The Intertwinement Between Freedom of Religion and Interreligious Dialogue: The Interreligious Field of Brescia as a Case-Study

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of interreligious dialogue in Brescia, a prosperous Northern Italian city with approximately 200,000 inhabitants. Despite similarities to other cities in the region, Brescia exhibits an unusually vibrant “interreligious scene,” encompassing numerous initiatives, events, and platforms. We ask why this vitality has emerged and what consequences it has for local understandings of religious freedom. To address these questions, we combine two analytical frameworks. First, drawing on the concept of political opportunity structure, we examine Brescia’s genius loci—the specific institutional, cultural, and discursive conditions that fostered interreligious engagement. Brescia’s strong Catholic tradition and inclusive integration policies, together with a diverse migrant population, have created opportunities for religious communities—especially migrant groups—to participate and get recognized. Second, using Bourdieu’s concept of the field, we consider the power dynamics among actors involved in interreligious dialogue, highlighting how different agendas and positions shape interactions and outcomes. This analysis reveals the emergence of a relatively autonomous field of interreligious dialogue in which local stakes are being defined over what dialogue entails and how it should be practiced. By linking political opportunity structures with field theory, the paper shows how local contexts shape the conditions for religious freedom, while interreligious practices themselves, in turn, reshape the meaning and application of religious freedom.

1. Introduction

The present paper examines the interreligious field—or, more specifically, the field of interreligious dialogue—that has been growing in Brescia, a 200,000,000-inhabitant, rich industrial city in Northern Italy. Unlike similar cities in the same region, Brescia presents a peculiar interreligious vivacity, as it is home to a number of interreligious dialogue initiatives, events and platforms. Why is it so, and what does this “interreligious scene” produce? What are the implications in terms of freedom of religion? To answer these interrogatives, we will resort to two concepts.

The first is the concept of “political opportunity structure” (as characterized by Morales and Giugni 2011; Cinalli and Giugni 2013), which allows us to grasp Brescia’s genius loci—that is, the local, specific conditions of possibility which have fostered the development of interreligious platforms and initiatives in the city. As we will explain, (migrant) religious communities are provided with a rather ample set of opportunities to be visible and take active part in the local life, since the expression of religious diversity is granted both from an institutional, formal point of view and from a discursive and cultural one. We will describe such structure of opportunity by reconstructing the roles played, respectively, by (a) the local Catholic identity and tradition in favouring the design and implementation of far-sighted integration policies and practices, also from the point of view of religious freedom, and (b) the features of the migratory history and of the migrant population residing in Brescia, with its notable internal diversity, which has prevented the identification of religious diversity only with Islam, i.e., the “dangerous Other”.

The second concept is that of the Bourdieusian “field” (Bourdieu 1993), which we will employ to analyse the dynamics at play within and across the various interreligious dialogue initiatives, and their effects in terms of religious freedom. The concept of the “field” appears particularly apt in a twofold way. At a first level, it allows us to appreciate how interreligious dialogue is approached by the actors involved with their respective agendas and their relative position(ing)s, illuminating the power differentials and the power relations at work, as well as the consequences they generate. At a further level, it enables us to recognize that the “social game” underlying the various interreligious dialogue initiatives that have been taking place in Brescia is coming to create a specific, autonomous “field of interreligious dialogue”, where stakes are being established about what is interreligious dialogue and how it should be conducted. This, in turn, generates crucial implications for the local understanding and the local practice of religious freedom.

Hence, the contribution provided by the present paper lies in the combination of these two concepts—“political opportunity structure” and “field”—to identify the intertwinement and the reciprocal implications between religious freedom and interreligious dialogue. On one hand, the local political structure of opportunities shapes a local understanding of religious freedom, as it forges the conditions of possibility for practicing one’s own religion and for the emergence of interreligious activities. These conditions may vary depending on local contexts, as different contexts generate different structures of opportunities. In other words, religious freedom is understood and practiced differently according to varying political opportunities structures. Brescia’s political opportunity structure paved the way for the birth of interreligious dialogue initiatives, within the broader framework of migrant integration policies (top-down) and integration practices (bottom-up). On the other hand, the analysis of such initiatives through the lens of the “field” enables us to appraise the consequences that the very practice of interreligious dialogue generates for the possible expansion of religious freedom.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we will briefly describe the methodology and the empirical materials on which the study is based. Second, we will present the “political opportunity structure” which enabled the development of a peculiar religious “sensitivity” in the context of Brescia, and the adoption of a specific approach to migrant integration and diversity-related issues, explaining the discursive and institutional conditions of possibility which have shaped the current configuration of interreligious dialogue in the city. Third, we will closely analyse interreligious dialogue initiatives and platform initiatives by adopting the Bourdieusian lens of the “field”, allowing us to identify the power dynamics at work between the different actors involved and the effects they generate on the very practice of interreligious dialogue, and, more broadly, on the local understanding of religious freedom.

2. Methodology

This study is part of a two-year research project (2024–2025) on the urban governance of religious diversity and specifically on interreligious dialogue within local understandings of religious freedom in four Italian cities: Padua, Florence, Turin and Brescia1. In each city, local research units conducted interviews, focus groups and participant observation sessions, mapped local interreligious dialogue initiatives, collected official policy documents and the local newspaper’s coverage on the topic. This paper is based on the fieldwork carried out by the research team of CIRMiB (Center of Initiatives and research on Migration) of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Brescia between March 2024 and May 2025. Specifically, it draws on:

• 44 semi-structured interviews with religious actors, civil society representatives and local policymakers, covering their background and trajectory of engagement in interreligious dialogue in Brescia, their opinion on the current state of interreligious dialogue as well as on the strengths and the weaknesses of local interreligious dialogue initiatives, their view on the local governance of religious diversity and religious freedom;
• 4 participant observation sessions of local interreligious initiatives (for a detailed reconstruction of these initiatives, see (Colombo 2025) in this Special Issue);
• 2 focus groups with teachers, headmasters and students of upper secondary schools with a diverse student population;
• 2 focus groups with residents and civil society representatives of two multi-religious neighbourhoods;
• Documentary analysis of texts and materials produced by the various interreligious platforms and initiatives mapped.

