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Religion and Immigration: a Comparative Study Among Ethnic Churches in Europe

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Religion and Immigration: a Comparative Study Among Ethnic Churches in Europe Dottorato di ricerca in Sociologia, Organizzazioni e Culture ciclo XXXII S.S.D: SPS/08 Religion and Immigration: a Comparative Study Among Ethnic Churches in Europe Coordinatore: Ch.mo Prof. Marco CASELLI Tesi di dottorato di: Samuele Davide Molli Matricola: 4612228 Anno Accademico: 2018/2019 Abstract This PhD thesis wishes to contribute to an emergent body of research that inquires into the intersections between religion and migration. In the European literature, differently from that of North-America, this subject has long been a controversial one. On one side, the long-term implications of secularization paradigm, i.e. an antireligious bias, have affected its theoretical development. On the other side, the Islamic religion, given its media and public overrepresentation, has become the main empirical core. Nevertheless the religious panorama is more varied and complex than how it is commonly represented. Migrants have indeed contributed to shape new forms of religious pluralism, even inside the Historical Christian denominations, as in the case of Roman Catholic Church. In this direction the thesis aims at filling some theoretical gaps within this area of interest, focusing on ethnic churches established by catholic migrants in the city of Milan and London. By combining and comparing data collected in these religious communities, the study examines how religion becomes a significant component of the experience of migration and analyses how and in which ways it contributes to integration processes. Empirically, the thesis starts by analysing the spatial dynamics through which migrants have been able to mould new religious landmarks both in the city of Milan and London. Following a specific methodological approach, the study explores the transformation of the urban landscape into a religious transnational setting. Adopting the lived-religion approach, i.e. a focus on subjectivities, the thesis moves on to discuss how migrants de facto experience religion, providing a classification of the various meanings and functions of ethnic churches. The research then explores such subjectivities in motion and relation, providing accounts on the models of migrants’ religious participation. Migrants have indeed created lively networks, moulding complex organisational settings, also animated by various kinds of groups and activities. The study moves to analyse how churches evolve, becoming intrinsically multifunctional to migrants needs’, providing what I label as an informal-welfare, able to support their social inclusion. Subsequently the study explores in which ways ethnic churches may act at transnational level, explaining how they have become pivotal actors in creating circuits where various resources are exchanged beyond national borders, renovating and redirecting a historical pattern of Catholicism. Finally, given the nature of case studies, the thesis explores how the local catholic panorama is facing this internal pluralism. Today -at different levels- the Catholic Church is indeed more and more engaged with a governance of migration, which starts with dealing with arrival of new believers. Methodologically the study draws on a qualitative research design, which includes 75 in-depth interviews with both clergy and lay members of ethnic churches, in Milan and in London. It also includes ethnographic notes collected while attending (sacred and secular) meetings and events sponsored by these ethnic churches. Finally, the thesis is presented with of a rich set of visual data. Table of contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Chapter 1 Introduction: Old and New promised lands. Religion and migration in a changing world ... 6 1.1 Challenges to a theory-building on immigrants’ religious involvement. .............................................. 7 1.1.1 Opening the immigrants’ agency-box towards the transcendent. ...................................................... 7 1.1.2 Putting the sacred text into the secular context ................................................................................... 8 1.1.3 Avoiding methodological atheism ......................................................................................................... 9 1.1.4 Avoiding methodological nationalism ................................................................................................. 10 1.1.5 The US and Europe: new bridges and old barriers ........................................................................... 11 1.2 Outline of the thesis ................................................................................................................................. 12 1.2.1 Positioning theoretical objectives ........................................................................................................ 12 1.2.2 Profiling empirical sections.................................................................................................................. 13 Chapter 2. Catholic Church and immigrants: from old to new insights .................................................. 17 2.1 Framing the Catholic Church as a mediating and multilevel institution ........................................... 19 2.2 The Catholic Church and immigrants: a history of ethnic pluralisation ........................................... 22 2.3 Catholicism, migrants and transnationalism ........................................................................................ 24 2.4 Concluding remarks: an ever less European Catholicism ................................................................... 27 Chapter 3. The empirical turn on immigrant religious institutions ......................................................... 29 3.1 Religion as a tool for reproducing and inventing ethnic identity ........................................................ 30 3.2 The three C: Congregationalism, community Centre-model and internal Cells ............................... 31 3.3 Introduction to Informal Welfare: the invisible hand of God ............................................................. 33 3.4 Psychological and emotional supports: taking care of souls ................................................................ 34 3.5 Welfare platforms: work, housing, rights, family and education. ...................................................... 36 3.6 Developing an approach to religious welfare: trying to formalise the informal. ............................... 37 3.6.1 The diamond of welfare and immigrants ........................................................................................... 38 3.6.2 Religion, social capital and solidarity. ................................................................................................ 38 3.7 Civic and political skills: how religion may train new citizens. ........................................................... 39 3.8 Lived-religion: a valuable heuristic for immigrants’ religious participation .................................... 41 3.8.1 Definition: beyond mainstream approaches, towards a grounded-theory of religion .................... 42 3.8.2 Genealogy: The Madonna of 115th Street .......................................................................................... 43 3.8.3 Exploring migrants’ subjectivities ...................................................................................................... 44 3.9 Concluding remarks: approaching the empirical research ................................................................. 45 3 Chapter 4. The soul of the city: a spiritual geography ............................................................................... 47 4.1 Building an (in)visible sanctuary............................................................................................................ 48 4.2 Urban pilgrimages: what's going on? .................................................................................................... 53 4.3 Urban processions: from invisibility to visibility .................................................................................. 55 4.4 Taking care of God: fresh flowers .......................................................................................................... 59 4.5 Urban Geography and ethnic churches ................................................................................................. 61 4.6 Applying for a space: a religious negotiation ........................................................................................ 65 4.7 Conclusion: from space to subjectivity .................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 5. Meanings and Functions of ethnic churches ............................................................................ 69 5.1 Ethinc church as an intermediate space vs. loneliness and anonymity ............................................... 69 5.2 Ethnic church as a space of resilience .................................................................................................... 73 5.3 Ethnic church as a space of resistance against discrimination, stigma and exclusion ...................... 75 5.4 Ethnic church as a space for an informal social mobility .................................................................... 79 5.5 The Sunday Best: ethnic church as a space for respectability, moral order and selectivity ............. 82 5.6 Conclusion: a taxonomy of interpretations
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