Keywords

Violent conflicts, social unrest, and other humanitarian crises around the world have led to growing numbers of people seeking refuge in both the global North and the global South. Forced displacement and migration have always been part and parcel of spiritual development. However, the current refugee crisis in Europe and elsewhere in the world has brought to the fore fervent discussions regarding the role of religion in defining difference, linking the refugee crisis with Islam, and fear of the Other. Many religious institutions, spiritual leaders, and politicians invoke religious values and call for strict border controls to resolve the “crisis.” However, equally many humanitarian organizations and refugee advocates use religious values to inform their call to action, to welcome asylum seekers and refugees, to provide them with assistance, and to facilitate integration processes.

Religion and Spirituality

What is religion? The word has Latin roots: religio (respect for what is sacred) and religare (to bind, in the sense of an obligation). French sociologist Émile Durkheim defined religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things.” In Durkheim’s conceptualization, the sacred meant extraordinary—something that inspired wonder and which was connected to “the divine.” Durkheim argued that “religion happens” in society when there is a separation between the profane (ordinary life) and the sacred (Durkheim, 1915, p. 45).

Durkheim is generally considered the first sociologist who analyzed religion in terms of its societal impact. Durkheim believed that religion is about community: it binds people together (social cohesion), promotes behavior consistency (social control), and offers people strength during life’s transitions and tragedies (meaning and purpose) (McGivern, 2013).

Religion is a Western concept (Fitzgerald, 2007). Similar concepts do not exist in many past and present cultures; there is no equivalent term in many languages (Morreall & Sonn, 2013; Nongbri, 2013). Dubuisson (2007, p. 18) suggested replacing the study of religion with the study of “cosmographic formations,” a category that includes various attempts to “describe the world and tell this or that group of humans, or even all of humanity, how to live in it.” The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a

[…] system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

He further remarked:

[…] we have very little idea of how, in empirical terms, this particular miracle is accomplished. We just know that it is done, annually, weekly, daily, for some people almost hourly; and we have an enormous ethnographic literature to demonstrate it (Geertz, 1993, pp. 87–12).

In this volume, we stress the importance of a broad conceptualization of religion that includes both Western and non-Western religious and spiritual traditions. We recognize that religions are culturally and socially constructed. In our conceptualization, religion encompasses the socio-cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions. Spirituality used to be a “predominantly Roman Catholic term applied chiefly to certain practices of prayer within a traditional institutional church framework” (Muldoon & King, 1995, p. 331). In recent decades, however, there has been an expansion of both the meaning and the application of the term spirituality; both Christian and non-Christian traditions have begun to use the term. References to spirituality are also made in social movements such as Marxism, feminism, or even the environmental movement. “The term has broadened to connote the whole of the life of faith and even the life of the person as a whole; including its bodily, psychological, social and political dimensions” (Schneiders, 1989, p. 679).

We also emphasize lived experiences of religion defined as a dynamic phenomenon, not as a fixed set of ideas championed by religious institutions and blindly adopted by their followers. Lived experiences of religion and spirituality indicate that believers actively shape, negotiate, and change religious beliefs and practices (Nyhagen, 2017; Main & Kujawa, forthcoming). Lived religion is thus “a subjectively grounded and potentially creative place for religious experience and expression” (McGuire, 2008, p. 12).

We aim to bring about a paradigm shift in both scholarly and public debates on the importance of religious and spiritual beliefs in the lives of asylum seekers and refugees. We also want to stress the importance of faith-based initiatives aimed at facilitating refugees’ integration and well-being.

Religion and Forced Migration Nexus

Religion and forced migration are inextricably connected. Religion operates in compelling, competing, and contradictory ways as it shapes the experiences of forced migrants. Being a refugee—experiencing the suffering in wartime and during flight, loss of homeland and family, and the challenges of living in a new country—is for many forced migrants, a spiritual crisis of unparalleled severity. The basic spiritual needs—hope, meaning, relatedness, forgiveness, acceptance, and transcendence—are threatened in forced migration. Below, we outline several points at which religion intersects with forced migration.

Religious Persecution

Religious persecution is one of the five grounds enumerated in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, on the basis of which refugee status is determined. As Karen Musalo (2002) observed, religion is likely to gain increasing prominence as grounds for protection because of rising fundamentalism and nationalism, the relationship between religion and women’s rights, and the sustained concern with religious freedom internationally and locally.