3. Brescia’s “Genius Loci”: A Political Opportunity Structure Shaping Local Religious Freedom

3.1. The History and Use of the Concept of “Political Opportunity Structure”

The concept of “opportunity structure” refers to “the framework of socially structured means and rules available for a social group to achieve its aims and interests, which are culturally defined” (Latorre-Catalán 2017, p. 11). Originally, the concept was coined by Merton (1976), who, starting with his theorization of anomie and deviant behaviour and later in the development of his broader social theory, outlined the interplay between an individual’s position in the social structure (in terms of socio-economic status) and its possibilities to act in order to pursue culturally defined goals. In his words, “opportunity structure designates the scale and distribution of conditions that provide various probabilities for acting individuals and groups to achieve specifiable outcomes.” (Merton 1995, p. 25). Therefore, opportunity structures represent the uneven distribution of options for individuals and groups, differently located within social structures (Sanjay and Deflem 2006). The concept was further employed in the Merton-inspired literature on deviance and delinquency, where a distinction has been introduced between legitimate, socially accepted opportunity structures to reach upward mobility, and illegitimate opportunity structures to attain the goals of personal success heralded by society (Cloward and Ohlin 1960).

Subsequently, the concept gained centre-stage within the literature on social movements (Kriesi 2004; Meyer 2004), where it came to designate the dimensions of the political system (hence the adjective “political”) which can either favour or hinder the development of collective action (inter alia, see Tarrow 1996). In other words, political opportunity structures consist in those aspects of the political system affecting the chances that a challenging group can mobilize effectively (Morales and Giugni 2011). According to McAdam (1996), political opportunity structures are made up of (1) the degree of openness of institutionalized political systems; (2) the degree of stability of the alignments between the elites governing the state; (3) the presence, within such elites, of actors allied to the social movement in question; and (4) the capacity of the state and its propensity for repression.

The concept has been further developed and extended to neighbouring fields of enquiry. As Morales and Giugni (2011) have convincingly argued, it can be fruitfully applied to the study of migrants’ possibilities to become included in the political process and express forms of participation. Indeed, even when migrants do not come together to contest a political system or do not constitute a “challenger” to it, their possibilities to participate are far from self-evident, as migrants are usually considered “outsiders” to a polity, and are usually not considered entitled to the right of expressing their voice. Hence, when it comes to the political opportunity structures affecting migrants’ possibilities to participate, what is under scrutiny is the degree of openness and acceptance of diversity of a political system and, more broadly, of a society.

Since religious diversity is often—and especially in the Italian case—migration-driven, we deem that the concept of political opportunity structure (POS) can be extended to the area of research on religious pluralism, with the aim of examining the possibilities that migrants’ religions, often seen with suspicion or disdain (as in the case of Islam) can be freely practiced and become visible and legitimised in the public arena. Furthermore, as Sayad (1999) has masterly demonstrated , the debates concerning the treatment reserved to migrants often reveal broader, unresolved issues within a given society through a “mirror effect”; therefore, the concept of POS appears suitable not only to analyse the situation of religious communities of immigrant origin, but, more generally, of religions different than the majoritarian one, such as historical religious minorities (in the case of Italy, the protestant Waldensian community and the Jewish community). This acquires particular salience in Italy, the cradle of Catholicism. Hence, the concept of POS seems particularly apt to analyse the conditions of possibility for religious freedom in a given context.

Political opportunity structures have been articulated and operationalized in two dimensions (Koopmans et al. 2005; Morales and Giugni 2011; Cinalli and Giugni 2013): an institutional one and a discursive one. Institutional opportunities refer to the set of legal provisions and arrangements specific to an issue and/or to a category: in the case of migrants, these include citizenship rights, voting rights, migration and integration policies, anti-discrimination measures, the protection of cultural rights; in the case of religious communities, institutional opportunities are the set of norms regulating the relations between the State and religions, dictating the possibilities, inter alia, to build places of worship, receive public funds, provide legal recognition to religious marriages or guarantee access to religious representatives to offer spiritual assistance in prisons or hospitals. In the case of Italy, these rights are not guaranteed equally to all confessions, as they depend on the obtention of an “Intesa” with the Italian State, i.e., a concordat officially granting recognition to a confession, with the attached set of provisions regulating its public expression. Obtaining an “Intesa” is a highly formal and complex process for a religious confession, essentially stemming from the political will of the government; it is no coincidence that the confessions considered more “problematic” by virtue of their “Otherness”—Islam and Sikhism—have not been able to reach an Intesa with the Italian State yet2. For these reasons, Italy represents a highly closed institutional setting, as institutional opportunities both for migrants and for religions different than Catholicism are very limited.

Discursive opportunities refer to the discursive legitimation of certain actors in the public arena and the visibility granted to certain claims: politicians, intellectuals, and civil society actors all contribute to shape discursive opportunities that may legitimize or delegitimize certain collective identities and substantive demands. Italy has long been characterized by an extremely negative discourse surrounding the presence of immigrants in general, and of Muslim migrants in particular, hampering these groups from accessing any kind of discursive opportunities (Saint-Blancat 2014; Allievi 2005).

Therefore, at the national level, both institutional and discursive opportunities are closed in the domain of migrants’ participation and in that of religious freedom (for confessions not having an Intesa with the Italian State), thereby forging a regime of “full exclusion”, based on the typology developed by Cinalli and Giugni (2013, p. 150). According to their model, when opportunities are open from the institutional point of view, but closed on a discursive level, there is a situation of “formal inclusion”; conversely, a combination of open discursive opportunities and closed institutional opportunities translates to “informal inclusion”; lastly, open opportunities both on the institutional and the discursive planes create a regime of “full inclusion”.

That appears to be the political opportunity structure regarding migrants and migration-driven religious diversity in Brescia. While the city has not been exempted form tensions, controversies and debates on these issues, our empirical material demonstrates that this local reality can be considered rather “open” both in its institutional setting—with the policies implemented over time regarding migrant integration—and with regards the prevailing discursive characterization of migrant religious communities. The presence of discursive opportunities, in particular, is to be traced, on one hand, in the very specificities of the local Catholic tradition and identity (Rusconi 2023; Corsini 2023; Gabusi 2023) and, on the other hand, in the characteristics of the local economy and of the related social fabric. These features have generated a “predisposition” to welcome and integrate migrants, significantly contributing to shape far-sighted local integration policies, also in the field of cultural and religious rights. Having prevented the eruption of anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric, such measures have in turn facilitated a rather appeased, or, a minima, non-conflictual, perception of diversity. Indeed, the openness of institutional opportunities and the openness of discursive opportunities have mutually reinforced in Brescia.

In the following paragraphs, we will first trace the origins of such discursive opportunities and then describe how they translated to institutional opportunities in terms of local policies and arrangements.

3.2. Discursive and Institutional Opportunities for Religious Freedom in Brescia

When asked about the state of religious freedom in Brescia, our interviewees almost invariably stated that this right is guaranteed in the local context. The two following quotes are quite exemplary of this consensus:

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed in Brescia. There are no problems from this point of view: if you want to practise your religion, you can do so freely. In Brescia there are many different faiths and communities. This means that here one can live one’s religion with dignity.”

