RELIGION IN DIASPORA AN APPROACH TO THE GLOBAL MIGRATION 1

Artikel ini membahas keterkaitan antara agama dan imigrasi khususnya dengan kemunculan komunitas diaspora yang dibentuk oleh para imigran untuk melestarikan tradisi agama-budayanya di samping upaya untuk berintegrasi dengan masyarakat asli. Keberlanjutan peran agama dalam komunitas diaspora di negara-negara barat ini secara langsung bertentangan dengan proses sekularisasi yang telah ter jadi sejak decade 1960an-1970an. Mengadaptasi konsep diaspora, artikel secara khusus menelaah peran agama yang terus berlanjut dalam 3 aspek kehidupan para imigran di negeri-negeri Barat, yaitu (i) bentuk asosiasi sosial; (ii) bentuk kesadaran/identitas; dan (iii) bentuk/ pola reproduksi agama/budayanya. Para imigran membentuk dan mengembangkan kelompok-kelompok sosial berbasis agama bersama-sama dengan berbagai aspek lainnya seperti suku, ras dan kebangsaannya. Para imigran juga berkecenderungan memiliki identitas ganda yang terbentuk dari warisan budaya termasuk agama yang senantiasa berpengaruh bersama-sama dengan tumbuhnya ikatan dan rasa memiliki kepada negara dan masyarakat yang ditinggalinya sekarang ini. Terakhir, proses integrasi para imigran berlangsung melalui reproduksi tradisi budaya dan agama yang difasilitasi oleh kebijakan multikulturalisme di negara-negara Barat saat ini.


A. Introduction
The role of religion in the context of immigrants' integration has recently attracted growing attention from students of international migration and ethnicity. 3In his seminal work, Assimilation in American life: the role of race, religion, and national origins, Gordon Milton 4 has already noted the impact of immigrants' religion on the process of their adaptation to the receiver society.Present-day scholars have identified a number of themes or issues related to the role of religion in immigrants' integration, including the increased ethnoreligious awareness among immigrants stimulated by their new minority religious status in the new lands; the dynamic reconstruction of social, political and religious identities extended or narrowed across race, ethnic or sectarian lines; the increased intention to form or join religious-based communal associations; and the internal differentiation and fragmentation within the ethnoreligious immigrant communities. 5The role of religion within immigrant communities has been further endorsed by the establishment of transnational religious networks spawned from home and other immigrant countries where fellow co-religionists reside. 6he paper aims to explore the concept of diaspora intertwined with the role of religion that makes up the way immigrants adapt and integrate into the (secularised) societies of the receiving countries.The argument departs from the assumption that immigrants do not come only by themselves but also bring with them their (different) religion from the home country.The persisting societal role of religion across the world in the last few decades has drawn attention to its prominent and enduring influence on immigrants, particularly those residing in the West.However, the prevalence of secularisation in Western countries and its global influences across the globe 7 should not be overlooked as it also has a significant impact, limiting the social and individual role of religion within immigrant communities.As exemplified in Western European countries, Muslim immigrants in France, Britain and Germany have retained their religious traditions and practice, both in private and public realm, that eventually disturb the secularisation of the host society. 8In short, the study of immigrants' integration should consider carefully the role of religion and the influence of the secularised cultures of the receiving countries.
To delineate the role of religion in immigrants' integration, I adopt the concept of 'diaspora' as the primary analytical tool, which is considered relevant in explaining the phenomenon of religion in the context of immigration, particularly its influential role shaping the modes of immigrants' integration or adaptation in tandem with the rise of globalization and transnational religious networks.Diaspora refers to immigrant communities, exiles, expellees, expatriates, refugees and/or asylum-seekers who feel 'dispersed' from but closely attached to their homeland and who engage in the reproduction of their identities and traditions in the host society 9 .I focus on three meanings of diaspora proposed by Vertovec 10 : (i) as social forms around which immigrants organize themselves such as ethnic (or religious) groupings; (ii) as a type of consciousness by which immigrants define the reconstruction of their ethnic (or religious) identity; and (iii) as a mode of cultural reproduction in which immigrants form minority religious communities and then pursue and transplant their ethno-religious traditions imported from their home country.Religion is not only a complementary element in diaspora but their primary feature, which makes the ethno-cultural bond steadfast and enduring within groups of people living scattered in foreign countries. 11

