Research Team ( London site):

Prof John Eade (Head of Project)

Dr David Garbin (Research Fellow) 

Dr Ann David (Research Fellow)

International framework of the project
Research plan for the London site: background
London site: Muslim and Christian groups
London site: Hindu groups 

International framework of the project

The research is focusing on four major world religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism) among migrants of various national origins within three urban contexts (London, Durban, Kuala Lumpur). It is designed to illuminate the various roles that religion plays in minority migrants' everyday lives as they seek recognition and acceptance of their minority status from their host societies.

There are three central research topics and questions:

•  Identity and meaning: What religious identities do migrants embrace within receiving societies and what significance do religious values and commitments give to migrants' other social identities including gender, class, race, ethnicity, and nationality?

•  Affiliation and membership: How do migrants' religious identities guide their participation in social groups and organisations and affect the nature and extent of their membership - both inclusion and exclusion - within the wider receiving society?

•  Context and empowerment: On what religious resources - ideational, material, and organisational - do migrants draw in collective mobilisations to assert claims for recognition by receiving societies, which at the same time deploy religion in their efforts to manage migrant diversity and membership?

The research methodology is based on extended biographical interviews with individuals and participant observation at religious events, congregational meetings and regular times of worship. Audio and visual recording will be employed where appropriate, as will be the use of secondary sources for further detailed information.

The final outcome will be a book of edited articles related to each site of investigation, an edited volume of papers across all three sites, and papers submitted to peer-reviewed journals.

Outline of the research plan for the London site

Background

Although popular images of Britain as a multicultural society emphasise the settlement of migrant workers in the period after the Second World War, London has a much longer history of migration. Indeed, its origins are bound up with an invasion by imperial Rome almost two thousand years ago and its rapid development as a garrison town and port at the north-west edge of the empire. The original City of London - the square mile - was later dominated by another immigrant political and military elite - the Normans - whose castle, the Tower of London, dominated the access to the port. London welcomed Italian merchants and Hanseatic traders during the mediaeval period, French Protestant (Huguenot) refugees in the last 17th century, and subsequent arrivals before the 20th century world wars included Irish and Italian Catholics, Chinese, and Jews.

These earlier settlements were subject to the strong assimilative pressures of the emerging British nation-state. Indeed, the Huguenots have disappeared as a highly visible community, while the earlier Irish, Jewish and Chinese settlers have largely moved away from their original, working class localities and have adapted to more privatised, middle class lifestyles in London 's suburbs and many have married out. For these highly assimilated suburbanites religious identity has become more a matter of personal choice and flexible community networks.

The post-Second Word War settlements include displaced people such as those fighting in the Polish armed forces, prisoners of war who chose to stay on and those from Continental Europe who were recruited to work in sectors of the economy facing labour shortages, such as coal mining and farming. However, it was the arrival of 'black and Asian' workers from the British Empire who attracted most attention and whose contribution to the development of British multicultural society continues to be most hotly debated. 'Black' workers were recruited from the Caribbean and were joined by those from British colonies in West Africa. This migration overlapped with migration from former British India - initially from independent India and the western wing of Pakistan, and then from East Pakistan (later Bangladesh ). This movement was complemented by the arrival of East African Asians during the 1970s. Smaller flows from Cyprus, Latin America, Sri Lanka and the Middle East swelled the ranks of Christians, Hindus and Muslims. More recently, however, migration flows have become more complex with the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers and the even more recent flow of 'circular migrants' from Poland and other A8 countries which joined the European Union in May 2004.

This history has made London into the most multicultural and dynamic city within the nation. At the same time the transformation from imperial capital to global city has led to strong racial and ethnic divisions across the metropolis. The suburbs have remained predominantly white and residually Christian, while the 'inner city' areas contain large concentrations of minorities who are separated by racial and ethnic boundaries. African Caribbean and African settlers, predominantly Christian, overlap in three main areas (Lewisham/Lambeth, Dalston, Acton/Harlesden), while Hindu and Sikh communities from India and East Africa have a large concentration in the western areas of Hounslow and Wembley and Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are located primarily in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Camden Town to the east. Older Christian minorities such as Irish and Polish Catholics occupy inner city areas to the west and north west , while recent Polish migration appears to be scattered across central and eastern boroughs.

This history of migration plays a key role in shaping the religious and secular bases on which migrants make claims for membership and recognition. Christian minorities have entered a city where long established religious organisations have a history of assimilating newcomers. The established church - the Church of England - and the Roman Catholic communion have developed a parish structure and hierarchy which militates against separate ethnic congregations. The Nonconformist congregations have a more open, less hierarchical structure but also seek to assimilate 'black and Asian' newcomers. All these Christian bodies support long established organisations which operate globally through missionary activities and human rights and racial justice campaigning. The expanding Pentecostal congregations come closest to ethnic churches and attract black Londoners who have become disaffected with the assimilative, white-dominated tradition of the other Christian denominations.

