Social discrimination of religious minorities in Argentina. An exploratory study of religious discrimination applied on Jehovah's Witnesses

Institutionalized religious discrimination forms a matrix of meanings from which it is interpreted and re-signified all social practice. This horizon of meaning, almost invisible at the level of the formation and use of common sense, makes religious discrimination in a persistent and complex social phenomenon. The impairment in the enjoyment of certain fundamental freedoms, which is necessary to place religious freedom, it is particularly significant for religious minorities, who are more likely to be subjected to discriminatory social practices under their subordination against the existence of a confession or dominant religion.

For some religious communities is easier to be accepted by the social environment, at least in appearance. In the case of Jehovah's Witnesses, although it has legal recognition by the state, it is also true that the mass media convey a distorted view of their purposes and ways of life. On the other hand, discrimination of which are the subject of Jehovah's Witnesses need to be analyzed in political terms, in the broader context of the tension between the forms of linkage between the state and the various minorities who join the social tissue. Thus, the homogenization of the different identities and the formation of a "national being" to focus the diversity in unity, has been the strategy that the Argentine government has deployed since the time of its formation, assuming the trend of the French model of laïcité.

This document purposes to show some important aspects of religious discrimination applied to Jehovah’s Witnesses into Argentine institutional order, so as to highlight the most important sociological aspects of this social fact.