Search Results (58)

This article discusses caste dynamics within the Punjabi diaspora in Italy—the largest in the EU—by focusing on the case of the Ravidassia community and describing its evolving relations with the local Sikh community. Previous research on Punjabi migration to Italy mainly focused on issues of labor exploitation, intermediation, and Sikh identity, often conflating the entire Punjabi population with its majoritarian—but far from exclusive—Sikh-Jatt component, thereby overlooking its internal heterogeneity of caste, religion, and class. Despite the growing number of Ravidassia-Chamar migrants in Italy—evidenced by the proliferation of Ravidassia temples and associations across the country—their migratory experiences, employment patterns, socioreligious practices, and inter-caste relationships remained unexplored. This article offers, for the first time, an overview of the history, geography, and identity politics of the Ravidassia in Italy. Drawing on data collected with Punjabi migrants during multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, it illustrates the alternative strategies adopted by the Ravidassia to assert their identity in this diasporic context, focusing on cases in which their relations with the Sikh manifested their complex nature. It concludes by discussing the advantages and drawbacks of each strategy, in light of the history of power relations between the Ravidassia and the Sikh. Full article

This article examines the religious practices of descendants of Bosnian migrants in Slovenia, a country that stands out as one of the most secular in Europe. While Bosnia and Herzegovina is known for its complex religious pluralism, where religious institutions play a crucial role in nation-building, Slovenia presents a contrasting context of secularization. Applying Peter Berger’s theory of religious pluralism, which suggests that pluralism weakens traditional religious authority, this study explores how descendants of Bosnian migrants navigate their religious identities in a secular environment. Although their identities have been shaped by the Yugoslav wars and the post-war redefinition of ethnicity through religion, younger generations are also influenced by broader social processes in Slovenia, including secularization, integration, and exposure to multiple belief systems. Using a qualitative research approach based on semi-structured interviews, this case study investigates the preservation and transformation of religious traditions among Bosnian migrant descendants and how these practices influence their identity. The findings highlight how migration and adaptation to a different socio-cultural environment shape religious practices across generations, contributing to broader discussions on religious choice, identity, and pluralism in contemporary societies. Full article

The paper aims to determine the associations of mediators’ religiosity, assessed as self-reported religious belief and religious practice frequency, with their recognition of the existence of a work ethic of mediators, their personal approach to the occupation, their values, their adherence to the rules of mediation, and their perception of its objectives. The article is based on the results of a quantitative study conducted among Polish court mediators (n = 391). It was found that the mediators who were religious believers and regularly practiced their religion were more often convinced about the existence of a work ethic, treated work in their occupation as an opportunity to help people, and remained neutral in disputes, but they were also more inclined to violate the principle of impartiality by being prepared to conduct mediation in their friends or family members’ cases. Our research on mediators’ work ethic may be useful in raising the standards of mediator training in specific areas of specialization, including working with migrants and multicultural communities, enhancing the effectiveness of mediations, improving their quality, and boosting the level of disputants’ satisfaction. Full article

Partner selection is a complex process shaped by structural, social, and personal factors. For refugees and forced migrants, displacement and adaptation add further challenges, with families—even from far away—playing a crucial role in shaping expectations and influencing partnership decisions. This influence can be direct—through arranged marriages or introductions—or indirect, by setting expectations based on ethnicity, religion, or social status. Family endorsement is often crucial in reinforcing ethnic, religious, or language group continuity and community acceptance. This study examines the role of family in partner selection among refugees who arrived in Germany largely during the 2015–2016 period, a group characterized by a high proportion of unmarried men with limited family support. This group is compared to the German resident population, both with and without a migration background. For the descriptive analyses, we draw on two data sources: the PARFORM dataset, collected in 2022–2023, which covers male Syrian and Afghan refugees who arrived between 2014 and 2018; and the ninth wave of the CILS4EU-DE, collected in 2022. The multivariate analyses rely exclusively on the PARFORM dataset and utilize linear probability models with selection correction. We contribute to the literature in three key ways: identifying mechanisms of family influence despite physical distance; introducing a multidimensional framework to measure partnership outcomes based on ethnic, religious, and linguistic endogamy; and providing new insights into the underexplored partnership formation of this refugee cohort. Full article

