Transnational Religious Ties and Integration: An Unhappy Couple?

Abstract

As the discussion in Chapter 2 has shown, transnationalism can be mainly conceived as a complex and multidimensional social field that involves a web of connections between distant places, and thus is occupied by a broad range of social actors including those not directly connected to transnational migrant communities (Basch et al., 1994; Crang et al., 2004). Although there is abundant literature on certain transnational ties, such as remittances, hometown associations and political parties, little has been published on migrants’ transnational religious activities and most of it is American-based (see, for example, Levitt, 2003; Mahler & Hansing, 2005; Menjivar, 1999).