November 12, 2009

The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: Great Britain, Malaysia, and South Africa

Immigrant minority groups frequently face discrimination from their host societies on the basis of differences of national origin, race, culture, and religion. But religion can also provide identities, connections, resources and practices that can facilitate immigrants’ adaptations and integration into new contexts. To improve understandings of religion in the day-to-day lives of international migrants, the SSRC Project on the Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities investigated the roles of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism for immigrants settled in Malaysia, South Africa, and Great Britain. The conference will offer preliminary comparative findings from the research.

This event is cosponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, the Institute for the Study of International Migration, and the Social Science Research Council.

The conference is made possible through the support of the Luce/SFS Program on Religion and International Affairs.

Session I Cross-Site Comparative Reflections (1:30-3:15pm)
Chair: Susan Martin, ISIM, Georgetown

Welcome (Tom Banchoff, Berkley Center)
Introduction of the Project (Josh de Wind, SSRC)
Migrant and Spiritual Journeys (José Casanova, Berkley Center)
Immigrant Sacred-Secular Place-Making (Manuel Vasquez, University of Florida)
Migrant Circulations (Kim Knott, Leeds University)
Open Discussion

Session II: Thematic Site Presentations (3:30-5:00pm)
Chair: Jose Casanova

Kuala Lumpur: Journeys (Diana Wong, Universiti Kebansaan Malaysia)
London: Place-Making (Ann David and David Garbin, Roehampton University)
Johannesburg-Durban: Circulation (Samadia Sadouni, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research)
Response (Susan Martin, Georgetown)
Open Discussion

José Casanova is one of the world’s top scholars in the sociology of religion. He is a Professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center’s Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular. He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian.

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