In Transnational Religious Organization and Practice Stanley John provides the first in-depth analysis of a migrant Christian community in the Arabian Gulf. The book explores how Kerala (South India) Pentecostal churches in Kuwait organize and practice their Christian faith, given the status of their congregants as temporary economic migrants and noting that the transient status heightens their transnational orientation toward their homeland in India. The research follows a twofold agenda: first, examining the unique sociopolitical and migrational context within which the KPCs function, and second, analyzing the transnational character and structural patterns that have emerged in this context. The ethnographic research identifies and analyzes the emerging structures and practices of the KPCs through three lenses: networks, agents, and mission. This study concludes with a proposal for an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to be employed in the study of transnational religious communities.

This volume, bringing together work by scholars from Europe, East Asia, North America, and West Africa, investigates transnational religious spaces in a comparative manner by juxtaposing East Asian and African examples. It highlights flows of ideas, actors, and organizations out of, into, or within a given continental space. These flows are patterned mainly by colonialism or migration. The book also examines cases where the transnational space in question encompasses both East Asia and Africa, notably in the development of Japanese new religions in Africa. Most of the studies are located in the present; a few go back to the late nineteenth century. The volume is rounded off by Thomas Tweed’s systematic reflections on categories for the study of transnationalism; his chapter "Flows and Dams" critically weighs the metaphorical language we use to think, speak, and write about transnational religious spaces.

How do faith-based organizations influence the work of transnational peacebuilding, development, and human rights advocacy? How is the political role of such organizations informed by their religious ideas and practices? This book investigates this set of questions by examining how three transnational faith-based organizations—Religions for Peace, the Taizé Community, and International Justice Mission—conceptualize their own religious practices, values, and identities, and how those acts and ideas inform their political goals and strategies. The book demonstrates the political importance of prayer in the work of transnational faith-based organizations, specifically in areas of conflict resolution, post-conflict integration, agenda setting, and in constituting narratives about justice and reconciliation. It also evaluates the distinctive strategies that faith-based organizations employ to navigate religious difference. A central goal of the book is to propose a new way to study “religion” in international politics, by actively questioning and reflecting on what it means for an act, idea, or community to be “religious.”

Focusing on the dilution of state sovereignty, this book examines how the crossing of state boundaries by religious movements leads to the formation of transnational civil society. Challenging the assertion that future conflict will be of the “clash of civilization” variety, it looks to the micro-origins of conflicts, which are as likely to arise between states sharing a religion as between those divided by it and more likely to arise within rather than across state boundaries. Thus, the chapters reveal the dual potential of religious movements as sources of peace and security as well as of violent conflict. Featuring an East-West, North-South approach, the volume avoids the conventional and often ethnocentric segregation of the experience of other regions from the European and American. Contributors draw examples from a variety of civilizations and world religions. They contrast self-generated movements from “below” (such as Protestant sectarianism in Latin America or Sufi Islam in Africa) with centralized forms of organization and patterns of diffusion from above (such as state-certified religion in China). Together the chapters illustrate how religion as bearer of the politics of meaning has filled the lacuna left by the decline of ideology, creating a novel transnational space for world politics.

In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education. Often the expertise needed stemmed from problems at a local or regional level, but many transcended nation-state borders. Experts helped shape a new transnational sphere by creating communities that crossed borders and languages, sharing knowledge and resources through those new communities, and by participating in special events such as congresses and world fairs.

This book explores the role of religion in the lives of Brazilian migrants in London and on their return 'back home'. Working with the notion of religion as lived experience, it moves beyond rigid denominational boundaries and examines how and where religion is practiced in migrants' everyday lives.

Return has long been considered the end of a migration cycle. Today, returnees’ continued transnational ties, practices and resources have become increasingly visible. Transnational Return and Social Change joins what is now a growing fi eld of research and suggests new ways to understand the dynamics of return migration and the social changes that come along. It pays tribute to the meso-level impacts that follow the practices and resources migrant returnees mobilize across borders. With a particular focus on the meso-level the book takes up the challenge of transnational research and enquires into the consequences of return for local communities, organizations, social networks and groups. Presenting a collection of case studies dedicated to migrations across Europe and beyond, this book contributes new insights into the societal impact of migration in pluralized societies.

This collection examines the subject of identification and surveillance from 16th C English parish registers to 21st C DNA databases. The contributors, who range from historians to legal specialists, provide an insight into the historical development behind such issues as biometric identification, immigration control and personal data use.

With the progress in communication and transport technologies, it has never been easier for migrants to stay connected with their country of origin. Facing the wide range of activities in which immigrants are involved, governments in the country of origin and the country of destination have endeavoured to respond to these activities. Up until now, the question of the nature of political engagement across borders that migrants may pursue has yet to be studied in a broad sense. The purpose of this book is to establish to what extent the place in which immigrants settle (namely the region or country) might determine the types of political activity in which they engage. More precisely, it ascertains whether and for what reasons different forms of transnational political activity develop in the United States and Europe. Looking at a series of case studies from Europe and the USA, it identifies the full range of political activities and various similarities in the actions undertaken by communities based in the same area. With contributions from international experts, this insightful book will be of interest to postgraduates in the field of international politics, migration researchers, political scientists and policymakers. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This innovative collection examines the transnational movements, effects, and transformations of religion in the contemporary world, offering a fresh perspective on the interrelation between globalization and religion. Transnational Transcendence challenges some widely accepted ideas about this relationship—in particular, that globalization can be understood solely as an economic phenomenon and that its religious manifestations are secondary. The book points out that religion's role remains understudied and undertheorized as an element in debates about globalization, and it raises questions about how and why certain forms of religious practice and intersubjectivity succeed as they cross national and cultural boundaries. Framed by Thomas J. Csordas's introduction, this timely volume both urges further development of a theory of religion and globalization and constitutes an important step toward that theory.