**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.

**Keywords:** Religion, socio-economic activities, relationship, Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals, Protestants, Muslims

## **1. Introduction**

The socio-demographic situation of the Far North region of Cameroon of which Maroua is the headquarter is as follows: According to data from the 3rd census conducted in 2005 [1], the population of the Far North was estimated at 3,111,792 inhabitants which was about 17.8% of the Cameroon's total population. According to the report on demographic projections and the estimates of priority targets for various health programs and interventions, carried out by the National Institute for Statistics (NIS) in 2016 [2], the total population of the Far North increased to about 4,208,433 inhabitants. This population is made up of 50.3% women and 49.7% men. Enquête complémentaire: Enquête Camerounaise Auprès des Ménages<sup>1</sup>

<sup>1</sup> Complementary Research: Cameroon Household Research.

(EC-ECAM) [3] show that 19.4% of the population is aged between 0 to 4 years, the age of 35.6% varies from 5 to 14 years, 33.2% are of working age (15–64) and only 2.8% are at least 65 years old. Therefore the Far North of Cameroon has a relatively younger population.

Considering the structure of the population by age, there emerges an economic dependency ratio of 1.19. However, it is in the Diamaré division where there are about (49.6%) which is relatively the largest number of people of working age are found in the Far North Region of Cameroon. There are about 8.1 percentage of widowed or divorced women in the Far North and about 10.4% in the Diamaré Division. In the Far North region about 1.2% of the people live with a disability and about 1.8% of them are in the Diamaré division. The average household size in the region is 6.3 people [4].

In 2014, the poverty rate (or incidence of poverty) in the Far North region was 74.3%; nearly double the national level. The poverty rate is higher in households headed by women (81.2%) than in those headed by men (22.9%). Poverty increases with the size of the household; rising from almost 28% in one-person per household to 86% in households of at least 8 people. The poverty rate seems to increase with the age of the head of household: 60.4% in households headed by a person under 35, 76.9% in households headed by someone who is about 35 to 64 years old and 83.2% in households headed by a person who is 65 and above. The level of poverty decreases as the level of education of the head of household increases: from 81% in households where the head has no schooling to 33% in those where the head has a higher educational level. Households headed by inactive people are the poorest (78.6%). The level of poverty among those headed by employed people is also high and stands at 74.2%. Poverty is higher in households headed by people working in the primary sector (85.1%) and the poverty rate is 64.3% and 32.1% in households where the head works in the secondary and tertiary sectors respectively.

About 96.5% of workers were self-employed in 2016, in the Far North region of Cameroon. There is the lack of formal employment opportunities that job seekers often face since the majority of workers are generally employed in the informal sector, which is a sector characterized by high levels of poverty, inequality and lowquality employment.

As of Thursday, February 4, 2021, Cameroon's current population was about 26,933,967 basing on the Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data. In 2020 its population was estimated at 26,545,863 people at mid-year. UN data indicate that Cameroon population is equivalent to 0.34% of the total world population. About 56.3% of the population (14,941,523 people in 2020) live in the urban area and the average age in Cameroon is 18.7 years [5].

According to [6, 7] about 42.34% of the population of Cameroon is made up of 0–14 years: (male 5,927,640/female 5,820,226) and about 20.04% consists of those who are about 15–24 years: 20.04% (male 2,782,376/female 2,776,873) and about 30.64% are made up of those between 25 and 54 years: (male 4,191,151/female 4,309,483), there is also about 3.87% of those who are about 55–64 years: 3.87% (male 520,771/female 552,801) and finally about 3.11% are people about 65 years and over: 3.11% (male 403,420/female 460,248) (2020).

The 2005 census [8] describes religious demography in Cameroon by stating that 69.2%, 20.9%, 5.6%, 1.0%, 3.2% percent of the population is Christian, Muslim, animist, other religions, and those who have no religious affiliation in Cameroon respectively. Among the Christians, approximately 55.5%, 38%, 6.5% are Roman Catholic, Protestant, and other Christian denominations, including Jehovah's Witnesses and Orthodox churches respectively. The 2010 Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project [9] found that 70.3%, 18.3%, 3.3%, 2.7%, 5.5% of the population was Christians, Muslims, animists, other religions and those with no

*The Age-Sex Structure of Religion as a Determinant of the Social Inclusion of Internal… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96426*

religious affiliation in Cameroon respectively. Of the Christians, 38.3%, 31.4% were Catholics and Protestants respectively and that there is a rising number of Christian revivalist churches (Pentecostals).

Christians are mostly found in the southern and western parts of Cameroon: Protestants are mainly found in the two Anglophone regions while the five southern Francophone regions are mostly Catholics. The Fulani (Peuhl) ethnic group are mostly Muslims and they primarily inhabit the northern Francophone regions; the Bamoun ethnic group are also mostly made up of Muslims in the West Region of Cameroon. Many Muslims, Christians, and members of other faiths also adhere to some aspects of animist beliefs.

The objective of this work is to examine how the religion of the internal migrants, that is people who have left other parts of Cameroon and have settled in Maroua which is in the Far North of Cameroon, a region predominated by Muslims influence their integration and their socio-economic activities.

#### **2. Literature review**

Religious demography is defined as the scientific and statistical study of the demographic characteristics of religious populations, by paying attention to their growth, distribution, development density, size, age-sex structure, migration, and vital statistics, including the altering of religious identity in a human populations and these characteristics are linked to other social and economic indicators. Demographers do not limit themselves only to the study of basic demographic features of religion (age, sex, fertility, mortality), they also examine religion as a demographic characteristic of human populations which merits its own field of inquiry [9]. Since religion is important for projections, it is therefore a fundamental factor in demography, of future population growth and other social indicators [10].

