This book reconstructs the connection between religion and migration, drawing on post-colonial perspectives to shed light on what religion can contribute to migrant encounters. Examining the resources and motives for hospitality as lived in Christian contexts in the Nordic region, it addresses the content of talk about "religion" in public discourse, the concept having become something of an empty signifier in debates surrounding migration. Multidisciplinary in approach, this volume demonstrates that "religion" is not, in fact, an empty signifier, but gains substance through practice and interpretation. Considering the undeveloped potentiality of religion and the manner in which the unseen religious perspective in secularity becomes manifest in practice, this volume will appeal to social scientists and scholars of religion with interests in migration, refugee studies, theology, and Christian practice.
1. Introduction: The Pursuit of Common Grounds Conceptualizing Values
and Encounters
2. A Nonmodernist Humanizing: Reconstructing Theological
Resistance Beyond SecularReligious Binaries
3. Religion, Race, and the
Fantasies of Benevolence
4. Migration and Christian Vocation in a Global
World
5. "Tu Veux un Chewing-gum?": Encounters in Hospitality and Willfulness
6. Europe Between Globalism and Localism
7. We Who Flee and We Who Are in the
Business of Producing Refugees
8. State Lockdown: The Concept of "Risky
Immigrants" in Danish Policy Discourse
9. The Gift of Being Needed:
Protestantism and the Double-Edged Sword of Hospitality
10. Bordering,
Othering, and Empathy: Enhancing Social Proximity in a World in Motion
11.
The Cracks in the Category of Christianism: A Call for Ambiguity in the
Conceptualization of Christianity
12. Challenged by Ecumenism: The Blessing
of the Religious Other for Ecclesial Hospitality Practices
13. Conceptions of
Dialogical Hospitality: The Ugly Side of Hospitality
Cecilia Nahnfeldt is Scientific Leader, Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society, Uppsala University and Researcher at Research and Analysis Department, Church of Sweden, Uppsala.
Kaia S. Rųnsdal is Associate Professor in the field of Leadership, Dialogue and Care in Plural Contexts at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway.
