The conversion of capital across fields: Hysteresis and the integration paradox among British Muslims

Abstract

The integration paradox – heightened exclusion among the most socio-economically integrated members of some, though not all, minority communities – challenges linear models of incorporation. This article reconceptualises the paradox through a Bourdieusian field-analytic lens, using latent profile analysis of UK survey data (N = 2535, including 109 Muslim respondents) to identify four configurations of belonging: Adaptive Mainstreamers, Empowered Pluralism, Individualised Assimilation and Double Alienation. British Muslims attain the capital-rich Empowered Pluralism configuration at least as often as others, yet report humiliation at nearly three times the odds of non-Muslims in the same configurations – a misrecognition gap concentrated among Adaptive Mainstreamers and absent within Empowered Pluralism, suggesting strongly resourced dual belonging operates protectively. Employment predicts capital-rich belonging only among respondents below their mid-fifties, consistent with hysteresis in capital convertibility. Heterogeneity analyses confine Double Alienation to foreign-born Muslims. The findings relocate the paradox from average attitudes to misrecognition at equal capital.