Religion and migration in North America: a bottom-up perspective

Conference organized by Nadia Malinovich (Université de Picardie, EPHE, GSRL - Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités), Anne Dalles Maréchal (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, GSRL - Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités), Anne-Sophie Letessier (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, ECLLA - Etudes du Contemporain en Littératures, Langues et Arts) and Cécile Coquet-Mokoko (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, CHCSC - Centre d'Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines).

Event open to the public with mandatory registration (see the form below).
Conference in French and in English.

Presentation

These past years have seen a resurgence of interest in the religious beliefs and practices of immigrant populations, both in popular and academic discourse. While this subject is most often addressed in the context of larger debates about multiculturalism and social cohesion within society as a whole, researchers are increasingly interested in religious identities as experienced by the newcomers themselves. As Peter Kivisto notes, two of the most fundamental questions to be asked about religion and immigration are: "Do religions help newcomers to adapt? Is religion a comfort, an aid to integration or an obstacle?" (2014). Following Kivisto's comparative and transnational perspective, this conference will adopt a "bottom-up" approach to explore how religion has played a role in the migratory trajectories, lived experience and imaginary of newcomers in the United States and Canada from the nineteenth century to the present day, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (history, anthropology, sociology and literature).

Partners

- Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (GSRL, UMR 8583 PSL)
- Centre d'Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines (CHCSC)
- Graduate School Humanités - Sciences du Patrimoine de l'Université Paris-Saclay
- Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris-Saclay

Program

March 20, 2025

9am - 9.30am: Welcome and opening remarks

PANEL 1 - Collective and Individual Identity Claims: 19th and 20th centuries
9.30am - 10am: From Presbyterian to Infidel: Immigration and Community in the Diary of a Rural Miller, James Barry, 1822-1906
Daniel Samson (Brock University, Canada)
10am - 10.30am: Anti-Judaism, Antireligyeze tetikayt and the Emergence of a Yiddish Anarchist Identity in the United States (1890–1918)
Binyamin Hunyadi (Institute for Advanced Studies, Romania)
10.30am - 11am: Sephardic-Oriental women in early-20th century New York: Between Americanization and identity preservation
Merav Bellaiche (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
11am - 11.30am: Coffee break
11.30am - 12pm: The Serbian Orthodox Church in the United States of America and Serbian migrants (1919-1941)
Vesna Đikanović (Institute for Recent History of Serbia in Belgrade, Serbia)
12pm - 12.30pm: Montréal 1924: An illuminated cross and Jewish migration
Simon Rabinovitch (Northeastern University, USA)
12.30pm - 1pm: « En quête d'une vie meilleure »: émigration russe évangélique à Vancouver (Canada) et Portland (USA)
Anne Dalles Maréchal (Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Etienne, GSRL)

1pm - 2.15pm: Lunch break

PANEL 2 - Integration and Transmission in the Contemporary Context
2.15pm - 2.45pm: Les Églises évangéliques, passerelle vers le conservatisme politique pour les immigrés hispaniques ?
Marie Gayte-Lebrun (Université de Toulon)
2.45pm - 3.15pm: Entre communauté et nation : la religion comme levier d’intégration des immigrés ouest-africains musulmans dans la société américaine
Kalilou Barry (Université Paris-Est Créteil)
3.15pm - 3.45pm: Beyond worship: the mosque as refuge for newcomers in Toronto
Imen Ben Jemia (Université de l’Ontario français, Canada) et Mahmoud Abu Ali (University of Waterloo, Canada)

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
4pm - 5pm:  De la mission au droit des migrants, la conversion américaine du catholicisme
Blandine Chelini-Pont (Aix-Marseille Université)

March 21, 2025

9.30am - 10am: Welcome

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
10am - 11am: La religion des orisha et la lutte pour la liberté religieuse: des sacrifices d’animaux au racisme religieux
Stefania Capone (IRL Mondes en transition, CNRS-USP, São Paulo, Brésil)
11am - 11.30am: Coffee break

PANEL 3 - Transnational Dynamics, De-colonial perspectives, Legal Questions
11.30am - 12pm: Loups-garous en mouvement : pratiques de protection haïtiennes en diaspora
Ana Fiod (ENS-EHESS Paris & Museu nacional du Brésil, Rio de Janeiro)
12pm - 12.30pm: “Missionary immigrants” and “migrant-missionaries”: a reappraisal of reverse mission through the lens of itinerant missions in Canada and the US
Kwasi Boakye-Yiadom (McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)
12.30pm - 1pm: Séphardisme décolonial : migration et activisme communautaire des Juifs Marocains entre Québec et Israël
Roy Shukrun (Université de Groningen et Université McGill, Canada)

1pm - 2.15pm: Lunch break

2.30pm - 3pm: Religion, Migration, and Treaty: Perspectives from Manidoo Ziibi (Canada)
Pamela E. Klassen et Sarina Simmons (University of Toronto, Canada):
3pm - 3.30pm: The Jewish Migration Project: Building a Crowdsourced Archive of Jewish Migration
Liza Sheehy et Rachel Grupp (Northeastern University, USA)

ROUND TABLE
4pm - 15pm: Renewing Migration Narratives
Discussion with Mae Ngai (Columbia University) on her forthcoming A Nation of Immigrants: A Short Story of an Idea.