Migration, Religion and Integration (ethnic churches in Milan and London) - Samuele Davide Molli

Описание: Network Roberto Franceschi Workshop - 11 December 2020

Migration, Religion and Integration: evidence from a study on ethnic churches in Milan and London

Samuele Davide Molli
PhD in Sociology, Catholic University of Milan. Researcher at “Centro Studi Confronti e Migrazioni”

The study I present responds to an emergent body of research that inquiries into the intersections between religion and migration. In particular, the research examines how religion becomes a significant component of the experience of migration and analyses how and in which ways it contributes to integration processes.The study focuses on various ethnic churches established by catholic immigrants both in the city of Milan and London. Methodologically, it draws on a qualitative research design, which includes in-depth interviews, ethnographic notes and a reach set of visual data. The presentation starts by analysing the spatial dynamics through which migrants have beenable to mould new religious landmarks in both cities. I explain how foreign believers “take a place” through an internal rewriting of native religious spaces.Their religious practises give indeed new meanings tothe local panorama, “transcending” national borders. Migrants, over time, develop a diasporic identity around these religious spaces and make sense in this way to their new experiences. Religious symbols and practises merge past and present, an “imaginary bridge” between the mother country and receiving nation. Within global cities, it ispossible to find these transnational spaces and processes. Adopting the lived-religion approach, i.e. a focus on immigrant subjectivities, the study moves on to discuss how migrants de facto experience religion, providing a classificationof the various meanings and functions of ethnic churches. I advance a series of perspectives emerging from migrants’ subjectivities: basically, what meanings members associate to their involvement. In light of this, I provide an inductive taxonomy of ethnic churches and their functions. This involves that churches are spaces of sociality, resilience and resistance as well as of participation and respectability. Then I present how ethnic churches provide what I label as a “welfare from below”. Churches indeed evolve, becoming intrinsically multifunctional to migrants’ needs. While “welfare”is mainly associated to the study of public policies, to the market and to the role of third sector, Iargue instead how this concept may be applied to the case of churches established by immigrantswithin host societies. I advance a schematization able to frame the welfare activitiesthat religious communities produce. I conclude by discussing how all these dynamics open new perspectives for studying the immigrants’ integration. Religion provides members various forms of well-being and precious welfare resources: all benefits that are hard to find in an unfamiliar context. In this sense, churches don’t represent a panacea, but they predispose and contribute to migrants’ integration process. Finally, I discuss how ethnic churches and more generally immigrant faith communities represent an important view on how immigrants are developing their participation into the European societies.

Thank to Fondazione Isacchi Samaja Onlus

About Network Roberto Franceschi:
Each year Fondazione Roberto Franceschi Onlus awards research grants to MSC and PhD students in order to finance data collection on the issues of social distress, poverty and inequality (https://www.fondfranceschi.it/network.... The recipients become part of Network Roberto Franceschi, the transnational network of scholars formed for the purpose of carrying out and promoting scientific research in the field of study of prevention of social pathologies and forms of social exclusion, on matters pertaining to underdevelopment, marginalisation, poverty, migration and civil rights.

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