Paper short abstract:

In this communication, we show how religious communities address an essential need for space at a neighborhood level. The spaces created, inhabited and made available by religious communities serve as refuge, hosting services that might otherwise be unavailable in the costly urban setting of Geneva.

Paper long abstract:

In Geneva’s urban landscape the access to spaces is often difficult. However, the availability of spaces is an important condition for the deployment of activities that enable the creation of social ties leading to community building. The shared use of spaces among different religious communities, either through rental or lending arrangements, is an indirect response to the challenges linked to urban saturation. The repurposing of existing locations and new and sometimes multiple uses is one of the strategies employed by actors in search of places to gather. The majority of religious communities, aside from historic churches, often relies on sub-renting places of worship or gathers in spaces not initially conceived for religious purposes, such as commercial or residential buildings that have been converted. Religious communities that dispose of larger spaces however frequently share them with minorities lacking access to a place of worship, but also with local residents or neighborhood associations.

In the realm of the participative research project ReligioCités, led by the Cross-Cantonal Information Center on Beliefs, a Geneva-based applied research center, we observed a wide range of secular activities that are hosted in places of worship. These practices attract divers publics and are the result of a network of relationships created with other social actors within the neighborhood.

Finally, we argue that these places serve as “refuge”, hosting and providing services that would otherwise be unavailable in the expensive urban setting of Geneva. We conceptualize this dynamic with the notion of “urban hospitality” (Joseph 1998, Stavo-Debauge 2020).