Sociologies (Mar 2014)
Dieu ne comprend pas le lingala ? Migrations religieuses et frontières raciales
Abstract
For several years now, there has been a profusion of new studies appearing in France on post-colonial migrations, with significant empirical and critical contributions to the field, despite polemic and controversy, forming a major scientific turning point. At the same time, a marginal but flourishing field of study has been growing in the past fifteen years on the presence of African churches in Europe. Aside from the diversity of means of religious expression observed in these communities, there are important trends towards creation of an entirely separate field of study, defined by the nationality of the participants (sub-Saharan Africa) and their religious practices (evangelical, charismatic and/or Pentecostal Christianity). A closer look shows, however, that these discussions have taken a particular form in the French context, given the resilience of the categories which tend to racialise, or even pathologise attachments to origin, defending the theory of racialised religious identity. As we will see, this thesis arises from the ethnicity of socio-religious dynamics, leading to the loss of context of the emergence of these religious forms on the one hand, and the elimination of any post-colonial reflexivity on racialisation of global society, on the other.
