Descrizione del progetto
Promuovere l’integrazione delle comunità religiose minoritarie
Le recenti tendenze nella migrazione globale dei popoli hanno ispirato la formazione del concetto di teorie modello riguardanti l’assimilazione delle minorità nelle società ospitanti. Riguardo alla questione delle esibizioni religiose (manifestazioni) delle minorità in spazi pubblici, non si dispone di sufficienti ricerche empiriche. In sostanza, non è chiaro se tali manifestazioni contribuiscano a un senso di accettazione o creino animosità nei confronti degli immigrati di religioni minoritarie. Il progetto ReligSpace, finanziato dall’UE, condurrà numerose ricerche e sperimentazioni in contesti urbani per formulare una nuova teoria sugli effetti causali delle manifestazioni religiose sull’integrazione delle minorità. La comprensione di questa delicata questione favorirà l’integrazione armoniosa delle minoranze e aiuterà i responsabili politici e gli urbanisti nel prendere decisioni costruttive.
Obiettivo
Recent globalization and immigration trends are motivating tremendous efforts to regulate manifestations of minority religions in the public space, such as religious structures, stores, attire, and rituals (hereafter, spatial religious manifestations). Yet the empirical literature has, to date, not taken on the methodologically and conceptually challenging undertaking of theorizing, operationalizing, and assessing this dimension of religion. In particular, it remains unclear what causal effect manifestations of religion in the public space have on minority-religion immigrants’ sociopolitical integration: do they, by validating immigrants’ identity, facilitate a sense of belonging and the endorsement of local practices, or nurture alienation and hostility toward the host society?
Integrating up-to-date theories and methods from political science, psychology, sociology, and geography, and optimizing external and internal validity, this project is the first large-scale research to examine the causal effect of exposure to spatial religious cues on sociopolitical integration, studying minority-religion immigrants of the three monotheistic religions in four urban settings.
The research will be divided into three work packages: (1) conceptualization and operationalization of spatial religious manifestations; (2) comparative naturalistic and survey-embedded experiments examining the effect of real-world spatial religious cues on minority-religion immigrants’ sociopolitical integration; and (3) a panel survey with longitudinal geocoded data analyzing the conditions in which spatial religious cues are particularly instrumental in local-level integration.
Besides developing a novel approach to the study of religion in politics, this project will open new horizons in the understanding of aggregated religious priming effects in real-world settings, with insights into the dynamics that would advance a more inclusive society via nuanced policies and informed urban planning.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
91904 Jerusalem
Israele