The freedom of religion—the freedom to have, not to have, practice, or not practice any religion—is a fundamental right recognized by the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion and Belief. Nowadays, that right is being tested by rising or sustained violence against individuals on the basis of religion and belief—a threat that is largely under-recognized by the international community (Gorur & Gregory, 2021).

Religious beliefs and practices have led to many armed conflicts and resulting flights. Geographical hotspots of theology-fueled armed conflicts include Sahel, Nigeria, and Somalia. Although Islamist insurgencies predominate in religious conflicts, Christian rebel groups in Congo-Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda have also been active since the turn of the millennium. Countries with diverse religious populations are also prone to interreligious conflicts; examples include the Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire (Basedau, 2017). In many instances, religious persecution coupled with nationalism results in forced displacement, for example, the Rohingya in Myanmar (Mim, 2020). Over the years, Pakistani Christians have also been discriminated against and forcibly displaced (Wolf, 2021).

Religion and Trauma

Religious and spiritual beliefs support and empower many refugees through displacement, migration, and settlement. Religion and spirituality can be sources of emotional and cognitive support, a form of social and political mobilization, and a vehicle for community building (Goździak, 2002; Goździak & Shandy, 2002; Mavelli & Wilson, 2016). Programs that incorporate religion and spirituality in order to heal trauma are an excellent alternative to approaches which treat refugees’ suffering as pathology and medicalize their experiences (see Bracken et al., 1995; Goździak & Tuskan, 2000; Pupavac, 2002).

Displacement affects the lives of all refugees. However, the impact of being uprooted is particularly poignant and often very traumatic for refugee women, especially when rape and sexual abuse become commonplace. Unmet spiritual needs put refugee women’s integration and well-being at risk. Supporting their faith and spirituality is therefore important at every stage of the migration process.

We need to bear in mind that refugee women’s engagement with religion is often very different from the experiences of refugee men. Research indicates that men and women react differently when faced with similar adverse circumstances. A study of prisoners in a Russian labor camp showed that women observed religious rituals and celebrated birthdays, while men fantasized about escape, solved chess problems, and talked incessantly about politics (Weinberg et al., 1992).

While refugee women may find solace in religious rituals, their relationship with religion, particularly organized religion, is not simple. In some cultures, women are denied both the knowledge and the practical skills required to initiate rituals. In fact, most human religions, from tribal to mainstream religions, have treated women’s bodies, in their gender-specific sexual functions, as impure and polluted and thus to be distanced from sacred spaces and rites dominated by men (Ruether, 1990, p. 7). In many denominations, women are officially barred from ordination and men run the spiritual and administrative affairs of religious communities.

Not everyone finds solace in religion in the time of extreme suffering. During wars, it often seems that God has forsaken the suffering. Some war survivors go through life with the cruel words of scripture “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” on their lips (Matthew 27: 46). Elie Wiesel, writing about his experiences in concentration camps, said that after seeing innocent children burned alive, the “flames consumed my faith forever” and that the experience “murdered my God and my soul” (Wiesel, 1960, p. ix). Many soldiers returning from Vietnam remarked “I lost my soul in Vietnam” (Brende & McDonald, 1993, p. 325). Others have written about experiencing trauma at the moment when “the spirit went numb” (Mahedy, 1986, p. 32) and the development of the soul stopped (Baker, 1989). It has been called a disorder of hope (van der Kolk, 1988), a spiritual night (Mahedy, 1986, p. 32), or a loss of wholeness (Sinclair, 1993, p. 70).

Religion in the “Refugee Crisis”

Religion took center stage in the recent “refugee crisis” in Europe (Goździak et al., 2020). In the increasingly secularized Europe, religion has, paradoxically, gained or regained significance in many policy and public debates. Religious pluralism existed in Europe for centuries; in many countries, quite unproblematically (Pickel, 2018). However, the increasing religious (and ethnic) pluralism stemming from more recent migration resulted in challenges to religious freedom and religious tolerance, despite existing anti-discrimination laws. Even prior to the recent “refugee crisis” debates about building mosques, wearing different forms of hijab, and providing religious education in schools abounded. This situation has changed even more dramatically in 2015. With the arrival of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, governments and the general public started to link the refugees’ identity to their religion (Koening, 2005). Thus, refugees began to be equated with Muslims and Muslims with refugees. In extreme cases, refugees have been linked to Muslim fundamentalists.

