Religion as a path to civic engagement

Abstract

Dreams of global citizenship have long captured the Western imagination, but religion is rarely seen as a possible contributor to its emergence. This paper1 uses the case of transnational migrants – potential global citizens par excellence – to explore the relationship between religion and politics across borders. Based on a study of Indian Hindus, Pakistani Muslims, Irish Catholics and Brazilian Protestant immigrants living in the metropolitan Boston area, it examines how these citizens of the world actually think about who they are and what they want to do about it. How does religion figure in the rights and responsibilities of global citizenship, where are these fulfilled and who benefits from them? I argue that, while a small group claims an exclusive variety of religious global citizenship and is concerned only about helping those who share their point of view, the vast majority are open to partnerships around major social issues, such as education, health and employment. Religion is an under-utilized, positive force that social scientists and activists can no longer afford to ignore.

Keywords:

• Religion and politics
• transnationalism
• migrant religion
• US religion
• political incorporation
• civil engagement

Notes

1. God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and Changing the American Religious Landscape (Levitt 2007).

2. See Levitt (2007) for an in-depth discussion of the study sample and methodology.

3. With the exception of Brazil where there has been a national debate about racial harmony.

4. For academic debates concerning the rise of Hindu nationalism and NRIs, see Blom Hansen (1991), Cossman and Kapur (1999), Raj (2000), Kurien (2002, 2004, 2005), Kapur (2003) and a special volume of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies devoted to Hindu nationalism and NRIs entitled, ‘Hindutva Movements in the West: Resurgent Hinduism and the Politics of Diaspora’, 2000, vol. 23, No. 3.

5. ‘No entry for Modi into US: visa denied’. Indiatimes News Network, Haryana, India, 18 Mar 2005, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1055543,curpg-1.cms.

6. See Kasinitz, Mollenkopf and Waters (2004), Malkin (2004) and Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters and Holdaway (2007).

7. On the potential for religious social capital to operate beyond the boundaries of the church, see Corwin Smidt's (2003) edited volume on religion as social capital, particularly chapters by Warren (2003), Wood (2003) and Nemeth and Luiden (2003).

8. Fox (2005) makes a useful distinction between ‘transnational’ citizenship and ‘global’ citizenship. The former is membership in political communities that are not limited to states. These are cross-border communities that are not global in scope. It can also refer to bi-national or bi-local relationships that are quite bounded in terms of specific political communities (not necessarily nation-states). Cosmopolitan citizenship does not necessarily have a cross-border dimension, in terms of either community membership or rights.

9. For civic republican thinkers, citizenship is the overarching civic identity produced by and productive of a sense of belonging to a particular nation-state (Habermas 1998). For liberal thinkers, citizenship denotes formal membership in a nation-state, an identity, which is universally defined in order to promote formal equality in rights and obligations for all (Jones and Gaventa 2002).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peggy Levitt

PEGGY LEVITT is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Wellesley College and Co-Director of the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University