Carrying Religion into a Secularising Europe

Migrants to Europe often perceive themselves as entering a secular society that threatens their religious identities and practices. Whilst some sociological models present their responses in terms of cultural defence, ethnographic analysis reveals a more complex picture of interaction with local contexts. This essay draws upon ethnographic research to explore a relatively neglected situation in migration studies, namely the interactions between distinct migration cohorts - in this case, from the Caribbean island of Montserrat, as examined through their experiences in London Methodist churches. It employs the ideas of Weber and Bourdieu to view these migrants as 'religious carriers', as collective and individual embodiments of religious dispositions and of those socio-cultural processes through which their religion is reproduced. Whilst the strategies of the cohort migrating after the Second World War were restricted through their marginalised social status and experience of racism, the recent cohort of evacuees fleeing volcanic eruptions has had greater scope for strategies which combat secularisation and fading Methodist identity

Aesthetics · Ethnography · Immigration · Political science · Racism · Secularization · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development

• Lessons from The Wire

  Open Access•Matthew Wood•The Sociological Review•2014

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