Migrants, Families, and Religion: An Intriguing Research Agenda. Book’s Content and Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the collection of essays presented in the book, starting by describing the challenging and exploratory meaning of the relationship between family, religion, and immigration. In the European landscape, only recently has the religion of migrants started to be investigated in new ways, that are careful to grasp the complexity of the religious experience and to avoid pre-conceived and stereotyped readings: a sort of “normalisation” in the approach to the topic, fed by both migration studies and religion studies. The chapter presents a reading of a selected sample of recent studies, adopting an approach based on the de-instrumentalization of religion and on the re-humanization of migrants, enabling them to express their subjective outlook on their own experience and on the significance of religious belonging. Lastly, the contents of the following chapters are presented and discussed.