MARIE CURIE 2019 - Progetto RELCAPETOWN
RELCAPETOWN – Religious Super-Diversity in Cape Town. Dynamics of Leadership and Territorialization Through Religious Spaces in the Migration Process.
MARIE CURIE 2019 - Progetto RELCAPETOWN (Carmelo RUSSO) (Resp. L. Faranda) dal 01/06/2020 al 31/05/2023 - € 212.433,60
Researcher: Carmelo Russo
Start date: 1 June 2020
End date: 31 May 2023
Project number: 886578
EU Contribution: € 212.433,60
Through an anthropological research, this project explores the interaction between religions and migration in specific areas of Cape Town, South Africa, from the perspective of the “religious super-diversity” notion. The research deals with social, cultural, and political roles of religious places and communities in a theoretical framework that investigates the relationship between religious agency of migrant groups and social cohesion. It aims to shed light on the implications of religion and the dynamics of religious leadership and hierarchy upon urban spaces, the public sphere, and relations with institutions.
The areas of Cape Town known as Subcouncils 15, 16 and 20 have been selected for the impressive presence of old and recent “migrants’ religious places”: there are different Christian churches, Synagogues, Mosques, Hindu Temples, Jehovah’s Witnesses Temples, etc.
In 2007 Steven Vertovec introduced into social science theories the category of super-diversity. According to this notion, the nature of immigration brings with it “a transformative diversification of diversity.”
Super-diversity as a starting point provides a challenging scope on the South African cities. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, Cape Town and South Africa have been experiencing new migration patterns, which introduced wide variations in countries of origin, ethnicity, language, religion, and gendered channels of mobility. While a great deal of attention has been placed upon the numbers of migrants arriving in Europe from Africa, a little less it has done on the relationships between religious places and migrant mobility in the African cities which present wide super-diverse societies, with multiple identities and constantly changing religious urbanscapes.