ABSTRACT
Global migration is contributing to the changing global religious landscape as intra- and inter-religious diversity is gaining traction. As Connor and Tucker (2011: 986) tells us, ‘religious diasporas, once a phenomenon within only a handful of countries, are now present in almost every country in the world’ (see also Johnson and Bellofatto 2012). From ancient civilization, migration has been integral to people’s lives, producing complex cultural outcomes. The movement of people, a recurring phenomenon in this age of globalization, also entails the movement of beliefs, traditions, ideas and practices. The increasingly differentiated migration flows encompass forced and voluntary, skilled and unskilled, documented and undocumented, internal and international, temporary and permanent. This chapter examines the question of how the relationship between religion and diaspora has been theorized. It seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of both the meaning of these categories and their relationship. The chapter contributes to new strands of scholarship that contribute to the dismantling of the dichotomous ways of thinking in the modern world by emphasizing the cross-fertilization between different diasporic cultures and religions as they interact.