Ethnocentric perspectives identified Islam as an alien and anti-democratic religion or an incubator of political conflict (see Fox, 2004; Huntington, 1996). Several recent surveys have borne out this widespread negative view of Islam and Muslim refugees (see Pickel, 2013; Welzel, 2013; Wike et al., 2016). As a result of growing Islamophobia, many policy-makers and quite a few members of the general public have called for the fortification of Europe (Schmiedel & Smith, 2018). On the other hand, the emerging pro-refugee advocacy and solidarity movements, even in countries such as Poland or Hungary, which refused to participate in the refugee relocation program, have called for openness to refugees regardless of their religion (Goździak et al., 2020).

Existing Knowledge: Religion in Refugee Studies

Twenty years ago, Dianna J. Shandy and Elżbieta M. Goździak issued a call for papers for the first-ever special issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies on religion and forced migration. Most authors who submitted manuscripts for consideration indicated a dearth of research on the nexus of religion and forced migration and struggled to place their own research in a broader conceptual context. These experiences reflected a widespread state of affairs as documented at the time by initiatives launched by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the New School for Social Research in New York (Goździak & Shandy, 2002). Much has changed in the last two decades, but some things remained the same. Most publications debate religion within a broadly defined international migration, while fewer place their analyses in forced migration studies.

In migration studies, there are notable books on the role of religion in immigrant communities and the transformation of the religious landscape in the United States. Peggy Levitt’s God Needs No Passport shows how immigrants are changing the face of religious diversity in the United States, helping to make American religion just as global as U.S. corporations. The book has important implications for today’s immigration debates where commentators routinely refer to a “clash of civilizations.” Levitt shows how the new realities of religion and migration are subtly challenging the very definition of what it means to be an American. God Needs No Passport reveals that American values are no longer just made in the United States but come from around the globe as global religious institutions enable immigrants to participate in two cultures at once—whether via religious services beamed in by satellite or through an expanding network of global religious organizations (Levitt, 2009).

Transformation of religious life in the United States is also a theme explored by contributors to the volume Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (Leonard et al., 2005). The book represents a valuable addition to the canon on this topic, joining volumes by Warner and Wittner (1998) and Ebaugh and Chafetz (2000) on religious organizations and networks, as well as overviews by specific ethnicity and/or religion by Haddad et al. (2003) and Min and Kim (2001).

Alex Stepick collaborated with several different colleagues to produce an important work on religion in diasporic communities. Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City focuses on the intersection of religion and civic engagement among Miami’s immigrant and minority groups. The contributors examine the role of religious organizations in developing social relationships and how these relationships affect the broader civic world (Stepick et al., 2009).

Rey et al. (2013) collaborated on Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion in Miami, a historical and ethnographic study of Haitian religion in immigrant communities. Where many studies of Haitian religion limit themselves to one faith, this book explores Catholicism, Protestantism, and Voodoo in conversation with one another, suggesting that despite the differences between these practices, the three faiths ultimately create a sense of unity, fulfillment, and self-worth in Haitian communities.

Migration is changing Canada’s religious landscape as well (Pew Research Center, 2013), but the scholarship does not seem to be as robust as in the United States. Notable exceptions include Reitz et al. (2009) and Reimer and Hiemstra (2018). Growing Up Canadian. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, edited by Beyer and Ramji (2013), is a study of religion among first generation of children from immigrant families in Canada. It contributes to understanding religious diversity and multiculturalism in the twenty-first century. It relates to a continuum of identities: from atheist to spiritual but not religious.

In 2013, Springer launched a new book series Religion and Global Migration edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Jennifer B. Saunders, and Susanna Snyder. Twelve books have been published in this series, covering a broad spectrum of issues and geographies. Space limitations do not allow us to mention all of them, but we want to draw the readers’ attention to a few books from this series. The series editors published a collection of case studies, entitled Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, from a wide array of regions across the globe and showcased theological, sociological, and anthropological methods for studying religion and migration (Saunders et al., 2016). In her book on Solidarity and Reciprocity with Migrants in Asia, Yuen (2020) engaged Catholic and Confucian ethics and moral philosophy in a dialogue about solidarity and reciprocity. Closely related to the theme of our book is the volume Religion in the European Refugee Crisis, edited by Schmiedel and Smith (2018). This book examines how religion has been employed to call either for eliminating or enforcing the walls around “Fortress Europe.”

