Migration has become increasingly important to understand the place of religion in the globalized world. Religion and Migration: Negotiating Hospitality, Agency and Vulnerability is a welcome addition to the literature on such themes as transnational religion and religious mobility. With a few contributions later added, this edited volume is made of the papers developed from the presentations at the conference “Current Migration and Religion: A Transnational Discourse” at Landgut Castelen, Switzerland in June 2018. One of its strengths is that the volume was created from intersectional perspectives that include both outsider’s etic description and insider’s emic interpretation of the subject.

Much of the studies about religion and migration have focused on how religion supports migrants who have arrived in Western societies from the Global South. This approach may reinforce the stereotype of migrants as passive objects. This edited volume goes beyond such a limited reading of migrants, by advancing to a more nuanced interrogation of migrants’ agency and ‘mutual hospitality’ that gives a significant impetus to religious changes in the globalized West.

This book is divided into three sections that have 15 chapters together. The first part titled “Migrants’ Agency and Changing Landscapes of Religion” focuses on the role of religion in the context of migration. Through the case study of the cross-border migration between Mexico and the USA, Pries and Bohlen describe how Our Lady of Guadalupe serves as an empowering resource for Mexican-American women. Recognizing the public discourse othering migrants as victims or perpetrators, Jahnel suggests developing decolonized theories of borders. In line with Jahel’s attempt at postcolonial theology, Polak’s historical and social scientific research portrays how migrants make significant contributions to socio-cultural and religious innovations in the past and the present. Drawing on data on African migrants in Johannesburg, Mpofu demonstrates migrants’ resistance to hostility articulating forms of transnational religious identities in South Africa.

The second segment entitled “Rethinking Hospitality and Home” concerns the interaction of migrants with previous dwellers, which leads to social, religious, and cultural changes. Hoffman informs the diversification of Christianity in Switzerland, as the significance of non-mainstream Christian denominations and other religions has increased. She describes an Arabic congregation actively networking with the Swiss Methodist Church to secure a foundation in Switzerland, reaching out to Arabic-speaking people to preserve their ethnic culture. Relying on experiences of interactions between Indigenous peoples and European settlers in Canada, Reynolds explores ‘mutual hospitality’ as a resource to decolonize Christian theology and practice. Bieler and Kunz draw on Project DASEIN, a church-based outreach program for refugees and asylum-seekers in Basel, to explore reciprocity beyond the paternalistic pattern of assistance. The flight of refugees from life-threatening conditions is accompanied by complex liminal phenomena culturally, legally, and psychologically. Karle examines refugees in Germany who use religion to meet challenges in the process of migration. Although the majority of Muslims practice moderate Islam, fundamentalist tendencies would appeal in highly unsettling situations in Germany when socio-structural problems are interpreted according to religious paradigms.

The final section “Public Discourse and Religious Practice” examines migrant experiences as resources for theological renovation, religious discourses, or hermeneutics of the scriptures. Nyamnjoh examines mobility as a platform for migrants to seek salvation. In South Africa, mobility within Pentecostal churches fulfills the quest for divine healing among Cameroonian migrants. Kato considers migrant life as a hermeneutical paradigm for biblical studies.  In particular, the vulnerability of migrants can be used as a theological framework to understand the suffering of the messiah in Gospel. Drawing on Sorong-Samarai movement aiming to reconnect West Papua and Papua New Guinea, Havea offers an insight into migration as a decolonizing movement to resist empires. Kim-Cragg articulates how migration can be used as a poignant locus of theological reflection, especially for preaching, nuancing the meaning of hospitality by blurring the host/guest dichotomy.

Though the title of the book is “Religion and Migration”, Christianity is its focal point, with the exception of Muslim migrants and Indigenous peoples. Except for the cases of South Africa and West Papua (by Nyamnjoh and Havea), cases of mobility within the non-West (e.g., from India to Eastern Africa or from the Middle East to Southeast Asia) where a majority of humanity live and transnational interactions have been historically frequent are not sufficiently covered. Instead, this book reveals how the society, culture, and religion of the Global North are diversifying due to migration at the institutional, discursive, and theological/interpretive levels.

Kyuhoon Cho

The University of Regina

Categories: (M) Book Review