Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Refugee Settlement and Religion in British Columbia

Bibliographic Data

ID8204869
AuthorsP Bramadat (0000-0002-7996-902X, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume82
Issue4
Pages907-937
Publication date2014-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfu040
OpenAlexW2071068547
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited17

In this article, I have two objectives. First, I use data from a pilot study I conducted in British Columbia during 2011–12 to reflect on the practical challenges that religiously affiliated refugee settlement agencies face in contemporary society. Among other issues, I am interested in what is happening in and to these groups in an era in which Canadians demonstrate less loyalty to and often less interest in institutional religious groups. Interviews with leaders of religiously affiliated agencies, as well as civil servants, provide insights about the evolving relationships between religious communities and secular societies. The second objective of this article is to describe and assess the ideological environment in which discussions about the relationship between religious and government aims might occur. Interviews confirm the power of closed secularism to delimit not just the ways in which agency leaders and government workers interact in the present, but also the ways they think about how they might interact in the future. While volunteers may complain about one or another feature of the private sponsorship regulations in Canada, agency workers generally accept the restraints placed on them by a state that defines itself in at least functionally secular terms. However, the discursive norms that discipline both government and religious actors may reflect a society in which the latter are expected to misrepresent themselves. Whether or not this pattern of silence surrounding the religious commitments of service providers (or refugees themselves) will remain unproblematic or practical in an increasingly multicultural, religiously pluralistic, postsecular future remains an open question.

Agency (philosophy) · Government (linguistics) · Ideology · Multiculturalism · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Refugee · Religious organization · Secularism · Settlement (finance) · Silence · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Gender Studies · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development

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