When religion is considered in refugee studies, it most often receives attention for its role in conflict settings (e.g., Sandal, 2019; Schliesser et al., 2021) and the politicization of identity (Börzel & Risse, 2018). Legal scholars analyze religious persecution as grounds for asylum and refugee status. Religious-belief cases are difficult in terms of credibility assessment exactly because they require “a government or UN adjudicator to wrestle directly with the ambiguities of religious identity and faith” (Kagan, 2010, p. 1190). Ziya Meral and Amanda Grey reported that although “the law is clear that religious persecution constitutes grounds for asylum, assessment of religion-based asylum applications is complex and challenging due to the inherently internal and personal nature of religion and belief” (Meral & Grey, 2016, p. 3). They not only point to the disparity between the Home Office policy and practice in the UK and the lack of statistics but also offer several recommendations about policy guidelines, trainings, good practices, and working with faith communities.

Drawing on ethnographic research in the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, at the Thailand-Burma border, in Palestine, and in Cambodia, Building Noah's Ark for Migrants, Refugees, and Religious Communities, edited by Horstmann and Jung (2015), examines religion within the framework of refugee studies as a public good, with the spiritual and material use of religion shedding new light on the agency of refugees in reconstructing their lives and positioning themselves in hostile environments.

The plight of atheists facing persecution has also been studied. Cases of imprisonment or death threats faced by non-religious persons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco, and Indonesia—where such views are unacceptable—have been brought to the attention of human rights organizations. Refugee activists are concerned that atheists and non-religious asylum seekers are not explicitly mentioned in the 1951 UN Convention. In 2016, the UN confirmed the inclusion of atheists and non-religious refugees under the “religion” criterion. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada have accepted refugees based on persecution due to atheism. However, atheism as a criterion for granting asylum is not clearly accepted by all countries and atheist/non-religious asylum seekers face structural difficulties in many places (Nixon, 2019).

Our Contributions to the Unfolding Debates

This volume brings emerging and seasoned migration and religion scholars into dialogue with spiritual leaders and representatives of faith-based organizations assisting refugees. The geographic focus of the book is global. Many chapters are based on original research, but some stem from lived experiences of solidarity with refugees. The contributors focus on activities motivated both by religious and secular beliefs.

The volume is divided into three distinct yet inter-related parts focusing on politics, values, and discourses mobilized by religious beliefs; lived experiences of religion, with a particular emphasis on identity and belonging among various refugee groups; and faith and faith actors and their responses to forced migration. The introduction and the concluding chapter bookend these three parts. The introduction explores the nexus of religion/spirituality and forced migration. It foreshadows some of the themes discussed throughout the volume.

In Part One, entitled Politics, Values, and Discourses, the authors engage with both religious and secular values that inform policy-making and public discourses in Hungary, Poland, and Israel. Elżbieta M. Goździak juxtaposes the Hungarian government's call for “flexible solidarity” with grassroots efforts undertaken by solidarians, conceptualized here as civil society actors, to welcome asylum seekers and facilitate their onward journey to other European countries where they might find a warmer welcome and favorable opportunities for permanent settlement. She shows how flexible solidarity promoted by the Hungarian government created deserving and undeserving refugees. She also focuses on religious leaders and their attitudes towards refugees to show how some attempted to welcome the Stranger, while others sided with the Orbán administration to advocate for solidarity abroad. The bulk of her chapter is devoted to a discussion of the ways different solidarians representing civil society organizations and informal community networks contested the government’s anti-refugee policies. Her analysis shows that civil society actors provided invaluable assistance to asylum seekers, but were unable to bring about major policy changes.

Agnieszka Bielewska and Nir Cohen focus on the “migration crises” in Poland in 2015–2017 and in Israel in 2010–2011. Drawing on secondary data, they show how liberal politicians used religious and ethical narratives to advocate for more open asylum policies, whereas conservative statesmen used them to promote restrictive asylum policies. They show how the usage of historical narratives of victimization resulted in a bifurcated discourse, in which religious ethical arguments were selectively used to promote a particular political agenda.