(Civil society actor engaged in interreligious dialogue initiatives)

“Last year, at the beginning of my mandate here in Brescia, I was invited to attend an Iftar organized by the local Muslim community during Ramadan. I was struck by the fact that the event was hosted in the building belonging to the Padri Saveriani [Xaverians, a Catholic order], who offered their venue for this celebration. I think this has a strong symbolic significance”

(Head of the city’s police department)

These characterizations of local religious freedom provided by our interviewees spurred the need to deepen our understanding of the conditions that have made this local understanding of religious freedom possible.

In reconstructing these conditions, our interviewees recurrently pointed to the historical role played by Catholic social actors and to the Catholic influence over the local political and intellectual elite:

“This is a city that’s woven through with Catholicism […] anyone looking at it from the outside sees a deep sense of religiosity […] In my opinion, what we have inherited from this is a certain seriousness that’s typical of Catholicism—of a certain kind of Catholicism—a kind of Catholic sobriety, and definitely a certain public ethic that’s really been supported by the city’s religiosity […] there’s a sense of civic responsibility here, and I think religion has contributed a lot to that.”

(Representative of the Municipal Council)

Such a tradition has its roots in the commitment of Brescia’s Catholic actors against fascism and in the fight for Italy’s liberation during World War II (Corsini 2023; Gabusi 2023)—above all, Don Mazzolari, a priest known for his anti-fascist activism. Subsequently, with the growth of Brescia’s industrial vocation—which rendered the city one of the capitals of Italian industrialization in the post-war period—Brescia became a cradle for social Catholicism, through the work of Catholic actors, congregations, grassroots movements and trade unions, who all showed a specific sensitivity towards the issues affecting the working class:

“The tradition of social Catholicism in Brescia is very strong and ancient, and has permeated all aspects of life in this city”.

(Civil society actor involved in interreligious initiatives)

This created a specific, local Catholic identity, which came to be embodied by pontiff Paul VI, who was born in a small town close to Brescia and grew up within this tradition. As the participant to one of the focus groups carried out in multicultural neighbourhoods clearly explains:

“Brescia is the town of Paul VI and of the Fathers of Peace [the priests of the congregation of San Filippo Neri, known for their pacifist orientation]. It is also the town where the commitment of Father Bevilacqua, Father Marcolini, Father Cittadini [priests involved in catering for the needs of the working class, having fought against fascism] forged a local Catholic ideology. These people contributed to forge an idea of peace and of social cooperation, from which a pontiff like Paul VI emerged. He brought to conclusion the second Vatican Council, entered into dialogue with other faiths and made the first trip [of a pontiff] to the Holy Land.”

(Catholic priest, focus group participant)

Indeed, one of the most important legacies of the second Vatican Council is precisely the “Nostra Aetate” declaration concerning “the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions”, which was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI at the end of the Council (1965). This declaration is considered foundational because it opened the Church to relations with other religions, in the form of interreligious dialogue, not just at high hierarchical levels, as the document invited the entire Church—including congregations and parishes—to lay the ground for entertaining positive relations with other religions3.

This reverberated throughout Brescia’s marked and specific Catholic identity, which found also a political translation, as pointed out by another interviewee, who is a member of the municipal administration: “The priests of San Filippo Neri are the masters of the Christian Democrat left”, referring to the “Christian democracy” party that has ruled Italy since the post-war period until the 80’s, which was notoriously internally divided in a centre-right faction and left-wing leaning faction. Due to above-sketched cultural “humus”, Brescia significantly contributed to the development of the centre-left stream within the party, with politicians and intellectuals originating from Brescia who became Members of the Constituent Assembly and of the Parliament (Lodovico Montini, brother of Paul VI) and even ministers (Pedini, Martinazzoli). As spelled out by the same focus group participant quoted above:

“The Christian Democracy, for better or worse, has identified with these roots […]. Brescia has always been a stronghold of DC, but of an enlightened DC, of the centre-left stream, with figures like Martinazzoli and Pedini. The same goes for the mayors that Brescia has had. So, there is this cultural, political, ecclesial heritage, which is considerate and respectful [of diversity and cultural differences]”.

(Catholic priest, focus group participant)

The terrorist attack of “Piazza della Loggia”, perpetrated by neo-fascist extremists in 1974, also contributed to shape a class of local intellectuals and activists that made the city more oriented towards a left-wing leaning, as reflected in the results of local elections, traditionally won by the centre-left (with the exception of one mandate between 2008 and 2013).

This might appear surprising, considering that Brescia lies in Lombardy, a region that has traditionally represented one of the strongholds of centre-right parties, which are characterized by a marked anti-immigrant attitude. The region’s approach to the management of religious diversity is exemplified, inter alia, by the adoption, in 2015, of a Regional Law concerning land use and construction rights that was immediately dubbed as “the anti-mosque law”. Indeed, Lombard cities with similar characteristics (size, industrial history) have been wary of developing such an open stance towards immigrants and their religions. Even Milan, a metropolis having attracted a high number of immigrants, was the stage of harsh controversies concerning the creation of mosques and it took the administration numerous years and negotiations to finally settle the issue (Mezzetti 2023). Veneto, too, the region neighbouring with the province of Brescia, has displayed such a distrustful, or even hostile, attitude towards diversity. Not far from Brescia lies Verona, a city known for its fierce right-wing, xenophobic leaning, as one of our interviewees recalls:

“I studied at the University of Verona and through this experience in Verona I really learnt what racism is… here in Brescia there isn’t the same ghettoization as in Verona: in Brescia, the presence of different people is taken for granted”

(Representative of the Municipal council belonging to the Muslim community)

Hence, the reason why Brescia stands out in a conservative region like Lombardy is the fact that its peculiar Catholic tradition translated to a rather progressive stance towards ethno-religious diversity, making this town more akin to larger cities like Turin (Di Placido and Palmisano 2025) or Florence and Bologna (Conti 2016). Although the political identity of these cities is more pronouncedly leftist than that of Brescia—whose left-wing leaning is of a more moderate tradition, as explained above—they were similarly marked by the legacies of key-Catholic figures—like the Catholic mayor of Florence Giorgio La Pira, known for his pacifist commitment, or Don Giovanni Bosco in Turin, who created the modern “parish” with activities for youths and children (Griera et al. 2020).

This local political tradition came into play when Brescia, as one of the most important industrial areas in Italy, started attracting a sizeable number of migrant workers in the early the ‘90s4. On one hand, the actors of social Catholicism catered for the needs of this population:

“Brescia has always been characterised by the strong activism of Catholic grassroots associations, which have always dealt with integration issues, like offering free courses of Italian to newly arrived migrants, and this in turn has fostered the knowledge of migrants’ needs”.

