Belonging, Behaving and Believing: The Church of Sweden and the Swedish Migration agency on Unaccompanied Refugee Minors

Aktivitet: Föredrag eller presentationPresentation

Beskrivning

From 2014 to 2016, 44,617 unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) arrived in Sweden and sought asylum. The Church of Sweden has received hundreds of these young people seeking to join the church and be baptised as Christians. Conversion to Christianity among asylum seekers in Europe is a well-documented phenomenon that is often dismissed as merely a strategy to boost asylum chances. This paper challenges such views, examining the intricate reality behind these conversions.

Grounded in three years of ethnographic fieldwork, and drawing on participant observation and first-hand narrative accounts, this paper introduces a Bible study group in the Church of Sweden made up predominantly of URM-background Hazaras from Afghanistan. Mapping the participants’ trajectories in terms of belonging, behaving, and believing, it proposes that belief should be understood as 'practical knowledge' constituted through social participation, rather than according to a form of dogmatic cognitivism. This finding is at odds with the Swedish migration agency's working definition of religion.

The paper furthermore addresses the nested precarities that characterise the lives of asylum seeking youth, and the invisibility that accompanies the bureaucratic processes in which they are caught up. This is juxtaposed with the visibility and recognition that the participants encounter in the community of the church.
Period2024 nov. 19
EvenemangstitelUnga, migration och mångfald: kyrkors arbete i dagens Sverige
Typ av evenemangKonferens
PlatsStockholm, SverigeVisa på karta
OmfattningNationell

Ämnesklassifikation (UKÄ)

  • Humaniora
  • Etik