23/05/2024 10:30 - 12:45

HALL: FATESI - MARCATAJO

Proponent: Rapisarda D.L.

Chair: Drønen T.S.

Speaker: Drønen T.S., Haug K.S., Loland I., Rapisarda D.L., Stålsett S.

Migration is about crossing borders, physical as well as cultural, religious, and social. Migratory processes have led to discussions on how to contextualize border-work in a globalized world, and how to address mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. Migration challenges assumptions on socially and culturally homogeneous contexts and destabilizes the idea of fixed borders. Borders are liminal spaces of challenges and opportunities where cultures, languages and identities are negotiated, thus unfolding complex dynamics of power, privilege, and inclusion/exclusion. This panel discusses the intersection of migration, religion and border-work from different theoretical perspectives and in a variety of contexts through the following topics: 1. How the Mediterranean Sea works as hermeneutical site for a postcolonial theology of migration and how such process in turn symbolically reconfigures the Mediterranean border; 2. How postcolonial theological reflection challenges traditional notions of hospitality and dominant discourses on borders and border-work; 3. How transnational repression shapes cultural and religious boundary-making among Eritrean refugees in exile and gives rise to multiple hegemonic, non-hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic discourses and practices; 4. How forcibly displaced persons in Central-Africa challenge local communities over scarce resources, and how local churches develop theological and societal approaches to foster dialogue and peaceful cohabitation.