Social inclusion clearly refers to disadvantaged people on the basis of their age, sex, race, ethnicity, origin, disability, or economic or other status. Social exclusion is the process by which, individuals or groups are fully or partly excluded from wholly participating in the society in which they live' [11]. Everyone stands the potential risk of social exclusion, however, some attributes or characteristics strengthen such a risk which are often associated to identity or group ascription. Kabeer (2006) [12] refers to this as groups of persons who identify their collective membership, beliefs and values and act in cooperative ways. Caste, ethnicity and religion are examples of such group identities while some are categories of people who are delineated basing on particular shared characteristic rather than collective values and lifestyle.

Members of these categories may not know each other and may share very little in common, apart from the fact that they are discriminated upon Jennie et al. [13]. Certain ingredients of exclusion are dynamic, multi-dimensional processes which are motivated by an imbalanced power relationships which interact across four main dimensions—economic, political, social and cultural—and at different levels include individual, household, group, community, country and global levels. This leads to a continuum of inclusion/exclusion characterized by uneven access to assets, capabilities and rights which result to health inequalities. People are excluded from some domains of life: social, economic, political, civic and spatial and the salience of each part strongly depends on the country and local contexts and also on the stage of a person's life course. This means that, the concepts of social inclusion and social exclusion are multidimensional and depend on the context.

Age is not the only selective aspect of migration but also gender, education and other migrant characteristics. Interstate migration in America for example are made by college-educated professionals because their labour markets are often more

national than local [14]. Rural-to-urban migration is to an extent driven by better incomes and the migrants' expectation of a healthier life in urban areas as posited by neoclassical economists [15]. Nevertheless, income inequalities alone do not explain the phenomenon. Interstate movement is also an individual and family riskdiversification strategy and which builds upon pre-existing networks among other motives [16].

People move from one geographical area to another because of their entry into labour force or employment motives [17]. Therefore migration choices and employment are related. Intra-national migration is an answer to the gap that exists between an expected urban and a de facto rural income [18] and migrants think that they will have better-paying jobs at the destination. Therefore interregional migration is due to income variability [19].

The economic crisis that Cameroon faced during the 1980, to an increase of rural job-seekers to urban areas and as a result, the urban population grew. This was due to the fact that poverty severity is higher in the rural than urban areas. About 35.4% of individuals inhabiting cities are non-natives of those areas and migrants in urban areas represent only one-half of the urban population [20]. The inability of national economies to improve well-being appears to be deeply rooted not just in population redistribution, but in the socio-economic and political structures of several countries [21].

The above made us to ask the following questions: Does a migrant religious affiliation facilitate his inclusion in the socio-economic activities of Maroua? Does having a common membership or shared belief like religion facilitate the integration of migrants and their subsequent socio-economic activities? Do migrants who are Muslims profit from existing networks considering that Maroua is predominantly a Muslim community than the other religious denominations?

The major objective of this chapter is to find out how the religious affiliations of the population that have migrated and settled in Maroua for varied reasons influence either their exclusion or inclusion in the socio-economic activities of Maroua. We also set out to find how the sex-age structure of religion influences participants' integration and socio-economic activities.

#### **3. Methodology**

We used the exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling method or chain-referral sampling which is a non-probability sampling technique in which as [22] states, the samples have traits that are rare to find. We recruited the first subject that we identified as an internally displaced migrant and then he provided us with multiple referrals. Each new referral then provided us with more data for referral and so on, until we got enough number of subjects for the sample.

It was obviously difficult to find a list of all the details of the number of the internal migrants in Maroua. Therefore, we used this method because we were dealing with a population that is hard to locate or difficult to identify or find. More so, there was no pre-calculated list or demographic information of their details, therefore it was an immense pain contacting them in Maroua. As a result, referrals made it easier and quicker to find them as they came from reliable sources.

This sampling method as [22] states, involves a primary data source nominating other potential data sources that will be able to participate in the research studies. Snowball sampling method is purely based on referrals and that was how we were able to generate our sample. We closely examined and filtered the internally migrated population and we then conducted a research by administering a

#### *The Age-Sex Structure of Religion as a Determinant of the Social Inclusion of Internal… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96426*

questionnaire with them which were based on elements that made us to understand their integration and the way they were perceived in Maroua.

We analyzed the collected data using SPSS software which helped us to cross-tabulate the collected data.

## **4. Analyses of findings**

#### **4.1 Internal migrants' religion and their social relation with natives**

We examine the bond that exists between internal migrants and their entourage. The question we ask was the extent to which religion has a considerable impact on internal migrants' relations with the natives?

**Table 1** shows that 44.48%, 26.3%, 21.22%, 4.48%, 1.63% and 1.92% of migrants as a whole have a good neighborly relationship, maintain simple acquaintances with their neighbor, maintain relations of solidarity; have professional relationships; have no relationship with the neighborhood and finally have a conflicting relationship with the neighborhood respectively. We realize that migrants have a good neighborly relationship in most cases, however will this always be the case with the influence of religion?

With the influence of religion, we discovered that if one is a Muslim, the more one will maintain a good relationship with ones neighbors and one will also practice a relationship of solidarity. Equally, if one is a Catholic, one will have a good neighborly and conflicting relationship with ones neighbors. Pentecostals significantly maintain a professional and conflicting relationship with their neighbors. The animists on their part either have a conflicting relationship or no relationship with the neighborhood and finally the Protestants as for them maintain either normal relations with the neighborhood, or purely professional relations. Equally, just like the Pentecostals and the animists, the Catholics also have conflicting relationship with their neighbors.