Research on religion and migration has often focused on institutions and belief systems, while overlooking how mediation links migrants, sacred objects, rituals, and religious imaginaries. This study advances mediation as a core analytic in religion–migration studies by examining the practices of ten Thai migrant students in South Korea through semi-structured interviews on Buddhist amulets, Hindu deity pendants, Catholic rosaries, merit-making, and the elevation of sacred objects. Guided by Meyer’s religion-as-mediation framework and Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary, the analysis shows that quotidian, embodied engagements with sacred objects mediate and materialize Thai Buddhist–Animist imaginaries in Korean settings, expanding, transnationalizing, and hybridizing them through encounters with the host environment. These practices not only sustain spiritual continuity, but also generate sacred transnational social spaces that bridge both the ontological divide between the human and the transcendent and the geographical divide between Thailand and Korea. Rather than being preserved through institutional affiliation, migrant religiosity is continually reconstituted through everyday embodied practices of mediation that render the sacred experientially real in the host society. By foregrounding mediation, this study offers a reconceptualization of migrant religion as an embodied, material, and world-making process—one through which migrants actively reimagine and inhabit sacred spaces across borders. Full article

The Catholic Church in Denmark hosts several migrant communities, with the Polish-speaking group among the largest and most visible. Institutionally, Catholic priests from Poland serve as chaplains for migrant congregations, accompanying these mobilities and providing educational practices (e.g., family guidance, biblical teaching). This paper examines how perspectives on Catholic scriptural authority differ between the Church’s institutional representatives and its members, revealing tensions between biblical authority, social accommodation, and family values in a migratory setting. Based on 20 months of fieldwork in a Polish Catholic community in Copenhagen, this paper highlights the dynamic interplay of how Church members assess scriptural authority as evaluative engagement in their transnational lives in the Danish public sphere, illustrated through interconnected ethnographic excerpts. This article illustrates how scriptural engagement offers a productive lens to explore divergent notions of Polish Catholic diasporic life and the tensions between transnational religion, national belonging, and moral navigation. Full article

Business groups comprise independently owned firms based on different types of owner solidarity, such as kinship, ethnicity, religion, or political identity. However, research has been slow to account for how the adverse effects of ethnic solidarity influence BG-affiliate firm performance. We investigate the interplay of owner ethnicity and their firms’ innovation and export performance. We find variations in affiliates’ performance based on their self-identified ethnicities by analyzing data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys (WBES) across 20 sub-Saharan African countries. Notably, long-established migrant communities, including Indian, Middle Eastern, and European entrepreneurs, experienced waning performance within the BG structure. In contrast, group-affiliated firms led by Chinese entrepreneurs show significant outperformance compared to their African counterparts and minority group affiliates. This study contributes to a novel understanding of the heterogeneous relationship between ethnic solidarity and BG-affiliated firms’ performance across sub-Saharan Africa. Full article

Despite a growing body of academic literature on religion and migration, there is limited focus on the roles of migrant religious communities and on how religious everyday practices intersect with migration and its implications. This study seeks to address these issues from a post- and decolonial perspective, through the analysis of the activities of the St. Georgis Eritrean orthodox church in Berlin. It draws on material collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and primary text analysis between 2023 and 2024. Some of the main findings include the fact that the church provides a range of services to its members, e.g., family conflict resolution sessions and specific meetings for families with children with disabilities, which address some of the issues that the community itself chooses to prioritise and that are not addressed by other service providers. Analysing the establishment of the church and its social activities, this article focuses on the agency of the congregation and how it challenges Northern/Western religion and migration frameworks, with a specific focus on its religious dimension. Full article