(Civil society actor involved in interreligious initiatives)

On the other hand, the local administration conceived integration measures a proactive approach aimed at preventing newly arrived immigrants from becoming marginalized and excluded from the social fabric, with a view to avoid conflicts and hostility between natives and migrants:

“At the beginning of the 1990s many immigrants started arriving […] we put together a very simple project which was to welcome and guide them into the city and to its services. […] We had made agreements with a dozen or so one-star hotels in the city, which kept 5 to 10 places available for them. Through an agreement with ACLI [the Catholic-inspired trade union] we provided access to a workers’ canteen. The newly arrived were redirected at our office, where we registered them and gave them directions on where to sleep and where to find affordable meals”.

(Former employee of the municipal administration)

In 2013, this proactively inclusive approach led to granting voting rights to third-country nationals residing in Brescia to elect neighbourhoods’ representative in neighbourhoods’ local boards—something which constitutes a unicum in Italy and points to the openness of the local institutional setting5.

Since the early years of migrants’ arrival and settlement, this open attitude also marked the administration’s attitude towards the cultural and religious rights of newly settled migrant communities:

“I had been contacted by the first Ghanaian Pentecostal communities to find a place to celebrate, and I found them two or three in the city (…) At the first procession the Sikhs organised in the city [in 2001], we prepared the city for what was going to happen with a flyer distributed around the neighbourhoods where the procession would have taken place, explaining the meaning of this event, because we thought that residents would have been terrified at the sight of their turbans. When it came to settling the issue of the mosque, we prepared the neighbourhood with fliers, explaining that the influx of people they were about to see was due to Ramadan. And we had made an agreement with the local company of public transportations in order to organise extra bus runs, so as not to give problems with traffic and parking”.

(Former employee of the municipal administration)

Indeed, these measures are revelatory of an attitude tending to favour the expression of religious belonging within a policy framework granting freedom of religion. This is further confirmed by a Muslim interlocutor:

“Already in the 90s’, the local Muslim community was granted a square in the city cemetery to bury their dead according to Islamic rules. The 90s’ are long gone and this means that the Muslim community had a fruitful relationship with the administration, even back then.”

(Representative of the Municipal council belonging to the Muslim community)

Another example is represented by the decision of the former mayor of a village close to Brescia, which hosts a large Senegalese community, to establish a feast, to be celebrated every year on 8 June, for the community to come together.

Certainly, according to many interviewees, the fact that newcomers could easily find jobs in the local industrial sector favoured a non-conflictual of non-distrustful attitude on the part on the local population towards migrants. In this regard, trade union activism—both Catholic-inspired and left-wing—in favour of migrants’ rights significantly contributed to this process:

“The level of commitment of trade unions made a difference… And we should also take into account what was done by more radical and left-wing associations that managed to create a dialogue [with local institutions]. Let’s bear in mind that Radio Onda d’Urto [a local left-wing radio station] had some shows in Urdu [this is relevant as Brescia hosts a large Pakistani community]”

(Civil society actor engaged in interreligious initiatives)

“This is the neighbourhood of Brescia [named “Fiumicello”] where migrants have always settled since the ‘50s and the ‘60s: it has long had a welcoming, inclusive tradition, because it was a working-class neighbourhood, and working-class struggles have marked its identity”.

(Civil society actor, focus group participant)

A further factor facilitating this degree of openness of the local political opportunity structure pertains to the very characteristics of the migrant population, which presents a high level of internal differentiation: considering macro-regions of origin, 44% come from other European countries, especially Eastern European ones (Romania, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova, Kosovo), 27% come from Asia (with India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as the prominent nationalities) and 25% from Africa (mainly from Marocco, Senegal, Egypt, Ghana and Nigeria)6. With regard to the prevailing confessions, a survey conducted in 2021 revealed that Muslims represent about 45% of the total religious affiliations among immigrants, followed by Orthodox Christians (15%) and Catholics (15%) (Colombo 2022, p. 50). Nonetheless, Brescia’s religious landscape is more diverse than in other local contexts, as it encompasses different Muslim traditions—with Muslims coming from countries as different as Pakistan, Senegal, and Morocco—alongside Sikhs (of whom Brescia hosts one of the largest communities in Italy), Hinduists, Orthodox Christians from Eastern Europe, Evangelicals from South-Saharan Africa and Latin America, as well as non-Italian Catholics from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Latin America (Mignardi and Ambrosi 2021). Although our interviewees did not underline this feature of the local context, we argue that such a diversification in terms of origins and religious belongings prevented both the local administration and the public opinion from solely focusing on “the Other” par excellence, that is, Muslims, ultimately defusing possible polarizations (Winkler et al. 2023; Körs and Nagel 2018). Indeed, as one interviewee underlined, “Over time I could notice that in Brescia there has always been an attempt to go beyond a securitarian approach, which has been the norm in Italy when it comes to managing diversity” (Representative of the Diocese).

This diversified reality also induces to frame the public space, such as that of the school, not as a neutral arena where religions should not be expressed; as explained in the following quote from a focus group participant, who is the headmaster of a high school, the public space “belongs to everybody” and should therefore offer the backdrop for expressing the spectrum of religious diversity:

“Our students asked me if they could organize a small celebration of the end of Ramadan in our school. I think that schools are a public space, that belong to each member of a community: therefore, we willingly accepted this request”

(Headmaster, focus group participant)

High school students (who participated in a different focus group) expressed similar views, adhering to the idea, voiced by one of them, to create a mandatory course about all religions, because “religions are a part of general knowledge: we should have one mandatory hour per week about religions. If it is mandatory, then it cannot be only about Christianism” (High school student, focus group participant). We deem these represent further significant examples of how freedom of religion is conceived of and practiced in Brescia, not just by institutional or religious actors, but also by the very individuals who experience the reality of everyday multi-religiosity in their own ordinary activities.

Based on this reconstruction, we can therefore claim that the city presents a rather open political structure of opportunity, both institutionally and discursively, which has granted the respect of religious freedom for religions different than Catholic one. In turn, this has favoured the development of an interreligious ecology, which we will turn to in the following section.

4. The Field of Interreligious Dialogue in Brescia

4.1. Interreligious Platforms and Interreligious Initiatives

To properly understand the interreligious ecology that has developed in Brescia, we will distinguish between interreligious platforms and interreligious initiatives. The former are more established and structured, entailing a formal adhesion on the part of religious communities; the latter are more informal, spontaneous gatherings. While both are based on volunteering and the goodwill of the interested actors, platforms enjoy a slightly higher degree of “institutionalization” (e.g., signing a chart, becoming member of an association), whereas initiatives are more flexible and might present an instable character in the long run. The actors involved—representatives of religious communities, public institutions, and civil society—are largely consistent across initiatives and platforms and recur regularly at the various events organized throughout the year. Collectively, these actors can be seen as constituting a sort of interreligious network.

