Comment habiller la Vierge? Syncrétisme et anti-syncrétisme haïtien à Montréal

Nous basant sur une recherche ethnographique réalisée à Montréal, nous mettrons en lumière l’articulation entre les religions catholique et vaudou à partir d’une controverse ayant lieu au sein d’une mission catholique haïtienne montréalaise quant à la représentation pictographique de la Madone. Après un bref survol de l’immigration haïtienne à Montréal, sera abordée la multiplication des champs religieux en contexte migratoire à travers le concept de syncrétisme. Ceci permettra de mettre en évidence la pratique parallèle de différentes religions afin d’articuler divers sujets et besoins. Malgré, ou justement du fait de ces parallélismes, nous verrons comment certains membres de la mission s’efforcent de différencier le catholicisme du vaudou, phénomène qui doit être analysé dans le cadre d’une conscience spécifique de classe au sein de la communauté des migrants haïtiens à Montréal.Drawing on anthropological fieldwork, I will utilize a debate taking place within the Haitian Catholic mission in Montreal about the pictorial representation of the Virgin Mary as an example in order to illustrate the interplay between Catholicism and Voodoo. After a short overview of Haitian immigration to Montreal, I will discuss the multiplication of religious fields in the migratory context using the concept of syncretism. This will allow me to show the parallel practice of different religions, as it serves to articulate different issues and needs. In spite of, or perhaps due to these parallels, I observed that considerable efforts are made to clearly mark the differences between the two religions. This will be analysed with regard to class consciousness in the Haitian migrant community in Montreal

The Event in Migrant Categorization: Exploring Eventfulness Across the Americas

The categories that define people on the move must be understood as unstable, contingent, and provisional processes. This paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship that explores the lived complexities of migrant categorization and their social implications. Based on fieldwork in Brazil and Central America, the paper investigates the processual character of categorization by intertwining temporal and spatial dimensions, focusing on specific events to understand the occasions, circumstances, and intentions that bring about adapted or entirely new categories. An eventful notion of categorization demonstrates not only how categories come into being but also how categories remain connected to particular events that are recognized or produced in response to movement. These categories stick to the identity of a subject in transit, confirming and solidifying it; however, they can also challenge the subject’s legal stability, generating new insecurities and (im-)mobilities

A shifting yet grounded transnational social field: Interplays of displacement and emplacement in African migrant trajectories across Central America

In this article, we draw on the volatile complexity of African migrant trajectories in Central America to broaden the scope of transnational scholarship. These trajectories are characterised by mobilities as well as immobilities, taking shape in particular local contexts. By focusing on the interplays between displacement and emplacement that are part of these trajectories, we aim to increase our understanding of the extent to which migrants still ‘on the move’ experience both temporal embeddedness and cross-border connectedness, thereby acknowledging and unravelling transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route. To do so, we build on long-standing scholarly commitments in Central and South America and recent field research in Costa Rica. We go into selected empirical cases to discuss the dynamics of travelling, dwelling and travelling again as part of African migrant trajectories across Central America. We then explore the value of a ‘shifting’ transnational social field perspective and indicate some challenges for future trajectory research

Of Spirits and Virgins: Situating belonging in Haitian religious spaces in Montreal, Canada

So far religious encounters in migratory settings have been largely examined in relation to the pluralizing of religious cultures, the emerging of syncretisms as well as religious conversions. However, many migrants choose to live more than one religion at the same time and integrate themselves into several religious communities with different and sometimes opposing religious agendas. This article concentrates on the Haitian migrant community in Montreal, Canada. On the basis of the parallelisms between Vodou and Catholicism it first examines the parallels between different religious concepts and performances and second, the significance of particular Vodou spirits which act as mediators between different cultures. The article questions the idea of exclusive belongings and highlights the meaning of space as a differentiating factor in the diversification of religious meanings and messages in multicultural settings.Keywords: Vodou, Haitian diaspora, space, spirit possession, syncretism, religious parallelis

Solidarität

Der Begriff Solidarität wird im Alltag gerne bedenkenlos mit Migration und Flucht in Verbindung gebracht. Welche konkreten Beziehungen und Handlungsinhalte jedoch mit dem Begriff bezeichnet werden, ist nur schwach bestimmt. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeichnet daher zunächst die Begriffshistorie und daraus hervorgegangene widersprüchliche Bedeutungsdimensionen nach. Anschließend werden anhand von Beispielen des pro-migrantischen Aktivismus in Europa die Herausforderungen von Solidaritätsvarianten beleuchtet, die aus dem Impuls des Mitgefühls entstehen (‚Mitgefühlsolidarität‘). Daran wird deutlich, dass der Solidaritätsbegriff mitunter auf einer rein diskursiven Ebene oder als Form der Selbstbeschreibung eingesetzt wird, um gesellschaftliche Ideale zu formulieren. Gleichzeitig sind gerade im Migrations- und Fluchtkontext die konkreten, in den sozialen Nahraum eingelagerten solidarischen Praktiken von ökonomischen oder symbolischen Ungleichheiten zwischen den Gebenden und den Empfangenden von Unterstützungsleistungen gekennzeichnet. Obwohl eigentlich inkludierend gedacht, kann diese pro-migrantische Solidarität daher paternalistische und viktimisierende Dimensionen vor allem dann entfalten, wenn die soziale Distanz aufrechterhalten wird. In Konstellationen also, in denen keine neue Gemeinschaftsform angestrebt und die exkludierenden Dimensionen der eigenen Gesellschaft weder hinterfragt noch verändert werden, nützt der Solidaritätsbegriff letzten Endes der Aufrechterhaltung bestehender symbolischer Grenzen

Displacement and New Sociabilities: Introduction to Thematic Week

In this thematic week we aim to think through the notion of displacement. At a time that is marked by unprecedented movements of refugees and migrants on the one hand, and deep-seated anxieties of becoming a “stranger to one’s own land” (Hochschild 2016) on the other, we believe that it is pivotal to reconsider this idea from various perspectives. Bringing together eight social anthropologists who give insights into their on-going ethnographic research in different parts of the world, we tackle this theme by giving precedence to the often-dialectical ways displacement and emplacement are experienced, lived and made sense of by groups and individuals