In contrast, Hindu and Muslim communities have been obliged to create their own religious structures and enter secular organisations, such as local and national political institutions, which have not been geared to their interests and have been influenced by direct and indirect forms of racism or Islamophobia. This high degree of fragmentation is also shaped by regional and sectarian diversity. At the same time the development of a second and third generation has led to a certain modification of the first generation strategy of transmitting the religious traditions and political allegiances of their countries of origin to London. Younger citizens have engaged with mainstream political and religious organisations encouraged during the 'New Labour' regime from 1997 by the central government's appeal to 'faith communities' and the building of cohesive, safe local communities. Muslims have been encouraged, in particular, since '9/11', 7/7' and British involvement in Iraq.

I - Muslim and Christian groups

Research Fellow: Dr David GARBIN 

Christian groups (Pentecostal and Messianic) and Muslim groups (in East London )

With regard to the Christian sample, the ethnographic fieldwork is currently being undertaken among migrant groups from French-speaking Africa living in London. These migrants, mainly originating from Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also from Ivory Coast, Gabon or the Central African Republic, have so far attracted little academic attention, despite their growing numbers and visibility over the last decade. This project constitutes the first intensive social anthropological study of these Francophone migrants groups in London.

The consequences of religious change on the individual politics of everyday (public and private) life are being examined. The study of personal narratives will allow us to investigate the location of religious conversion in the individual life cycle. In addition, we are looking at the relationship between migration/transnational mobility trajectories and social and religious change. One of the objectives here will be to assess the role of this relationship in the construction of a symbolic geography of the sacred/profane, before and after the conversion. Another objective of this project is to explore the notion of 'born again' and what it entails in terms of individuation but also in terms of new mode of socialisation and social distinction.

A similar approach is being adopted to investigate the social and religious changes among British Muslims in East London, especially within transnational missionary movements such as the Tabligh Jamaat or within Islamist youth groups. The new ritualisation of social life (including the new relationship to the body) is a central element here. In addition, we are also interested in the discourses of 'authenticity' and 'purity' in relation to dynamics of hybridity and popular culture but also in relation to the global/local politics of 'community'.

Finally, taking as a case-study black Pentecostalist and Messianic (Kimbanguist) churches as well as Islamist missionary groups, this project is exploring the issue of religious territorialisation, focusing on the relationship between local and global dynamics. This dimension of the study will allow us to map the transnational religious networks and to see to what extent (physical/symbolic) mobility and the circulation of ideas, information and values shape the production of locality and the discourses of belonging.

Initial Key Objectives

The research undertaken among Christian and Muslim groups will

•  investigate the politics of identity and religious conversion and evangelisation in specific 'community' contexts;

•  study the relationship between the moral economy of religion/popular culture and the social body, looking at class and gender divisions;

•  investigate the role of religious and cultural/ethnic identities in the constitution of a French-speaking postcolonial and diasporic public sphere;

•  study the interaction between global and local religious configurations in relation to the process of religious territorialisation;

•  look at the use and importance of transnational religious networks;

•  investigate the narratives attached to religious forms of authenticity, purity and universalism;

•  examine the possible tensions between ethnicity, hybrid forms of belonging and new religious identity;

•  inform the current theoretical debates on religious spatialisation, diaspora and transnational religion.

II - Hindu Groups

Research Fellow: Dr Ann David 

Hindu groups (Tamils in south-west and east London )

This research is being undertaken with Tamil groups based in different parts of London. The majority of the community is Sri Lankan, many of whom have migrated due to the violence in Sri Lanka; some of the groups however, have been settled since the 1960s. There is scant academic research dealing with the religious, socio-cultural and everyday lives of this community and this project will constitute the first intensive social anthropological study of Tamils in the UK.

The research will firstly investigate how contested avenues of space (or absence of contestation), both physically and metaphorically, are negotiated in the increasing display of British Hinduism. It will examine the conversion of old religious spaces (synagogues, chapels, churches) into Hindu temples, and the recent trend to build new, yet traditionally designed religious spaces. The project will seek to discover whether changes in temple and ritual practices are aspects of expressive culture that reaffirm, or 'perform' faith, and whether they are being defined in relation to a resurgence of Hindu scripturalism and 'globalised localism' evidenced in the diaspora.

The representation of space in bodily religious practice is also examined, drawing on theoretical writings of Kim Knott and Henri Lefebvre.  Issues of bodily practice, sacredness, control of bodies and their expression, the public/social body and the individual/private body are significant anthropological considerations and ones that have become increasingly important in an investigation of the 'doing', and of the location of religion.  Bodily expression during festivals including trance dance, classical dance, music, processions and bodily ritual practices will all be interrogated drawing primarily on interpretive anthropological strategies that seek to discover the socio-cultural expressions through the dance field.

The project will investigate new avenues of religious Hindu practices that deviate from traditional, orthodox temple and home worship, such as worship led by females, and the following of guru-led organised religion. How are these practices negotiated? Are they of increasing interest to the younger generations? Questions too regarding the political issues that interweave in religious practice will be addressed during the course of the research.

Initial Key Objectives

The research among the British Hindu groups will:

•  examine the contested use of space, both physically and metaphorically;

•  investigate new forms of British Hinduism;

•  study the performative aspect of Hindu religious worship, and the 'doing' of religion;

•  investigate changes in traditional patterns of worship to new, and perhaps 'unorthodox' pathways of practice;

•  look at tensions between political discourse and religious practice;

•  investigate the narratives attached to religious forms of purity, authenticity and universalism;

•  examine the use and importance of transnational religious networks.