Religion As an Instrument of Rooting for the Liquid Identity of Migrants Part 2

The process of rationalization that modernity has brought with it has led to a progressive erosion of the meaning that religion had in the definition of identity of subjects. The progressive weakening of the classical religious cults has gradually been joined by forms of widespread religiosity in line with the liquid character of current social scenarios. There has been room for criteria and categories related to religion, sometimes attributable to a specific religious belief, others to a more or less generic religiosity that often disregards a more structured feeling of belonging and religious practice. This has led progressively to a radical transformation of individual religiosity sometimes characterized by the "believing without belonging".

This process knows some exceptions represented by some categories of subjects, in particular migrants, who find in religion an indispensable foundation of their dislocated identity. Their religious beliefs thus become, sometimes even more than in the past, a symbolic family space where they can continue to live, in order to maintain and nourish their sense of belonging to past places and cultural models.

For these subjects, characterized by specific forms of complex belonging and sometimes forced to a physical and social estrangement in the countries of arrival, religion can assume a "defensive" value to protect their existential continuity and their need to feel part of a story.

The session welcomes theoretical and/or empirical contributions focused on the role that religion can have for migrants and immigrants and the forms that this identity bond can take.