Book Outline
To address the four central questions posed at the beginning of this Introduction, the volume is divided into three parts. Part I, ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism’, contains three chapters. This section of the volume provides a conceptual framework for the subsequent empirically based analy?ses and discussions, through a bringing together of different disciplinary literature on migration, transnationalism and Catholicism, spanning the social sciences and humanities, including historical and theological approaches. As Vertovec (2004, 290) argues, ‘migration and minority status, diaspora and transnationalism each relates to different, but overlapping, grounds upon which religious transformations take place’. Part I analyses and elaborates the theoretical links between these terms and provides conceptual clarity and analytical frames on how to comprehend and analyse trends and patterns of religious change.
Migration is not only part of the desire of individuals, families and communities to move but is also embedded in broader social and political process, as well as being a theological moment (Baggio and Brazal 2008; Campese 2012; Cruz 2008; Groody 2009). Displacement and migration are universal themes in the Bible which signify not only a spiritual search for God or Truth but also an ethic of hospitality and a call to comfort the migrant, stranger and sojourner (Admirand 2014). The first chapter, by Gemma Tulud Cruz, outlines a theological framework within which to understand global migration, transnationalism and Catholicism. As she argues, Catholic transnationalism in the context of migration can be understood from the perspective of liberation insofar as the search for a better life and the struggle for (greater) well-being individually and collectively is at the heart of every migrant’s journey and the Catholic Church’s response to migration today. Next, Sarah Roddy’s chapter brings together historical and sociological perspectives to alert us to the historical depth of present-day phenomena, in particular, the ways in which the transformation of Irish Catholicism in the second half of the nineteenth century was ‘a transnational co-production, happening simultaneously and in an entangled manner across homeland and diaspora, in the transnational religious field, rather than being simply a home-made (or, for that matter, a Rome-made) Irish export’. Recently, scholars have paid increasing attention to the diversity of religious practices and sites beyond churches, temples and mosques (Kong 2010). In this contemporary world, ‘the individual has come fully of age, that interaction has primacy over commitment, and networked sociability has triumphed. This cultural mutation is at work within Catholicism’ (Hervieu-Leger 2009, 451). In the third chapter and using the Marian shrine of Lourdes in
France as a case study, John Eade extends this discussion and offers some interesting theoretical interventions—particularly in relation to changing forms of worship practice and the balance between the establishment and more informal forms of devotion.
The next six contributions constitute Part II, ‘Encounters, Difference and Transformations’, which are global case studies that analyse the impacts of migration and transnationalism on global Catholicism. Against the background image of the Catholic Church as a hierarchical, bureaucratized and professionalized religious organization, Part II examines the everyday processual picture of encounters, difference and transformations within Catholic communities, parishes and institutions across the globe brought on by migration, mobilities and transnationalism. To explore religious transformations that occur within the Church at different spatial levels (local, national, regional and global) calls for international networks of researchers and openness to interdisciplinarity. In the fourth chapter, Alana Harris uses rich ethnographic material and oral history interviews to demonstrate how St Antony parish, East London, has become a site of transnational flows and inter-religious encounters as well as ‘a crucible for intercession and intervention in a context in which the mostly migrant congregants present feel powerless’. Among other things, she deploys the content of written petitions to reveal the wider structural inequalities faced by migrants and non-migrants within British society exemplified by the anguish for stability in family life and immigration status. The petitions expressed ‘a shared vulnerability and the need for divine understanding and assistance’ in St Antony—the patron saint of the ‘lost and found’. The chapter illustrates how migration offers opportunities and spaces for the encounter and interaction between migrants and non-migrants—spaces to rethink old identities and create new religious practices from below. In Pasura’s chapter, he weaves together the story of the transnational religious practices of Zimbabwean Catholics in the UK who retain strong ties with the Church in the homeland (through hymns, guilds, material and financial support) but also build bridges and create new connections (through music and pilgrimages) in their encounters with UK-based Catholics. He also shows how Zimbabwean Catholics wear religious uniforms on British streets which symbolize their permanence in an often hostile society. The large-scale migration of
Zimbabwean Catholics has led to continuing efforts by the bishops in the homeland to follow and, to a certain extent, control the nature of their religious practice. The same point is echoed by Turina (2015, 189) who observes how contemporary mobility of Catholics has ‘led to continuing efforts by the Holy See to follow and, to a certain extent, to control these fluxes of people’. Monika Salzbrunn and Raphaela von Weichs’ chapter has similar concerns, albeit focused specifically on the emergence and impact of African translocal martyrdom and pilgrimage in Switzerland. Framed within a postcolonial framework, the chapter uses rich ethnographic material and situational analysis to show the continuity and discontinuity of colonial and Orientalist discourse towards African migrants racialized as the Other, through analysis of pilgrimage practices, which are tightly controlled and monitored, as the Church takes ‘paternal, moral and institutional care of African citizens and non-citizens’.
