Events

Located at the intersection between migration and religion, this conference will examine how migrants experience their spiritual lives and interpret religious practices and responsibilities. We seek to understand how different Asian communities pursue their religiosity when unfastened from local settings, and examine how religious congregations find new avenues of spirituality in a migratory context. Although scholarship on migration has extensively studied the importance of faith in the lives of transnational workers, refugees and diasporas, these studies have mainly investigated institutional elements of religious participation, structures, and networks that faith-based organizations provide. As a departure, we propose to shift attention to ritual, missionary and pastoral aspects of religion, and highlight the spiritual dimensions of migratory trajectories. Religiosity often transforms the experience of migration, refashioning narratives of displacement into journeys of spiritual awakening and missionary calling. We aim to explore what migrations and displacements do to devotional experiences, practices and duties, and how the affective dimensions of migration are addressed by old and new religious commitments. We propose to show how the spiritual and religious adopt new meanings in resettled contexts, challenging or reinforcing emotional and intellectual dispositions towards the Other. A multi‐disciplinary event that will address important questions in anthropology, religion and migration studies, this conference will interrogate the diverse ways in which internal and international migrations shape religion in resettled contexts.

World religions often possess the infrastructure that migrant communities require for religious worship and devotional practices, yet religious spaces and practices remain frequently contested, revealing important conflicts and divisions between communities that profess to share the same core beliefs. In light of these distinctions, categories such as Muslim, Hindu or Catholic, fail to provide useful insights when encompassing migrants with profoundly different linguistic, cultural, national and class backgrounds. The performance of rituals and ceremonies that trace their origins to distant homelands become a fundamental part of the spiritual wellbeing of migrant communities that refuse to substitute their traditions with generic, cross‐cultural devotional celebrations. Nonetheless, religious observance in a foreign land is not merely an effort to uphold traditional values; it is an important way of generating new meanings and re‐signifying the experience of migration. We invite participants to examine the multiple ways in which migrant communities pursue new and old spiritual commitments and how these activities factor in the quality of the migratory experience.

Studies on religion and migration indicate two main political and cultural approaches that define the diaspora and cut across denominational boundaries. The first is characterized by anxieties of impending loss and dissolution of tradition and religious identity, occasionally manifested in a heightened sense of religious duty and morality amongst Asian migrant communities. The second portray migration as a unique opportunity to improve the global reach of religious denominations and to upset the balance of power of creeds formerly bounded to regional traditions, for example with the increased exposure that religions have in the global religious marketplace.

Moreover, Asian religious denominations zealously take responsibility towards fellow migrants and towards those with whom migrants work with. Although Christianity provides important examples of “reverse missionary work,” Buddhist, Hindus and Muslims communities also reach out beyond the members of their communities in the diaspora. Religious societies and organizations encourage dialogue and offer religious education to diverse populations, where the work of non‐natives is a key aspect of migrants’ agency capable of deeply transforming the spectrum of activities usually associated with migrant labor. While focusing on the experiences of lived religion in the diaspora, we are also interested in original, decentralized and small‐scale initiatives designed to promote particular religious faiths.

Taking these contrasts as our point of departure, this conference will investigate a) affective lives of migrant and displaced communities beyond conventional studies of religious diaspora b) changing notions of faith‐based community and religious affiliation in re‐settled contexts c) migrants’ decisions, actions and strategies that structure and transform religious practices and belongings.

The conference will address the following four lines of inquiry:

1. Which aspects of religious life can be shared across communities and which remain exclusively connected to local cultures and traditions?
   Although adherents to world religions embrace the same faiths and doctrines, taking part in the same pastoral and social institutions – language, regional cults and national traditions are highly specific and can generate conflict when sharing places of worship and venues for social activities. In this thematic section we focus on how different migrant communities navigate the tensions between belonging to global religious institutions and celebrating unique regional traditions.

2. How are regional religious traditions and rituals reproduced and enacted through migration, displacement and re‐settlement?
   Migrant communities often go to great lengths to preserve specific regional practices and replicate holy celebrations and devotions in their migratory destinations. In this section we examine how migrant communities organize to prepare appropriate meals, reproduce pilgrimages, transport ritual images and other devotional objects to their new locations and how they negotiate with local authorities to pursue these traditions.

3. What kind of migration strategies are implemented by those invested in religious proselytizing?
   Increasing numbers of religious communities no longer see migration as a threat to the moral integrity of those who are away from their homeland and identify the receiving communities as a fertile ground for inter and intra‐religious exchanges. These range from initiating interfaith dialogues and showcasing religious rituals to those unfamiliar with foreign traditions; to using faithful migrants to reach out to members of the community who are distanced from their religion or using labor migration as an opportunity for missionary work.

4. How do religious communities finance their work and how do they find venues for their celebrations?
   Diasporic religious communities channel financial flows for devotional activities and for the movement of religious workers. We here focus on the material dimensions of transnational religious practice, support of local institutions vs. large global churches, and the infrastructures made available to diasporic communities to observe religious commitments.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free, and seats are available on a first come, first served basis. We would greatly appreciate if you register your interest in attending to Ms Tay Minghua via email: minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg.

CONTACT DETAILS

Conference Convenors

Dr Bernardo BROWN
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | aribeb@nus.edu.sg

Dr Malini SUR
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | arimali@nus.edu.sg

Prof Brenda S.A. YEOH
Asia Research Institute, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
E | geoysa@nus.edu.sg

Secretariat

Ms TAY Minghua
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg