This study examines the role of religion in
lives of the Japanese migrants in the Czech Republic. Scholars have been
dealing with issues concerning both the religiosity and migration for a long
time. The contemporary sociology of religion offers various theoretical and
methodological tools to approach both social phenomena; nevertheless, regarding
the transformative character of both of them, it remains difficult to
characterize the nexus of the various modes of religiosity and migration development. Based on critics of contemporary research on
migrants’ religiosity, I propose a qualitative approach
that builds upon the postulates of theories of transnationalism and draws on
Jean-Claude Kaufmann’s method of understanding interviews. The method of
gaining and analysing the interviews conducted with the Japanese living
long-term in the Czech Republic allowed me to observe the process of religious
identity construction, or in other words to uncover the deeper levels of claims
concerning their relationship with religion. The results of
my empirical investigation and analysis show that 1) not all migrants create transnational identities, 2) the method of understanding interview allowed some respondents to
construct their own individualized and fragmented
religious identities, 3) not all religious
identities of migrants can be interpreted as transnational.
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