MIGRANTCHRISTIANITY · Migration, religion and work in comparative perspective. Evangelical ‘ethnic churches’ in Southern Europe

Migration, religion and work in comparative perspective. Evangelical ‘ethnic churches’ in Southern Europe

MIGRANTCHRISTIANITY investigated how Evangelical migrant men and women from Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America make use of a minority religion in negotiating their social and economic integration in Europe. The research tackled two broad questions: 1) the role of religion in migrants’ integration or marginalisation; and 2) how migration is reconfiguring European societies through the production of new understandings of Christianity, more specifically in Catholic countries, where Protestantism is eager to access public recognition. I investigated how migrants develop strategies of integration through their participation in native mainline Protestant churches, and how such strategies are shaped by ethnicity, class, gender and age. I also looked at how native historical Protestant churches act as ‘brokers’ of integration, with reference to a wider social positioning of the migrant as a ‘minority Christian’. The project contributed to our understanding of the role of religion in migrants’ integration or marginalisation and of how migration is reconfiguring the Italian and Spanish societies through the production of new understandings of Christianity: the migration-driven expansion of Evangelicalism in Europe challenges the Catholic majority religion as well as dominant views of migrant religion as Islam only. The MIGRANTCHRISTIANITY project thus involved theoretical and empirical research to produce new knowledge both at the academic and policy level, and engaged different publics, including churches, faith and inter-faith organisations and local, national and EU level authorities in the field of integration and religious pluralism. In terms of its potential impact on European policy objectives, the project contributed to informing policies on migrants’ integration, more specifically on the positive role which religious institutions can play in the process but also pointing to its limitations.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union