Religion and Social Cohesion: Youth Exclusion and Religious Organisations in a Super-Diverse City District of Oslo, Norway
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by VID:Open Dissertation no.11 Bjørn Hallstein Holte Religion and social cohesion Youth exclusion and religious organisations in a super-diverse city district of Oslo, Norway Religion and social cohesion: Youth exclusion and religious organisations in a super-diverse city district of Oslo, Norway Bjørn Hallstein Holte Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D) VID Specialized University 2018 © Bjørn Hallstein Holte, 2018 ISBN: 978-82-93490-25-8 elektronisk versjon ISBN: 978-82-93490-26-5 papir versjon ISSN: 2535-3071 Dissertation Series for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) at VID Specialized University, Volume no. 11 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. Cover: Dinamo Printed in Norway: Stenersen, Oslo, 2018. VID Specialized University [email protected] www.vid.no Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... i Abstract.................................................................................................................................... iii List of papers ............................................................................................................................ v Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3 Increase and spatial concentration of diversity in Norway (c. 1970–2015) .......................... 6 Research on religious organisations and religious diversity in Norway.............................. 10 Research on youth exclusion in Norway ............................................................................. 17 This thesis ............................................................................................................................ 18 1. Research design and research process ............................................................................. 21 Youth at the Margins and ethnographic fieldwork .............................................................. 22 Finding and meeting NEET young people .......................................................................... 25 Interviews in religious organisations ................................................................................... 29 An extended case ................................................................................................................. 33 Qualitative research quality criteria ..................................................................................... 35 2. Social cohesion as communicational permeability .......................................................... 39 Academic and policy discourse on social cohesion ............................................................. 40 Qualitative differences and different scales......................................................................... 42 Luhmann’s theory of society ............................................................................................... 46 Social integration and system integration ............................................................................ 50 3. Summary of papers ............................................................................................................ 55 4. Religious organisations, youth exclusion, and the public sphere................................... 63 Religious organisations in functionally differentiated society ............................................ 64 Religious organisations and youth exclusion ...................................................................... 71 Religious organisations as public space .............................................................................. 79 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 85 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 89 Papers .................................................................................................................................... 105 Acknowledgements I worked hard on this thesis, but it is not the result of my work alone. So many people took part in shaping it; so many people helped make it possible. First and foremost, I am grateful to Olav Helge Angell and Annette Leis-Peters for appointing me to and allowing me so much freedom within their research project. Thank you also for the time and effort you put into supervision. There were some rough patches, but we made it through. Kari Karsrud Korslien was an important member of our research team and a supportive colleague throughout. Ruth Prince came aboard as a third supervisor for my PhD project and thesis, and her careful reading and thoughtful feedback has been invaluable. I am grateful for the insight and ideas these four close collaborators have shared, all the time and hard work they have invested, and for my three supervisors’ patience in giving the same feedback over and over again when I would not develop my thoughts clearly enough. Thank you. It was a privilege to have colleagues in South Africa, Finland, and Sweden as a PhD student in the YOMA project (which I write more about in the thesis proper). The project conferences in Lammi, Finland, and Paarl, South Africa, were highlights of my time as a PhD student. Writing book chapters with Heikki Hiilamo, Marlize Rabe, and Ignatius Swart helped me see my Norwegian material more clearly. Thank you for taking a junior researcher so seriously. I am grateful – and proud – to have been part of the Centre for Contextual Ministry at the University of Pretoria from January to April 2017. Stephan de Beer, Hesmarie Bosman, and Lance Thomas were great colleagues and hospitable friends. Thank you for conversations, excursions, and so many lifts. Traces of our many discussions are hidden between the lines in this thesis, somewhat out of view, but still there. I am also grateful to my many other friends in South Africa who showed great hospitality, but I will not begin to list names here for fear of making embarrassing omissions. i In addition to most of those mentioned above, and in alphabetical order, Sindre Bangstad, Hilde Frøkedal, Hans Morten Haugen, Turid Misje, Ole Riis, Tor Slettebø, Auli Vähäkangas, editors and anonymous reviewers from Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research, the reviewers in the Peter B. Clarke Memorial Essay Prize, and probably others whose names have slipped my mind as I write this have read and commented on different parts of the thesis. I also received valuable tips and inputs after presenting my research at Diakonhjemmet University College/VID Specialized University; a lunch seminar at KIFO Institute for Church, Religion, and Worldview Research in February 2016; a department seminar at the Department of Sociology at UNISA in March 2017; and in paper sessions at the Socrel Annual Conference in July 2016 and the ReDi Biannual Conference in September 2016. I also feel that the staff at Library Diakonhjemmet who helped me get hold of so many books and articles during this project; Inger Marie Hognestad at the International Office and everybody else who were involved in making my exchange to the University of Pretoria possible; the Research School Religion Values Society (RVS), which invited me to a two-day course in September 2017; and the different parts of VID Specialized University that generously funded travels and seminars during the duration of this project deserve mention. This thesis would simply not have been the same without you. Finally, a word of appreciation to Tine who put up with me while I worked too much and to the baby who gave me yet another incentive to finish and submit the thesis. My sincere apologies to all who have been helpful in different ways but do not find your names on these two pages. As with the rest of this thesis, omissions and errors are only my own. Bjørn Hallstein Holte Oslo, February 2018 ii Abstract This thesis is a contribution to the research on youth exclusion, religious organisations, and religious diversity in Norway. It asks how religious organisations’ activities and engagements for youth in Søndre Nordstrand, a super-diverse city district of Oslo, contribute to social cohesion. The thesis approaches the research question on two levels: a theoretical discussion of social cohesion and qualitative research on youth exclusion and on religious organisations’ activities and engagements for youth in Søndre Nordstrand. The theoretical discussion of social cohesion draws on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of society and argues that social cohesion should be understood in terms of people’s access to participate in social systems (social integration) and the extent to which communication flows across different social systems (system integration) rather than in terms of consensus among people or whether people share values (socio-cultural integration). I conceive of the synthesis of social integration and system integration as communicational permeability. This represents a new and different way of conceptualising social cohesion, which is nevertheless grounded in established sociological theory. The qualitative research for this thesis followed two different, but interrelated,