Social Science Research Council

With support from the Ford Foundation from 2003-2004, the SSRC organized an international working group to design approaches to research on Religion, Migration, and Diversity:  A Transnational Perspective.  Based on the conclusions of this working group, we then organized an internationally comparative research project spanning three continents over three years.  Beginning in summer of 2006, senior scholars in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Malaysia organized research teams to examine the role of Islam, Pentecostal Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism in The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities as they engage local societies of London, Johannesburg/Durban, and Kuala Lumpur/Kajang.  Through research of migrant biographies, these investigations are exploring how transnational aspects of migrants’ religious beliefs, practices, and institutions become part of their local family, community, and national engagements.  To facilitate the coordination and to foster comparisons across the sites, we are periodically convening all project members  – site coordinators, researchers, and international advisors – in each of the three sites in order to explore comparative questions, research methods, and analysis.  In June 2006, an initial group met in Berlin to begin coordinating the research project.  In April 2007, the group met for the second time at Roehampton University in London to assess preliminary findings, reassess inter-site coordination, and to consider how the research can continue to inform two types of comparisons in future publications: between religions both within and across the individual sites.  We expect that the project will result in four publications - 1 for each site and 1 comparison volume.  Future meetings will be held in Kuala Lumpur in November 2007 and in Johannesburg in April 2008.