H R Ebaugh (2000) Bibliography http://196.188.170.250:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/504/1/%5BHandbooks %20of%20Sociology%20and%20Social%20Research%5D%20Helen%20Rose%2 0Ebaugh%20%28ed.%29%20%20Handbook%20of%20Religion%20and%20Social%20Institutions%20%28200 6%2C%20Springer%29%20-%20libgen.lc.pdf Immigration - Peggy Levitt Peggy Levitt in 'Immigration' studies immigration religion in the United States. The cult of Juan Soldado shows us that religion plays a unique role in the American immigrant experience Religion provides followers symbols, rituals, and narratives with which to create alternative landscapes that fit within, transcend, or supersede national boundaries These can facilitate host-country assimilation (how individuals use religion to become part of the countries that receive them), encourage enduring homeland ties (how individuals use religion to stay connected to their countries of origin), or render such orientations meaningless because what really matters to the individual is belonging to a religious space (how individuals use religion to imagine themselves in some other kind of spatial and temporal geography that overlaps with or takes precedence over political boundaries) Religion reorients debates around immigration by expanding the boundaries of questions about incorporation and membership Based on national surveys, Levitt argues that the US is clearly a religious country Two ends of the debate around definition of religion Substantive definitions focus on what religion is and tend to be restrictive Want to limit the study of religions to beliefs, institutions, and practices Defining characteristic of religion is the reference to the "supernatural" or the "superempirical" Functional definitions focus on what religion does and tend to be more expansive Include activities, ideologies and structures in the study of religion Defining characteristic of religion is its ability to provide an overarching structure of meaning or grounding for the self This gap is bridged by Bromley and Griel who define religion as a category of social interaction and discourse whose meaning and implications are constantly negotiated. Both the everyday lived experience of religion and theology or institutional practice matter Religion as a form of cultural work It is incorrect to expect one identity to be associated with one place Religious experience produces both hybrid individual and collective identities because it lies at the intersection of multiple life worlds and the ongoing interplay of "delocalisation and relocalisation" Global religious practices and ideologies interact with lived religion In a globalised world, religion reorders time and social boundaries rendering discussions of bounded national religious practices off the mark Individuals use religion to create new spatio-temporal arrangements and invent new mental maps with which to locate themselves within terrains that are constantly changed by Globalisation Syncretism and synthesis -393. Lots of data from survey. Religious make-up of the native-born and foreign-born Americans - data According to Herberg, immigrants in the US are expected to retain their religion but abandon their cultural and linguistic characteristics. The triple pronged melting pot of the US consists of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew and eventually, Herberg predicted, ethnicity would stop being relevant. But Herberg underestimated the enduring salience of ethnicity in the US along with Race. Religion and race work together but based on different logics; racial differentiation is hierarchical, unequal, and discriminatory. religious denominationalism is egalitarian and positively promoted Herberg also wrongly assumed that religion is solely a means of channeling host-country incorporation. Religion allows migrants to continuously belong to strong and enduring transnational social networks New methodology is required for accurate understanding Ontological shift: locate the study of migrants and their religious practices more firmly within the social fields in which they are embedded. National social fields stay within national boundaries while transnational social fields cross-cut national boundaries Utility: 1. We can look at the nonmigrants who get incorporated into transnational social fields through the connections they maintain with migrants 2. We can look at the multiple layers and settings that influence social experience. Eg the migrants may link their religious practices of their sending context with their localised receiving context 3. Makes it clear that incorporation in a new state and enduring transnational attachments are not binary opposites 4. Brings to light important questions about the changing nature of democracy, citizenship, and socioeconomic development that both sending and receiving countries need to deal with Religion from a transnational perspective very few works have looked at religion like this Not all religious cross-border connections are linked to migration Many religions were organised across territories long before the emergence of the contemporary nation-state system Religion acts as a tool for producing, reproducing, and inventing identity and plays a role in incorporation into the host-country, the homeland, or an imagined religious space Some religious communities function like extended families, their members filling in for distant relatives who cannot be present during an illness or a death because they live so far away Churchgoing roles: strengthens families by changing behaviour and providing a moral compass integrates members into ethnic and nonethnic social networks that provide info on jobs, housing, or social services Church membership increases access to cultural and social capital Both Catholic and Protestant Church have been accepting and encouraging long-term ethnic and cultural diversity Many migrants continue their membership in the religious org that they belonged to prior to migration and participate in "transnational rituals" Transnational membership Some religious institutions are more conducive to transnational membership than others Migrants also use religion to create alternative geographies of belonging that either fit within, transcend but coexist with, or take precedence over national borders Emergent Institutional Forms in response to migration Existing congregations transform themselves to accommodate newcomers eg. add a new set of symbols and rituals, add foreign language services When immigrants establish new religious groups in the United States they tend to become more “congregational” than they were at home, following the model of the Christian majority. Also in response to the US legal and tax system eg. even religions like Hinduism and Buddhism take on elements of congregationalism in the US Religious activities of migrants aimed at their homeland also produce transnational org forms Levitt in a previous work had identified 3 types of religious org patterns: 1. Extended transnational religious org Migrants tailor an already global system into a site where simultaneous belonging in both sending and receiving nation can be expressed eg. Catholic church 2. Negotiated transnational religious org Also extend and deepen global org ties already in place but in the context of less hierarchical, decentralised institutional structures eg Protestant Church 3. Recreated transnational religious org Migrants establish their own religious groups when they first come to the host country and eventually that functioning like chapters or franchises of their "mother" organisations Gujarati Hindus from the Baroda district Religion institutions strongly influence politics in the US despite its purported secularism 3 roles played by religious institutions in politics: 1. incubators for civic skills 2. agents of mobilisation 3. as information providers Even seemingly apolitical churches like the Pentecostals, influence the secular settings in which they are located because members fulfil multiple roles and participate in multiple settings, they influence the secular world and it continues to affect them Religious leaders also influence politics by making contributions to immigration reform, workers' rights, and education Religion often promotes long-term participation in homeland and hostcountry politics and does so at multiple levels eg Inishoweners get an informal civics lesson each time they attend mass Despite scholarship assuming that immigrants become more religious in the US than they were in their home countries because the disorientation and stress caused by adjusting to a new context is a theologising experience, the reality is that the same immigrant group can display different levels of religiosity in different settings Furthermore, if and when immigrants become more religious, it is because of American context and not the experience of immigration eg. Italian peasants who migrated to Argentina in the early 1900s turned to socialism and labour activism and those who went to the US became avid churchgoers Both religiosity and immigration lie at the heart of the American selfconcept The US is characterised by a civil religion that is inclusive enough to allow most Americans, regardless of their faith, to fit under its folds. Therefore, new methodological l and conceptual tools are needed to understand these transnational processes. We need new conceptual categories that no longer blind us to these emergent social forms nor prevent us from reconceptualising the boundaries of social life