In the seventh chapter, Hosffman Ospino examines the diverse ways in which the migration of Latino immigrants to the USA is transforming Catholicism, particularly parish life—what most Latinos refer to as their ‘home’. He identifies three models of parish life: ethnic parish, shared parish (multicultural parish) and the parish as a‘community of communities’. Ospino uses the term ‘transition’ to capture the complex dynamics of how Catholicism in the United States is transforming ‘into new ways of being and practicing Christianity, particularly driven by the needs and contributions of Latinos’. The essay provides an interesting contrast to John Eade’s chapter which explores the increasing popularity of diverse forms of pilgrimage, highlighting the limitations of a parish- bounded model. Thien-Huong Ninh’s chapter shows how Vietnamese Catholics in the USA and Cambodia struggle between forces of assimilation in their local societies, in the forms of American multiculturalism and Khmer nationalism. She demonstrates how Vietnamese Catholics engage in humanitarian efforts to help their co-ethnic co-religionists in Cambodia who experience double exclusion in that they are unwanted in Cambodia and excluded from Vietnamese citizenship. Although the transnational identities formed are fraught with unease, suspicion and conflicts they are Catholic-grounded in humanitarian efforts to revive ethnic bonds between Vietnamese in the U.S. and Cambodia. Elena Caneva’s chapter draws from an in-depth study of Filipino youth in Italy and the religious vitality framework to examine the role of Catholicism in the construction of identities among these ‘second-generation’ youth. The chapter i dentifies three types of identity development that largely utilizes Catholicism as a frame of reference, and these are: a religious identity, an ethno-religious identity and an ethnic identity.
Part III, ‘Negotiating Unity and Diversity’, is constituted by three contributions which discuss the multiple ways in which unity and diversity are being managed and negotiated, rejected or confronted, which in turn informs us about general characteristics of religious change within the Church. Increasingly, Catholic parishes in global cities are marked by extreme social diversity, with active Catholic migrants coming from a broad range of national, linguistic and ethnic groups. A fundamental question in Part III is how the intersection of migration and Catholicism speak to ideas about and experiences of, unity and diversity. We argue that the Catholic Church is a relevant case for a study of unity and diversity—in the context of increasingly diverse and mobile societies globally—due to its nature as a universal institution, which simultaneously has a strong tradition of adaptation to local customs and practices, thus becoming embedded in the fabrics of societies worldwide. To what extent and in which ways there is unity; and whether or not increasing diversity due to migration, is approached as a potential or threat, and managed in sustainable ways or not, are empirical questions which are explored in the chapters of this section.
An effort is made to move beyond a binary approach with an either- or outcome, but rather see the multiplicity of practices and attitudes, the significance of physical locations, exploring articulations of unity at different scales, with their intersections with ethnic, national, linguistic, cultural and generational identifications. In the tenth chapter, Marta Bivand Erdal combines migrant narratives with institutional perspectives in the context of post-EU accession Polish migration to Norway, which has altered the demographic composition of the Catholic Church in Norway radically. She explores the interface of Polish migration, and church responses, but also how migration and migrant transnationalism more generally are constitutive dimensions of the diverse minority Catholic Church in Norway, transformed and re-negotiated through this demographic re-constitution. As evidence from this volume illustrates, the nation-state frame of reference still dominates how Catholicism is lived and practiced, and has consequences for Catholic migrants. Against this context, Louise Ryan’s chapter takes up the issue of ethnic chaplaincies drawing on the context of England and Wales, and the existence of Catholic groups who congregate on their own or within mixed congregations which exemplify the religious change brought by migration. Maurizio Ambrosini’s chapter illustrates how, despite the celebratory tone in the literature on how migration causes change at the institutional levels (Castles 2010), migration into a Catholic dominated country, Italy, does not challenge existing church structures and institutions but rather cements the power. Ambrosini’s chapter demonstrates that the migration of Catholics groups has done little to change the hierarchical structure of the Church in Italy for instance based on parish council membership. Also, the chapter shows the Church’s advocacy role in challenging the exclusion of undocumented migrants from the wider Italian society. Finally, Claire Dwyer’s Afterword brilliantly situates the discussion of migration, transnationalism and Catholicism within the ‘framework of transnational geographies to suggest that the transnational is engaged in relation to different scales and imaginaries, reflecting on the importance of transnational networks, spaces and practices’.