We identified two platforms and five initiatives. Following the classification provided by Bossi and Giorda (2021), we further qualify such distinction between platforms and initiatives by looking at their origin and implementation, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Interreligious platforms and initiatives in Brescia.

Level	Name of the Platform/Initiative	Active Since…	Where
INTERRELIGIOUS PLATFORMS
Top-down origin; Middle-middle implementation	“Pact for interreligious fraternity” (Patto Bresciano di Fraternità Interreligiosa) as an evolution of the “Brescia’s Pact for an Italian Islam” (Patto bresciano per un islam italiano) (2017–2020)	2020	Meetings take place either in places of worship in various public spaces (e.g., Conference halls); both in the historical center and in the outskirts
	“Dòsti” Association, organizing the “Festival of Religious Arts and Cultures” (Festival delle arti e delle culture religiose)	2017	Meetings take place either in places of worship in various public spaces (e.g., Conference halls, museums); both in the historical center and in the outskirts
INTERRELIGIOUS INITIATIVES
Bottom-up origin and implementation	Annual “Interreligious walk” (Cammino interreligioso): upper secondary school students and their teachers visit the places of worship of various religious communities (Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Waldensians, Orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians)	2013	The visit the main non-Catholic places of worship around the city and ends with one of the main Catholic Churches of the historical city’s center
	“Fraternity Feast” (Festa della Fratellanza): annual interreligious gathering in the parish of S. Giovanni Bosco	2023	Periphery
	“Interreligious spiritual gatherings” (Incontri di spiritualità interreligiosa): a series of meetings in the parish of S. Maria Nascente	2023 (interrupted in 2025)	Periphery
	Interreligious prayer for peace, annually organized by Franciscan friars on 27 October	2023	Historical city center
	Ecumenical catechism (organized by a retired priest)	2023	Historical city center

The two platforms that have become established in Brescia were both initiated by institutions and have been subsequently maintained and kept alive by religious communities, third sector organizations and civil society actors. More specifically, the Ministry of the Interior acted as a sort of initiator, in the background, by virtue of its competence over religious affairs. In 2017 the “Pact for an Italian Islam”, signed in Rome by the then Minister of the Interior Minniti with representatives of the main Muslim organizations at the national level as a first step towards the Intesa (see above), had to be theoretically implemented across Italy at the local level7 with the signature of “local Pacts” under the aegis of Prefectures (which represent the government in the main Italian cities). Brescia was one of the few Italian cities where this happened, through the creation of a “Brescia pact for an Italian Islam” in December 2017, as an agreement of cooperation between Muslim associations, trade unions, Catholic organisations and cultural associations, with the aims of, inter alia, “supporting the dialogue between Muslim associations and institutions”, “include Muslim associations in civil society networks”, “counter religious radicalisation”, “invite the Prefecture to create a register for imams”, “ensure the translation of Friday sermons into Italian”, “sensitize young Muslims to the practice of active citizenship and of intercultural dialogue”8. The stated intents are formulated in a language that combines a securitarian approach with a focus on citizenship and participation, expressing a sort of “soft” control, concerted with the involved actors. However, the local adoption of such Pacts has not been monitored in the following years, due to the radically different attitude of the successive national governments concerning the management of migration and religious diversity. Nonetheless, the actors having signed the Brescia Pact did not let it die; rather, they transformed it into the “Brescia Pact for interreligious fraternity” and opened it to all confessions and interested civil society organisations. The intent to “control Islam” has been replaced by the aim of pursuing interreligious dialogue and of favouring reciprocal knowledge among different religious communities and civil society actors, as stated by our interviewee, the coordinator of the platform.

During the same period, the Central Directorate for Religious Affairs of the Department for Civil Liberties and Immigration of the Ministry of the Interior identified the Province of Brescia as a suitable area for the development of a pilot project, due to the significant presence of foreign residents and in consideration of Brescia as a “positive model” of governance of cultural and religious diversity (Pizzetti and Colombo 2019). The initiative was launched by the Prefect, who called on social and religious representatives to engage in more structured forms of dialogue and take an active part in the city’s social and cultural life, with the stated goals of preventing ghettoization, intolerance, and religious and cultural extremism. According to the Prefect’s vision, the initiative was not only about ensuring adequate places of worship for different religions, but also about encouraging religious communities’ members to know about and accept other religions (ibid.). This project resulted in the organization of the first “Festival of Religious Arts and Cultures” in 2017, around which the Dòsti9 association was subsequently created as an independent third-sector entity, gathering various religious and civil society actors who are responsible for the organization of the festival, which has taken place annually since its inception. In this case, the institution’s intents are of a different nature: rather than explicitly exerting forms of control, the aim was to steer and stimulate the participation of religious communities. As testified by the documents collected through the present project, the municipality eagerly joined the project, and has been providing financial resources and support for several editions, with the ultimate goal of further proving its capacity to manage religious diversity.

Both the Pact for interreligious fraternity and the Dòsti association represents evolutions of stimuli imparted by local institutions in a top-down manner, following decisions taken at the Ministry-level. Such evolution was possible thanks to the active engagement of religious communities and civil society actors, who are now fully independent in pursuing their activities. Given the degree of relative formality they achieved, they can be considered platforms with a top-down origin, but a “middle-middle implementation”, in which representatives of religious communities and civil society organisations cooperate within a meso-level organ (Bossi and Giorda 2021).

The interreligious initiatives listed in Table 1 are different due to their spontaneous, bottom-up nature: they are started by, and depend on, the commitment of single individuals or of single religious communities. The “Interreligious Walk” is entirely organized by a school teacher and involves students from several upper secondary schools in Brescia: they spend a school day following a walking itinerary, divided into stages; each stage is one of the main places of worship belonging to various religious communities (Muslims, Sikhs, Orthodox Christians, Waldensians, Buddhists, Catholic Christians). The three other initiatives were started by single Catholic parishes or priests, who invite other religious communities (especially Muslims and Sikhs in the case of the first two) either to one or a series of interreligious events. As anticipated above, these initiatives lack a formal character and take place on a smaller scale; moreover, since they depend on the activism of single individuals, they might be more unstable over time.

