The bonding and bridging roles of religious institutions for refugees in a non-gateway context

Abstract

Contemporary research indicates that religious institutions can play bonding and bridging roles in the lives of immigrants, strengthening the bonds within immigrant groups while simultaneously connecting immigrants to the wider society. The majority of this research focuses on religious institutions in US cities with long histories of immigration and sizable immigrant populations. This article examines the role of religious institutions in the lives of refugees living in a city with a small, but rapidly growing immigrant population. Evidence from interviews with Catholic and Muslim refugees and participant observation at two houses of worship suggests that the functions of religious institutions differ for refugees from majority and minority religious traditions. Catholic refugees use their church for bonding and bridging purposes, while Muslim refugees use their mosque primarily for bonding purposes.

Keywords:

• Assimilation
• religion
• refugees
• social capital
• immigrants
• Islam

Notes

1. According to the United Nations' 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, refugees are individuals who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their countries of origin because of their race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group or adherence to a particular political opinion.

2. This comparison of refugees from majority and minority religious traditions is imperfect since it does not control for historical and contextual differences between Somalis and Sudanese. A preferable comparison would have been refugees from minority and majority religious traditions from the same country of origin living in the same city (Chen 2002).

3. From Azande Organization website http://www.azandeorganization.org/Mission.html (accessed 16 May 2007).