In Part Two, entitled Lived Experiences of Religion, the contributors focus on the effects that lived experiences of religion have on identity and belonging. Izabela Kujawa and Ingrid Løland discuss the experiences of Syrian refugees in Turkey and in Norway, respectively.

Using interviews conducted in Istanbul and Gaziantep with Syrian refugees and representatives of the civil society organizations supporting them, Izabela Kujawa explores how religion and religious freedom are present in the rhetoric deployed in discussions surrounding Syrian refugees’ presence in Turkey and their status there. Furthermore, she focuses on refugees’ own experiences, expectations, and imaginaries, and the role that religion and religious tolerance play in them. She also analyzes how the theme of religion is established as an axis around which belonging and otherness are constructed and what role it plays in the process of integration.

Ingrid Løland argues that the academic literature lacks studies on the ways that lived experiences of religion inform both real and imaginary forms of temporal and spatial displacement contexts. In order to remedy the situation and more adequately capture the multidimensional and (dis)empowering aspects of religion in Syrians’ migratory experiences, she applies in her research a dynamic trajectory lens, in which the parameters of time and space are existentially acknowledged. She is therefore able to show how migration trajectories span pre-migratory life, revolution, war, flight, and exile in multiple and overlapping ways. Furthermore, she explores migration trajectories as a mirror of hybrid memory practices through which the symbolic language of metaphors is narratively conveyed. By focusing on spatiotemporal metaphors of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia, she maps the storied landscape of Syrian refugee trajectories where religion, identity, and belonging fluctuate between retrospective and future-oriented processes.

In the final chapter in this section, Johannes Bhanye examines the role religion and ritual play in facilitating access to and security over land among migrants in peri-urban Zimbabwe. The chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among Malawians settled in Lydiate, an informal settlement in Zimbabwe’s Norton peri-urban area. The study shows that religion- and ritual-based forms of authority—the Nyau cult and witchcraft—while not the only sources of access to and security over land, play a role in matters of land. Migrants turn to the Nyau cult to access and reinforce their ownership of land. Because it is feared and respected by adherents on account of its association with deathly symbols, the occult is able to yield and secure land for those who seek it in its name. Others secure their land against expropriation from fellow migrants through the eccentric means of witchcraft. Migrants do not turn to these alternative forms of authority is not because they prefer it; very often there are no formal institutions that they can use. The courts and local authorities are often unsympathetic to their interests. Migrant squatter settlements have become dynamic spaces with novel forms of authority regulating access to coveted resources.

In Part Three, entitled Faith and Faith Actors in Responses to Forced Migration, Max Niedzwiecki, Mathew Weiner and colleagues, and Katarzyna Durajska showcase actors motivated by faith to respond to the needs of asylum seekers and refugees. Max Niedzwiecki’s chapter is a case study of the LGBT Asylum Task Force, a ministry of Hadwen Park Congregational Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Task Force began to form when a gay asylum seeker walked through the parish's doors in 2008 asking for help; since that time, it has provided housing, a welcoming community, and access to wrap-around services to over 210 people from 22 countries. This is a multivocal account that tells the stories of the Task Force and some of its leaders and clients, contextualized in the current literature and in the environment faced by LGBT asylum seekers in the United States.

Mathew Weiner and colleagues, practitioners representing the Office of Religious Life at Princeton University and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, examine the Religion and Resettlement Project, an ongoing project that takes as its central premise the idea that religion is a critical aspect for understanding refugees’ mental health and civic lives, fostering civil society, conceptualizing the long-term displacement of refugees, and assisting with their integration.

Finally, Katarzyna Durajska takes a closer look at the response (or rather lack thereof) to the humanitarian emergency at the Polish–Belarussian border. Her essay is rooted in both her volunteer experience at the border and her research about the people helping refugees in Cieszyn, a small border town in southern Poland. Since 2016, Katarzyna has participated in activities supporting refugees, including fact-finding missions, protests, and information campaigns. These activities have given her unprecedented access to the developments at the border. She takes a closer look at the claims of the predominantly Roman Catholic Polish government who posit that they promote Christian values in all of their actions. Additionally, she uses “netnography,” online research originating in ethnography, to understand the social interactions between volunteers and refugee advocates in the context of contemporary digital communication.

The volume ends with short conclusions where Elżbieta M. Goździak and Izabella Main explore the way forward to think about religion and forced migration at the crossroads of policy and practice.