We will now turn to a necessary review of Bourdieu’s characterization of “field” in order to chart the power relations at work within these interreligious activities. As we will show, the notion of “field” will help uncover the implications of such power dynamics for the meanings attached to very practice of “interreligious dialogue”, and, ultimately, of “religious freedom” (Breskaya et al. 2024).

4.2. Bourdieu’s Notion of Field

To make sense of the uneven distribution of power and of social properties across the social space, Bourdieu coined the notion of “field” as an arena where individuals and groups occupy hierarchically structured positions based on the magnitude and composition of their capital endowments—economic, cultural, social, or symbolic. These positions are not merely static locations: they give rise to specific opinions, practices, and strategies, which Bourdieu calls “position-takings”. Crucially, position-takings depend not only on the actors’ individual capital endowments, but also on their objective relations to others within the space of the field, which is thus defined as “a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 97). Hence, a field may be understood as a market-like configuration of positions that functions on both the supply and demand sides: actors behave as if they were capitalists, striving to exchange their own capitals in order to accumulate the kinds of capital valued within that field.

Each field has its own specific logic, irreducible to those governing other fields. Actors engage in these contests because they agree, at least implicitly, that the “social game” of the field is worth playing. This is the reason why a field is such when its arena has become an autonomous realm, organized around a common stake, pursued “for its own sake” (en tant que): e.g., law is pursed as law, art as art, and, in this case, interreligious dialogue is pursued for its own sake. The rules of the social game played in this arena are recognized and respected by its participants (Bourdieu 2009).

Yet, fields are not static or closed systems. Their rules, hierarchies, and boundaries are subject to ongoing struggle. Competition unfolds around the valued forms of symbolic capital specific to that domain—prestige in art, authority in law, or legitimacy in religion. Struggles within a field may lead to a redefinition of its boundaries, stakes, and legitimate forms of capital. As Bourdieu notes, fields are arenas of tension between newcomers, who seek to break through entry barriers, and dominant agents, who defend their monopoly and attempt to exclude rivals (Bourdieu 1993). Hence, the autonomy of a field is always relative: its existence and internal structure can be reshaped by forces both internal and external. The notion of “field” thus provides a relational, dynamic understanding of power and practice. Fields are not merely backdrops for action, but active sites where the distribution of resources and the rules of the game are constantly negotiated.

In the following section, we will operationalize these concepts in our case-study, showing how it can be fruitfully employed to analyse the relative positions of actors engaged in interreligious dialogue and their reasons for investing in it. To our knowledge, this notion does not seem to have been applied extensively in the study of interreligious relations—with few exceptions: (Stolz and Monnot 2017; Bossi 2020; Bossi and Ricucci 2023; Ipgrave 2020, pp. 266–67). Nonetheless, a systematic analysis of interreligious dialogue through the lenses of the “field” holds promise, in that it allows us to highlight how power differentials between religious actors (Nordin 2017; Körs 2018) and the power dynamics between them may generate significant implications for the practice of religious freedom.

4.3. The Actors of the Interreligious Field of Brescia

Table 2 provides an overview of the relative positions, goals and capital endowments of the main actors involved in the social game of interreligious dialogue.

Table 2. The actors of the interreligious field of Brescia.

Actors Involved	Agenda-Goals	Capital Endowment
Policy-makers and institutions	Municipal administration: show its capacity to manage (migration-driven) religious diversity	Political power (also to restrain or safeguard religious freedom); economic power
	Prefecture: exert a degree of “soft”, concerted control
Catholic Church	Remain relevant as a religion and an institution; counter secularization	Symbolic capital; prestige; cultural and political influence; economic power
Other religious communities	Large non-Christian migrant religious communities (Muslims and Sikhs): show trustworthiness to gain recognition and legitimation	Token of ethnic-racial-religious diversity; increasingly acquiring Italian citizenship and the attached voting rights (thereby gaining local political relevance)
	Christian religious communities of migrant origin (Orthodox parishes, e.g., Romanian and Ukrainian communities): Obtain recognition and concessions from the Catholic Church (e.g., places of worship)	Token of religious diversity, not representing the potentially “dangerous Other” (unlike Muslims and Sikhs)
	Historical, native religious minorities (e.g., Waldensian protestant community, other native evangelical communities): counter the privileged position of the Catholic Church within the public, secular space	Token of religious diversity; non-conflictual accommodation (e.g., no need to obtain assistance regarding places of worship, unlike migrant religious communities)

What is the social game being played in this field? What are the implicit, agreed upon rules of this game? What are the relative positions of the participants, and what position-takings do they attempt to achieve?

Starting with institutions, based on what we described above (par. 4.1.), it is possible to affirm that their interest in promoting interreligious dialogue activities, either directly or indirectly, stems from their need to show their capacity and skills. In the case of the municipal administration, investment in the field serves to demonstrates its will to engage in an effective management of religious diversity; indeed, interreligious platforms have been born thanks to, and as an outcome of, migrant integration policies, as explained above. In the case of the Prefecture, such investment has been, at least in the past years, instrumental to maintain a form of “soft” control, agreed upon with the concerned actors, especially Muslim ones. These kinds of investment represent more or less explicit “techniques of governmentality aimed at “domesticating” (certain) religious groups (Dick and Nagel 2016; Griera and Nagel 2018; Griera et al. 2020). The capital endowment of institutions is self-evident and consists in the possibility to exert power—e.g., the power of restraining the possibilities to practice one’s own religion. This is the reason why the other actors participating in the field—religious communities—are all interested in cooperating with institutions. Migrant religious communities, specifically, cooperate with local policy-makers, as they need institutional approval for their activities—e.g., the organization of Sikhs’ annual procession or of Muslims’ celebration of Eid-el-fitr, or the request of an area where to establish a larger place of worship.

Hence, with the intent of gaining legitimation, migrant religious communities actively cooperate with institutions to show they are trustworthy. As one of the spokespersons of the Muslim community told us, he regrets that the “Brescia Pact for an Italian Islam” does not exist anymore, because, in his view, it represented a badge of credibility that Muslim associations could resort to in order to gain recognition. In this, we recognize the dynamic described by Mamdani (2008), Topolski (2018) and Ipgrave (2020) who explain the extent to which Muslims have internalized the Western dichotomy between “good religion” (westernized, secularized) and “bad religion” (dangerous, fanatic, premodern). In order to be accepted “by the West”, Muslim communities have to show they are “good”, i.e., non-dangerous and modern. Furthermore, the only capital endowment they can dispose of is the fact they represent diversity: their sheer presence in interreligious activities proves that those activities are “inclusive” (Griera 2020). As Khan (2024, p. 24) explains, “allowing oneself to be tokenized in this way involves an exchange where peace of mind is traded for social recognition”.

