Mavelli Luca - The Refugee Crisis and Religion

Additional Praise For The Refugee Crisis and Religion

The current displacement crisis requires new and creative responses responses that address the diversity of needs within the refugee population; responses that encourage all of us political leaders, media commentators, policy makers, ordinary citizens to recognise our common humanity across religious, political, economic, ethnic and cultural divisions. This book is an essential resource for developing such creative, inclusive responses.

Merete Bilde , Policy Advisor, European External Action Service

This book offers a timely and important engagement with one of the most pressing issues of our time: the links between refugees, conflict and religion. Questioning the traditional divide between secularism and religion, the contributors compellingly show how policy responses to refugee crises are often very narrowly defined around security concerns and fail to grapple with larger human and humanitarian responsibilities. Indispensable reading for both scholars and practitioners.

Roland Bleiker , Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland

Under a surgeons knife we are all the same. Out of anaesthetic we revert to creed, colour, place and politics. This much we know. These essays force the thinking on what we actually do with our identity and the identity of others. Secular or religious the challenge is the same; we must answer the question, consciously, what now?

Nic Coombs , Career Diplomat, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office

In examining the entanglement of religion and the refugee crisis, this book takes us beyond the conceptual to practical outworking and hears from those with lived experience of forced migration. The book launches fresh thinking from grassroots to global perspectives around notions of Muslim refugee, hospitality and fear of other.

Jo Knight , Advocacy Coordinator, TEAR Australia, and former immigration lawyer

By bringing together religion and migration, this book addresses as Wilson and Mavelli aptly put it the most obvious dimension of the so-called migration crisis and the biggest elephant in the room. The religio-civilisational divides through which migration is perceived are subject here to intense scrutiny from post-secular perspectives. The result is both incisive critique and refreshingly human stories of endurance, hospitality and faith as much as hardship, hostility and prejudice. The book achieves this unusual breadth by combining academic voices with those of migrants, advocates and activists. Drawing from diverse frontlines of crisis and critique, this edited collection will inspire and provoke those of us grappling with the contradictions, the hopes and the horrors that are bound up with the intersection of religion, secularism and migration.

Anne McNevin , Associate Professor of Politics, The New School, New York

The issue of global refugees or, somewhat pejoratively, migrants is an international scandal. Despite early optimism, the key impact of the Arab Spring was not to provoke a fourth wave of democracy; instead, it stimulated a huge wave of desperate people seeking to escape seemingly endless turmoil, repression and despair. This outstanding book, edited by two fast-rising stars of the religion and politics genre, makes riveting reading. It brings together scholars, practitioners and refugees, providing a comprehensive overview of the relationship between refugees and religion in the current world. No one reading it, including policy makers, could remain indifferent to the crisis it depicts so graphically.

Jeffrey Haynes , Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University

The Refugee Crisis and Religion is an important and timely book. The world is experiencing an unabated growth in the numbers of desperate refugees and internally displaced persons. At the same time, lamentably, it is also experiencing an increasing reluctance by States to meet their treaty obligations to protect those fleeing persecution. What role does religion both that of those living in potential host countries and that of the refugees play? How has the issue of religion played out in the securitization of the refugee regime? This book explores these questions and many more, from a multiplicity of perspectives. It aims for illumination of these difficult issues the resolution of which can mean life or death for those seeking a safe haven.

Karen Musalo , Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, UC Hastings, San Francisco

This accessible volume of essays brings together a diverse range of voices and themes to explore the complex relationship between religion, violence, the nation state and migration. Contributions from academics and practitioners alike make this indispensable reading for anyone seeking a deeper appreciation of how the global movement of people has once again reignited the cultural and political tensions around the Islam/West debate.

Mona Siddiqui , Professor Islamic and Interreligious Studies, University of Edinburgh

Mavelli and Wilson provide a timely, vital analysis of the crucial relationship between religion and refugees. This important book is just what the world needs at this moment. The book should be required reading for all the politicians and pundits who claim Islam is a violent religion or that Western nations should not accept Muslim refugees. The Refugee Crisis and Religion compellingly challenges accepted wisdom by combining rigorous scrutiny of the entanglements of contemporary migration and religion with incisive empirical examples of refugees and those practitioners serving them.

Alex Stepick , Professor of Sociology, Portland State University and Florida International University

The Refugee Crisis and Religion

Critical Perspectives on Religion in International Politics

In recent years, the discipline of International Relations has undergone a religious renaissance. The distinction between the religious and the secular has been brought into question by a resurgence of interest in religion, culture and identity in the context of international politics, forcing mainstream theories to take religion seriously. Furthermore, efforts to provincialize IR by bringing in voices from outside the West have stimulated interest in other religious traditions which have hitherto been marginalized in the discipline. Attempts have also been made to free IR from its dominant secular orientation through an encounter with the postsecular which can open up productive avenues of inquiry. This series, therefore, opens up space for critical scholarship on Religion and International Relations and postsecular approaches to global politics.

Series Editors

Giorgio Shani , Professor of Politics and International Relations at International Christian University (ICU) in Japan

Mustapha Pasha , Chair in International Politics, Aberystwyth University

Titles in the Series

The Refugee Crisis and Religion: Secularism, Security and Hospitality in Question , edited by Luca Mavelli and Erin K. Wilson

The Refugee Crisis and Religion

Secularism, Security and Hospitality in Question

Edited by
Luca Mavelli and Erin K. Wilson

London New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

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Selection and editorial matter Luca Mavelli and Erin K. Wilson 2017