The Socioeconomics of Islamist Radicalization in the West (SOCIR)

Does poverty cause terrorism? The consensus view in academia has long been that it does not, because data from the Middle East showed that Islamist terrorists were often middle class. However, in the West, militant Islamists have tended to come from poorer strata of society, which suggests the role of economics in radicalization varies by context, and that relative poverty may matter after all, at least in the West. The SOCIR project is the first in-depth investigation into the socio-economic aspects of Islamist radicalization in Europe and North America. It aims produce new knowledge about the economic experiences of Western jihadists so as to deepen our understanding of radicalization and help governments design better prevention policies. Economics may affect behaviour in different ways, so we will explore three different hypotheses about the link between deprivation and radicalization. First is the ?opportunity cost hypothesis?, namely, that poorer individuals are more likely to engage in militancy because they have less to lose. Second is the ?relative deprivation hypothesis?, i.e., that people who underperform relative to their qualifications may be vulnerable to radicalization due to a sense of frustrated ambition. Third is the ?horizontal inequality hypothesis?, namely, that some people radicalize partly out of frustration with the collective deprivation of Muslims in their society, without being economically deprived themselves. We will explore these hypotheses with a combination of statistical analyses, qualitative analyses, and interviews. The empirical core of the project is a dataset developed at Brandeis University containing background information about ~7000 individuals involved in militant Islamist activity in the West between 1990 and 2020. SOCIR will run for five years (2020-2025) and involve researchers from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO).

It is widely assumed among terrorism experts that poverty is not a cause of jihadi violence. However, new theory and evidence suggest that the poverty-terrorism link may operate differently in rich and poor countries, and that economic deprivation may affect radicalization more in wealthy societies. This project will test several hypotheses about the link between economic deprivation and Islamist extremism in the West. In its first of three components, the project will combine, standardize and extend a number of existing data sets with biographical information about Islamist radicals based in Western countries. The result will be a uniquely large and comprehensive database with anonymized biographical information. In its second component, the project will merge this data with demographic and other survey data from jihadist's countries of origin to statistically test three sets of hypotheses: 1. Opportunity costs: poorer individuals with "less to lose" are more likely to engage in high-cost militancy 2. Relative deprivation: individuals facing social mobility closure are more likely to become radicalized 3. Horizontal inequality: frustration with the collective deprivation of Muslim peers motivates radicalization processes. We will run a wide range of individual-level and country level statistical models to assess the above hypotheses. In its third component, the project will undertake in-depth qualitative research on a subset of jihadi biographies to flesh out social and psychological nuances of the causal mechanisms linking socio-economic status to radicalization. The project's outcomes will include standard-setting, high-profile publications on the economic roots of jihadi radicalism in the West; a publicly available online platform with standardized biographical data on thousands of Islamist radicals; and actionable policy knowledge that will allow more targeted interventions to address the socio-economic roots of jihadism among Western Muslim communities.