemitic attitudes among young muslims living in Germany.