I’m kind of agnostic’: Belief discourse by second-generation migrants at the Tamil Saiva Temple
Transplanting non-Western religions to Western nations results in firstgeneration migrant attempts to transmit faith in vastly different contexts. Especially as adolescents, second-generation migrants tackle mediating their personal religious beliefs in a society with diverse religions and ideolog...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
John Benjamins Publishing Company
2020
|
| Online Access: | https://benjamins.com/catalog/aral.19083.per http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80260 |
| Summary: | Transplanting non-Western religions to Western nations results in firstgeneration migrant attempts to transmit faith in vastly different contexts.
Especially as adolescents, second-generation migrants tackle mediating their
personal religious beliefs in a society with diverse religions and ideologies as
well as negotiating membership of their ethnoreligious community. This paper
draws from an ethnography in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia. I present Sri
Lankan teenage migrants’ discourse from their faith classroom to elucidate
processes of belief positioning. In working out their emergent, and provisional,
faith identities the students deploy mainly Tamil and English linguistic features
in their belief narratives. Flexible languaging complements their “syncretic acts”
- the practice of drawing on diverse ideologies and experiences (outside the
boundaries of a particular religion) to form personalized beliefs.
Translanguaging thus facilitates the expression of circumspect, nuanced and
non-traditional interpretations of their heritage religion. Understanding such
processes of belief positioning can help societies and institutions to work
towards migrant youth inclusion. |
|---|