To pursue the goal of obtaining recognition and legitimation, migrant religious communities also cooperate with the local Diocese, which, just like an institution, holds a prestigious privileged position in the city’s affairs and is regularly consulted—formally and informally—by the other secular institutions. Therefore, migrant religious communities seek the Church’s backing and support to obtain recognition and, possibly, to put forward their claims—e.g., Muslims could obtain their place of worship also thanks to the mediation of the Catholic Church, whose aim is the safeguard of religious freedom. This, in turn, meets the interests of the Church, as it can act as a “broker” (Emmerich 2023) between secular institutions and other religious actors, thus maintaining its privileged position as an institution (Stolz and Monnot 2017; Körs 2018). While diocesan bishops have to abide by the canonical obligation to promote interreligious dialogue10, cooperating with other religions is seen as a way to counter secularization forces and exert a form of “religious citizenship”, as if the Catholic Church needs to find allies to put forward a religious message. As a representative of the Diocese of Brescia told us:

When I think of interreligious dialogue, I think of the word “inhabiting” […]. I mean living together as different religions in this city and offering the image of men and women of faith, giving this city the sense that it is inhabited by men and women who, in different ways and forms, express their belief in God. I find this both beautiful and very meaningful for our times, which lack in references to a spiritual dimension. I really like the idea that the visible presence of people of faith bears witness to the way we live here.

(Representative of the Diocese)

For similar reasons, native, historical religious minorities are interested in taking part in interreligious exchanges and cooperate with Catholic representatives, often entertaining fruitful and cordial relations. Yet, they also seek to become more visible and known to institutions and the wider public, with a view to break the narrative—and the praxis—that assigns to the Catholic Church the privileged, dominant position it holds in many domains.

In any case, each of these actors thinks that the “social game” of interreligious dialogue is worth playing and attach a value to it, as something to be pursued “for its own sake”—that is, an activity that “has to be done” to avoid the risk of being considered intolerant and narrow-minded. In this sense, interreligious dialogue has come to operate like a Foucauldian dispositif (Winkler et al. 2023; Foucault 1995), conferring a specific disciplinary disposition on the actors participating in the game. As is known, a dispositif can be conceived of as an assemblage of practices and techniques with a prescriptive dimension, which is directed towards the achievement of disciplinary normalisation (Gøtzsche-Astrup and Villadsen 2025). The above-mentioned internalisation of the dichotomy between “good religion” and “bad religion” represents a clear example of how the dispositif of interreligious dialogue works: while it obliges all actors involved to be “moderate” and seek appeasement (activating Goffmanian front- and back-stage behaviours—see Colombo 2025; Nagel 2019; Griera 2020), it particularly impinges on those with less power (i.e., poor capital endowment) and “conducts their conduct” (to use Foucault’s terms), by formatting and taming their identities according to the standards set by the most powerful.

However, the field is not static: the forms of cooperation just described are challenged by other actors, whose agency might set in motion more conflictual dynamics. These actors contest the way interreligious dialogue has been done so far—thereby testifying to the very stakes they attribute to interreligious dialogue “en tant que tel”, and to the autonomy of this specific field. Another spokesperson of the Muslim community (different than the one quoted above with regard to the “Pact”), born and raised in Italy and speaking first and foremost as an Italian citizen asking to be treated on an equal footing, declares:

“For a long time, we [Muslims] had to accept any kind of invitation to take part in interreligious events, even when they were organised without prior consultation about our ideas on how to organize an interreligious event… but we had to say ‘yes, we will participate’’ anyways, otherwise we would have been considered backward and closed-off. I think interreligious dialogue should now go beyond these early stages… it should now mean that each religious community can speak for itself and provide its own narrative. Because interreligious initiatives are often based on this negative dynamic, where the white Catholic addresses other communities with this kind of ‘salvific’ attitude, saying to other religions ‘I welcome you’. But I think the time has come for the other communities [Muslims, Sikhs] to say out loud ‘we don’t need to be ‘saved’ from anything: we are here on an equal footing and we should walk together respecting each other—this is what I mean when I say that the ‘new’ religions should be able to speak for themselves: we need to be recognised as equals”.

(Representative of the Municipal council belonging to the Muslim community)

In this quote, the interviewee challenges two main features of current interreligious dialogue events: (1) the script to which Muslims have to stick in order to show a badge of credibility, by demonstrating they are “good” and trustworthy; (2) the brokerage of the Catholic Church, whose role is here denounced as paternalistic and outdated. In so doing, this interlocutor can leverage the growing capital that the Muslim community has been gaining over the most recent years, related to the fact that the vast majority of migrants of Muslim-majority countries has been acquiring the Italian citizenship. This makes the Muslim community more and more composed of Italian citizens, who can claim the right to equal treatment, also through its vote in local elections. At the same time, as explained above, Brescia enabled migrant groups to be active citizens and to participate in the city’s life to unprecedented extents (by granting them the possibility to vote in neighbourhood councils’ elections), for Italy’s (and Lombardy’s) standards. Hence, this interviewee can now claim that dialogue should not be instrumental to the recognition of those Muslims who act as the usual tokens of diversity and of “good religion”; on the contrary, it is the prior recognition of Muslims’ legitimacy as fully fledged members of the arena that can represent a premise for a more genuine and egalitarian dialogue.

This opinion resonates with other critical opinions on the how Catholics should act, coming from within the Catholic world and especially from actors who have been involved in the reception of migrants (e.g., Franciscans) or belong to missionary orders (Combonians, Xaverians). While post-conciliar documents (such as 1996 Apostholic exhortation “Vita Consecrata” and the 2020 Encyclical letter “Fratelli tutti”) invite congregations and orders to actively participate in, or promote, interreligious dialogue, these actors voice concerns over the right approach the Church should have in doing so, by leveraging on their experience in dealing with different cultures, as exemplified by the following quote:

“I believe that we must work to decolonise our religious and ecumenical thinking so that, perhaps, even in a context like that of the city of Brescia, we can discover the possibility of mutual enrichment through the practice of dialogue”

(Representative of a Catholic congregation engaged in interreligious activities)

Catholic initiators of interreligious initiatives, too, start questioning their own “authority” or legitimation qua Catholics:

“The first of our interfaith events was organized by myself and a girl from the Muslim community. When we were deciding how to conduct the event, I told her ‘You will speak first, you will take the floor before me and you will make the introduction’ because I thought ‘Enough of this Christian white supremacy!’. She laughed a lot, but then, with her eyes full of tears, she said ‘this is the first time I have been considered on the same par. Thank you’”

(Civil society actor engaged in an interreligious initiative, hosted by a parish)

Similarly, Catholic migrant communities seem to suffer from a paternalistic attitude on the part of the Diocese:

“We are administered by the diocesan system: many of the things we do have to be done with their mediation. We totally depend on them, totally.”

