Paper short abstract:

After two-years fieldwork within Mandirs, Masjids and Gurdwaras across Europe, the paper builds on visual ethnographic data to investigate how worship routines and lay matters find expression in such temples: thresholds of private/public, community/society, change/continuity, inclusion/exclusion.

Paper long abstract:

A manifest effect of transnational migrations on European urban landscape involves the establishment of non-indigenous worship places.

Considering south Asian immigrant minorities, since the post-colonial heyday a range of temples have sprouted over Europe; notably, Hindu Mandirs, Islamic Mosques and Sikh Gurdwaras have given visibility to other peoples' appropriation of public space. Yet, not all these houses of worship have been equally accommodated in their new settings, nor the groups that inhabit them have developed similar cohesion, performing devotions while also attending to mundane matters.

The paper surmises such sacred grounds as public thresholds, spatial hubs that stand as the backdrop of internal and external social relations of each religious community vis-à-vis other creeds and within specific national contexts. Ethnographic work I recently conducted between Italy, the NL and the UK (in the cities of Brescia, Rotterdam and Birmingham) shows that unknown dynamics of differentiation occur within such shrines, foyers of the current economic downturn. Despite providing retreats of solidarity and bulwarks for ethno-religious identity, the south Asian diasporas of Gods lodge and reproduce pre-existing and novel exclusions. Keeping my arguments in tension with 'home studies', I ponder: Who runs these holy households acting as a gatekeeper, and whom instead remains at bay, marginalized or ostracized, barred from participation?

Seeing the lived intersection of gender and faith in highly diverse local contexts might illuminate the historical complexity of interreligious coexistence, but also expose the contemporary entanglement of spiritual and political strategies for doing boundary-work, between community resistance and intercultural dialogue.