Diaconia Going Liquid? Faith-based Initiatives for Migrants in Secularizing Welfare Societies

Description

In the World Values Studies (Inglehart 2021) Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are among the countries that stand out for a high degree of secularization and relatively strong welfare societies. Historically, Protestant and – in the case of the Netherlands – also Catholic, churches played a major role in the development of these welfare societies. Nowadays, faith-based organizations are still important actors in supporting (religiously diverse) migrants from, both from Central and Eastern Europe (EU-migrants) and beyond. What are the issues these ‘diaconal’ organizations face, considering the deinstitutionalization of religion, the transition of welfare states, and increasing migration from less secularized countries? Current approaches of social work are often caught up in a binary perspective on religious and non-religious organizations.
This paper - presented on behalf of all three authors by Annette Leis-Peters - presents an approach to research (secularizing) faith-based support by using a modified secularization theory that focusses on processes on the institutional level and asks about both the discontinuities and continuities between more and less secularized faith-based initiatives, focusing on the characteristics of their practices, including the implied practice theory.

Period	25 Apr 2024
Event title	ISORECEA conference: Religious Diversity and Social Cohesion in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond
Event type	Conference
Conference number	16
Location	Tirana, AlbaniaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International