(Representative of a Catholic migrant community)

It is true that the Church has a canonical obligation to provide pastoral care to Catholic migrant communities (De Paolis 2008); nonetheless, some of them start voicing their frustration for their invisibility within the city’s Catholic world and their lack of independence, by underlining that their contribution of the Church’s vitality goes unnoticed: “if it wasn’t’ for us [migrants from the Philippines or Latin America], parishes and churches would be almost empty”. (Representative of a Catholic migrant community)

Besides contesting such inequalities in the exercise of dialogue, we collected different views on the very contents, approaches and goals of interreligious encounters. While for some interlocutors these gatherings should aim at fostering mutual knowledge between people of different faiths, with a view to deconstruct stereotypes and prejudices and favour appeased relations (this is the opinion of the coordinator of the “Pact”), other actors consider that the ways in which interreligious dialogue is currently practiced are outdated, superficial and folkloristic. More ambition is asked, with the request that interreligious encounters become occasions to express active participation as citizens who responsibly contribute to improve the quality of civic life. Indeed, all actors involved either in platforms or initiatives lament that participation in the events they organise is too low, and try to imagine creative ways to attract more members of religious communities.

Within the field, initiatives and platforms compete to be appealing to the public and to assert their own view of interreligious dialogue. These different opinions on what interreligious dialogue should consist in and how it should be practiced, as well as the regret about poor participation, testify to the fact that interreligious dialogue is pursued “for its own sake”—i.e., it represents an interest per se. Each involved actor approaches dialogue on the basis of the capital endowment it can count on and pursues its own goals. However, it does so not just by “simply” and “passively” participating in dialogue, but by taking positions about what dialogue should be about: this means that dialogue in itself represents a common stake to which each actor attaches value and meaning. The spread of the above-described bottom-up, spontaneous interreligious initiatives further confirms this: their organizers have no “hidden agenda” or vested interests in dialogue, as they genuinely aim at promoting exchanges and conviviality. That is why they strive to identify meaningful contents for these encounters and wish for more participation, thus reinforcing the stakes placed on the pursuit of dialogue “for its own sake”.

Within this social game, the role claimed by some participants, like younger generation of Muslims who are Italian citizens and start asking to be treated differently—i.e., to not be subjected to the normative logics of the dispositif of dialogue—has significant implications for how religious freedom will be guaranteed and understood in the context of Brescia. Indeed, such contestations of the current forms of dialogue open new scenarios, insofar as denouncing paternalistic attitudes and dismantling the privileges of “old”, established actors may further advance the right to religious freedom of “new” actors—Muslims, but in a longer run, also Sikhs. This, in turn, would put more pressure on secular institutions to guarantee the respect of the right to religious freedom—for instance, concerning issues like the request of larger places of worship. Although religious freedom is considered amply safeguarded in Brescia by our interlocutors, the accumulation of capital within the interreligious field might enable novel, more powerful position-takings on the part of migrant religious communities, who could rewrite the rules of the social game of interreligious dialogue, with clear implications for their right to practice their religion.

In sum, we deem that is precisely the specific political opportunity structure of Brescia—with its Catholic legacy and the effects of long-standing, far-sighted integration policies—that has enabled the peculiar characterization of interreligious dialogue as a common stake, around which a field has been developing. By ensuring the respect of religious freedom, the very features of Brescia’ political opportunity structure did not just create the conditions for the existence of such a dialogue, but also shaped the modalities in which it unfolds, which led to the development of a true “field of interreligious dialogue”.

5. Concluding Remarks

This case study illustrates how interreligious dialogue and freedom of religion are mutually constitutive processes shaped by local history, political opportunity structures, and field dynamics. Brescia’s discursive and institutional environment is unusually open for a medium-sized industrial city in Northern Italy. The city’s Catholic tradition—in anti-fascist activism, social Catholicism, and the legacy of figures such as Pope Paul VI—has long fostered a civic culture that values cooperation, public ethics, and engagement with diversity. This tradition, reinforced by left-leaning political currents and proactive migrant integration policies, cultivated a context where newcomers could participate visibly in civic life without being framed solely as a security threat. The diversity within Brescia’s migrant population—spanning multiple continents, faiths, and denominations—further prevented a reduction in religious plurality to Islam alone, defusing potential polarization and sustaining a local understanding of religious freedom as inclusive and dialogical.

Within this favorable opportunity structure, a distinctive interreligious field has emerged. Municipal authorities and the Prefecture have invested in interreligious dialogue to signal governance capacity and maintain soft, consensual control over religious diversity. The Catholic Church—still the dominant religious institution—acts as a broker, leveraging its symbolic capital to mediate between secular institutions and minority faiths, while also using dialogue to counter secularization pressures. Migrant religious communities, particularly Muslims and Sikhs, strategically participate to earn legitimacy and demonstrate civic trustworthiness. Historical religious minorities, such as the Waldensians, join these exchanges to gain visibility and challenge Catholic privilege. Collectively, these actors constitute a dense network whose interactions confirm Bourdieu’s understanding of a field as a relational arena where positions, capitals, and strategies intersect.

At the same time, this field is neither static nor consensual. Interreligious dialogue in Brescia increasingly operates as a Foucauldian dispositif—a set of practices and norms that disciplines participants into moderation and appeasement. While this dispositif helps stabilize relations, it disproportionately constrains those with fewer resources, “conducting their conduct” and shaping their self-presentation to meet dominant expectations of “good” religion. Yet these very dynamics have prompted new forms of contestation. Younger, Italian-born Muslims and other minority actors increasingly reject paternalistic attitudes and claim equal standing, asserting their right to shape the narrative of dialogue rather than merely participate on others’ terms. Their growing civic and political capital -facilitated by the acquisition of Italian citizenship and broader social integration—may reconfigure the rules of the interreligious game, shifting the local meaning of religious freedom and prompting institutional actors to adjust both discourse and practice.

Brescia’s experience demonstrates that interreligious dialogue is not simply an epiphenomenon of tolerant governance but an active site where religious freedom is negotiated, enacted, and transformed. Political opportunity structures provide the conditions for dialogue to flourish, yet dialogue itself reshapes those conditions, redistributing symbolic power and redefining acceptable expressions of faith. The case confirms that religious freedom is not a fixed principle applied uniformly across contexts, but a lived and locally produced reality. By analyzing Brescia through the combined lenses of political opportunity structure and field theory, this paper underscores the need to consider interreligious dialogue both as an outcome of local governance arrangements and as a force that continually remakes them.