Fears of a “terror pipeline” running from Western countries to ISIL and other militant groups are on the rise. The New York Times reports that at least a dozen men have left Minnesota to join radical Islamist groups. Community leaders and FBI officials suggest that cultural isolation, social discontent, and economic challenges drive recent immigrants abroad to fight, and expert accounts in the media argue solving these local problems is the best means of curbing the trend.

Social science has two things to say about this: first,  sincere religious belief, political ideology, and rationalistic behavior may play a stronger role than the media recognize. Second, Western media and governments may have an interest in portraying the motivations for militancy in particular ways.

Ethnographic research shows that the incentive structures of fundamentalist Islam make militancy an appealing choice. Young men who spend hundreds of hours per year in prayer groups and become leaders in their local mosque communities come to view radicalism as the only sure path to Heaven. They don’t join militant organizations because they are confused, isolated, or have no other choices, but because they sincerely believe that doing so is the right path.

• Quintan Wiktorowicz and Karl Kaltenthaler. 2006. “The Rationality of Radical Islam.” Political Science Quarterly 121(2): 295–319.

This type of radical religious behavior becomes more appealing in times of political uncertainty. Given the instability of Iraq’s fledgling democracy following the U.S. occupation, conservative Muslims may see ISIL’s rise as an opportunity to reclaim the region after a more secular approach to governing failed.

• Robert J. Brym. 2007. “Six Lessons of Suicide Bombers.” Contexts 6(4):40–45.
• Robert Pape. 2005. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Random House.

Western media organizations have strong incentives to blame militancy on local social and cultural problems. In times of moral or cultural panic, audiences look to pundits to see who to blame. “Disaffected Muslim youth” may be one such constructed class.

• Dan Berger. 2009. “Constructing Crime, Framing Disaster: Routines of Criminalization and Crisis in Hurricane Katrina.” Punishment & Society 11(4):491–510.

And, once blame has been placed, media accounts perpetuate that particular frame of the situation through a “fringe effect” where angry arguments from the margins become mainstream.

• Christopher A. Bail. 2012. “The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks.” American Sociological Review 77(6): 855–79.

For more on why people may flee micro-agressions at home, check out this Reading List.