Refugees and Religion

Birgit Meyer is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. She is co-editor of Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Bloomsbury 2019) and co-editor of Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion. Peter van der Veer is Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religion, Gottingen, Germany.

This remarkably rich edited collection identifies and analyzes the ways in which refugees as well as the nation-states that either welcome or reject them draw on multiple religious traditions to make sense of their unsanctioned mobility. The authors demonstrate that refugee predicaments are not wholly defined by modern ideas of citizenship, belonging, and rights, and that religion is the canopy under which many debates about refugees and refuge find their richest idiom.

• 1. Introduction Peter van der Veer (Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany)Part I: Politics of Religious Plurality in Europe2. War, Migration, and the Politics of Religious Diversity, Wayne te Brake (Purchase College, State University of New York, USA) 3. German Refugees and Refugees in Germany, Peter van der Veer (Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany)Part II: People on the Move from Vietnam4. Victims of Atheist Persecution.Transnational Catholic Solidarity and Refugee Protection in Cold War Asia, Phi Vân Nguyen (University of Saint-Boniface, Canada)5. The Virgin Mary Became Asian: Diasporic Nationalism among Vietnamese Catholic Refugees in the US and Germany, Thien-Huong Ninh (Cosumnes River College, USA)6. Refugees in the Land of Awes: Vietnamese Arrivals and Departures, Janet Hoskins (University of Southern California, USA)7. In Search of a Vietnamese Buddhist Space in Germany, Tam Ngo (Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany & Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and Nga Mai (Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany)Part III: People on the Move in and from Africa8. Are We an Elected People? Religion and the Everyday Experience of Young Congolese Refugees in Kampala, Alessandro Gusman (University of Turin, Italy) 9. The ‘Conquering New Territory for Jesus?’: The Transience and Local Presence of African Pentecostal Migrants in Morocco, Johara Berriane (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany) 10. Ritual Space and Religious Practice: Young West African Muslims in Berlin, Germany, Abdoulaye Sounaye (Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany)Part IV: Political Spaces of Reception11. Texts, Language and Religion in the Making of the Syriac Orthodox Communities in Europe, Heleen Murre van den Berg (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands)12. Between Hope and Fear: Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Camp Life in Assam, India, Salah Punathil (Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany)13. Accommodating Religious Diversity: Micro-Politics of Spatial Separation in German Refugees Accommodation Centres, Alexander Kenneth-Nagel (University of Göttingen, Germany) 14. Conversion through Destitution: Religion, Law and Doubt in the UK Asylum System, William Wheeler (University of Manchester, UK) 16. Afterword, Birgit Meyer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)BibliographyIndex