This paper explores the challenges of measuring and classifying the East African Asian population in Aotearoa New Zealand. As a particularly diverse country, New Zealand has a significant and varied population of immigrants from South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, along with immigrants of South Asian origin, from Fiji, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and East Africa. New Zealand’s system of ethnic classification relies on self-identification, with a broad definition of ethnicity encompassing heritage, ancestry, culture, language and feelings of belonging. However, the collection of this information at a granularity that enables detailed analysis is constrained for the South Asian population, regardless of origin or identification. People are typically presented with the choice of selecting “Indian” ethnicity as a tick box, or providing ethnicities under “Other” as write-in descriptors, which in turn are coded to a limited set of categories within the classification being used. This practice potentially conceals a diversity of ethnicities, which can only partially be hinted at by responses to questions relating to religions, languages and birthplaces, especially for second or third-generation descendants of migrants. Ethnic classification at the highest level, moreover, includes East African Indians as Asian, rather than African, reflecting diasporic heritage as a shorthand for ancestry and overlooking the relevance of layers of identity associated with the double diaspora. Drawing on Peter J. Aspinall’s work on collective terminology in ethnic data collection and categorizing the “Asian” ethnic group in the UK, this paper looks at the overlaps and disconnects between heritage, ethnicity and national belonging in classifying less clearcut identities. We explore the strengths and limitations of New Zealand’s self-identification approach to ethnic identity, and query what exactly is being asked of groups on the margins: when self-identification does not match external perception, are we looking for geographic, cultural, or genetic origins? A focus on the East African Asian population in Aotearoa highlights the complexity of identity for diasporic groups with distant ancestral links with India, as lived experience of cultural connection extends far beyond the bounds of ethnicity, language and even ancestry. Full article

The mainstream literature on the religiosity of Muslims in Europe often homogenises this diverse minority. This article diverges by focusing on a less visible ethno-religious minority within the Muslim population, specifically examining how Hazara Shia Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, resettled in the UK, live and organise Islam in everyday contexts. Addressing this gap, the research highlights the intersectionality of religion, ethnicity, and migration in reconfiguring religious practice. Grounded in the intersectional and lived religion approaches, this study contends that the religiosity of this Muslim minority undergoes a dynamic shift entwined with agency and adaptation in the new secular and plural context, becoming more individualised, privatised, and elective. Employing an ethnographic design, data are collected through semi-structured and key informant interviews, as well as participant observation, over 18 months of fieldwork across various council areas in Scotland. The findings illustrate reconfiguration, adaptation, and innovation in everyday Islam among this intersectional Muslim minority, identifying three main themes: the adaptation and reconfiguration of religious practices and rituals, the renegotiation of authoritative sources, and the navigation of intersectional identities and belonging since resettlement in the UK. Full article

This article is based on a months-long investigation and aims to contribute to the scientific understanding of the process of racialisation of the sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia. The starting point of our research was the speech given by the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, in February 2023. In the light of new negotiations with the EU for technical, administrative, and financial support in the management of migration in the Mediterranean, the president emphasised the importance of Tunisia being and remaining Arab and Muslim. The sub-Saharan migrants who have penetrated the Mediterranean area in large numbers, mostly via Libya or Algeria, are black. Many of them are also Christians. The Tunisian case regarding the racialisation of migrants is similar to the dynamics of political discourses and actions of systemic racialisation in European countries. Our thesis is that racialisation based on religion and/or skin colour is part of a more complex dynamic, defined by the capitalist mode of production, which, due to its inner contradictions, simultaneously requires and expels human labour force. We claim that the permanently expelled constitute surplus populations that are, due to not being disciplined by the capitalist markets, considered dangerous, which is why they fall under police jurisdiction. This process of policing surplus populations is what constitutes contemporary systemic racism as a special mode of state politics, whereby “race” is the result of said process and not determined by its biological, religious, ethnic, or cultural characteristics. We support our thesis by a fieldwork study consisting of qualitative interviews with Tunisian experts, conducted based on purposive sampling and subsequent qualitative coding, as well as of three personal narrative interviews, which were conducted with sub-Saharan migrants from Cameroon, who had been living in a refugee “village” in the north of Tunisia for more than a year. Full article

Female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) is a practice involving the partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. To facilitate attitude changes, the ecological model of behavior change considers multiple levels of influence and their relationships with environmental and behavioral factors. The combined effects of migration and cultural adaptation result in a transformative process that leads to decreased support for FGM/C. This qualitative study aimed to gain knowledge from FGM/C field professionals regarding the factors promoting behavioral changes in migrant communities in Geneva, Switzerland. Between September and October 2023, we conducted semi-structured interviews using a reflexive thematic analysis. Our qualitative research is reported in accordance with the COREQ criteria. A data analysis was performed using NVivo 14 software. Four influential dimensions were identified, each with associated factors. The first dimension, the social level, includes (1) the impact and implementation of anti-FGM/C laws. The second dimension, the community level, encompasses four factors such as (2) religion, (3) a multifaceted examination of social aspects, (4) navigating language barriers and raising awareness, and (5) cultural adaptation processes. The third dimension, the interpersonal level, includes factors such as (6) changing views on the marriage prerequisite. Finally, the fourth dimension, the personal level, is associated with (7) women’s experiences and perspectives regarding FGM/C. The findings highlight seven environmental factors, both within and across dimensions of the ecological model, that interact with human behavior to enable an adaptive cultural process. This process influences changes in attitudes and behaviors regarding FGM/C. Full article

Dedicated to the memory of Pnina Werbner, this essay revisits Werbner’s ethnographic and conceptual work on the relationship between diaspora and religion through a close reading of her book on Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims and her later engagements with the concept of diaspora with respect to religion and the background of her work on African and Filipino labour diasporas in the West. It argues that many of Werbner’s insights remain pertinent today, not least because in many European contexts Muslim-background citizens and non-citizens remain excluded from full belonging and are still forced to engage in constant perspectival manoeuvring similar to Werbner’s earlier interlocutors. While the notion of diaspora has lost much of its earlier conceptual verve, in its Werbnerian reading, I argue, it may still offer a scholarly tool for analysing the multiple imaginations, belongings, and ambiguities of migrants’ and religious minorities’ self-representations and complex lives. Full article

The plight of migrants and the need to foster their integration into diverse societies are of concern to global communities, governments, and charitable organizations. This study explored the roles of philanthropic organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in demonstrating solidarity towards migrants, exploring the multifaceted dimensions of compassion and support rooted in diverse religious principles. The study adopted a qualitative approach guided by the interpretivist paradigm when collecting and analyzing data. From its findings, the study highlights the integral role they play in addressing the complex needs of migrant communities. For instance, they provide food and financial support in clearing hospitals, tuition, and rent bills. In addition, the findings show that the organizations identify migrants in need through their open-door policy, encouraging those in need of support to contact them directly, with collaboration also being essential for the effectiveness of their services. By affirming the positive contributions of religious charities, this study underscores their role in promoting the well-being and social cohesion of migrants, ultimately exemplifying a shared commitment to humanitarian values and reinstating faith in the collective capacity for compassion and solidarity. Full article

Contemporary societies are increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, and multicultural, but to what extent are they ready for coexistence? This paper evaluates the competencies for intercultural and interreligious dialogue in two very different contexts: Barcelona and Melilla, two cities with great ethnic and cultural diversity, in which it is easy to have contact with people of different cultures and religions. To this end, we worked with a total of 1353 adolescents and young people, and four scales were used to evaluate intercultural and interreligious sensitivity, conflict management skills, and prejudices towards unaccompanied migrant minors. The findings suggest that in neither of these two contexts do adolescents and young people form relationships with these minors, despite accepting religious diversity and being educated at school in topics relating to coexistence and spirituality. In fact, participants showed a high level of prejudice towards this population. Implementation of more effective intervention programs in both cities is therefore recommended. Full article