B. Religion: Enduring and Declining in the Modern Age
The role of religion in society has generated an on-going debate within sociology since its early foundation.Many sociologists since the 1960s have preferred to look at the decline in the role of religion in society as inevitable, following the rapid pace of industrialization and modernization. 12Through four societal processes, namely social differentiation, rationalization, individu-alization, and privatization, the secularization thesis interprets the unilinear evolutional change affecting religion in terms of losing its public roles and influences and becoming less and less important for individuals in modern society.
Dobbelaere 13 elaborates secularization as a multidimensional process, which has occurred at three distinct but inter-related levels: (i) the societal; (ii) the organizational; and (iii) the individual 14 .The institutional differentiation of modern society developed with specific functions and separated structures has led to the demise of the overarching system of religion followed by the breaking up of other sub-systems like politics and economy from religion's absolute influence 15 .This process is adjusted by the organizational changes of society with marginalization of religious institutions, increase in religious pluralism 16 and the decline of religious authority as the sole moral reference in society 17 .
The secularization process is further affecting individuals in terms of decreasing religious involvement such as attendance at congregations and joining of religious organisations; and importantly the decline of religious faith (i.e.believing in God(s) and an afterlife) 18 .For example, in Britain, based on examination of data from the British Household Panel and the British Social Attitude Survey conducted by Voas and Crocket 19 , it is revealed that the levels of belief among British people are lower even than the nominal member-ship of the church.To some extent, the individual secularization trend has been confirmed worldwide.A study conducted by Aarts et al 20 demonstrates that the steady decrease in Christian belief and in church membership across several Western countries between 1980 and 2000 occurred in tandem but that membership declined faster and to a larger extent.Based on data from the World Value Survey, Norris and Inglehart 21 also confirm steady declining levels of religious beliefs and practices particularly in countries with high degrees of modernization and industrialization.
However, secularization as an inevitable process concomitant with modernization, which, in extreme form predicts the disappearance of religion from society, has been rebutted in numerous ways.As pointed out by Berger 22 , the secularization thesis has mistakenly linked modernization with the withering away of religion.While undeniably having secularising impacts on reducing the prevalence of religion both in the public sphere and individual minds, modernization is also cleverly adapted and/or exerted by religious institutions to aid survival and maintain different levels of socio-economic and political influences.Similarly, Casanova 23 argues against the meaning of secularization as the privatization of religion.Based on his comparative examinations across several Latin countries, many (Catholic) religious institutions in different organizational forms have actively initiated interventions in state policies and the public sphere in general.
Further, Berger 24 points out that societal secularization does not necessarily impact on individual secularization.A person might continue believing in God and practicing their religion despite living in a secularized environ-ment.As empirically supported by Finke and Stark25 , there exists a paradox of individual religious vitality shown in the American case, which is relatively high despite the high level of societal modernity and secularity 26 .Driven by the supply-demand premise adopted from the theory of economics, the existing religious pluralism in American society has provided lots of options for the masses, which eventually generates a significant impact on levels of religious vitality.In addition, this hyper-industrial society might have generated a psychosocial thirst for certainty among individuals, constructed as forms of past nostalgia for religiosity, which religion can provide some answers to 27 .
Hence, it seems fruitful, as advocated by Martin 28 , to see secularization not as a homogenous, unilinear and undifferentiated form but as a complex historical process with different possible trajectories across different societies.As shown in Western and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America and the global south, different forms of religious monopoly or plurality intertwined with democratic or totalitarian state policy in earlier periods have shaped the different public roles of religious institutions and degrees of individual religiosities in the present.The different secularization trajectories are also shown by other world religions (e.g.Islam).The historical rivalry between Church and State for power seems to be lacking in Muslim societies, which makes them not only unfamiliar with secularization but also more likely to resist it as an idea associated with past Western colonialist and imperialist projects 29 .The existing idea of multiple forms of modernity, generating different impacts on different societies 30 , could be seen as the primary cause of these varied forms and trajectories of religion across societies in the contemporary age 31 .
In short, as stated by Bruce 32 , secularization in terms of the decline of the socio-political power of religion and individual religious beliefs and practices, at least in Western Europe, is likely to be an irreversible phenomenon 33 .Nevertheless, (new) religious or spiritual movements and institutions across the world (including the US) seem to resist both the social differentiation and privatization process and try to maintain and exercise a considerable sociocultural and political force 34 .According to Casanova 35 , however, such similar processes are hardly found in Europe.Given that the bulk of immigrants arrived from the south, bringing in and maintaining their religious traditions have not only increased the religious pluralities in the Christianised-yetsecularised Europe but also pushed old and new issues regarding the (social and political) role of religion into the public sphere 36 .There is likely a doubleedged impact; either the secularised (Western) society secularising 'immigrant religions' (e.g.Islam or Hindu) or those religions desecularising the (Western) host society (ibid).The above conclusion correlates with Habermas' 37 point of view that both religious people and secularist counterparts are required to learn and respect one another's stances in this 'post-secular world'.

C. Diaspora: Reviving its Ethnic and Religious Foundations
Tölölyan 38 argues that "where once were dispersions, there now is diaspora".This statement underscores the ubiquity of the term of 'diaspora' designating immigrant communities, exiles, expellees, expatriates, refugees, asylum-seekers and so forth.The definition of diaspora in this context, nevertheless,seems too broad and is similar to that suggested by Conner 39 as "that segment of people living outside the homeland".The term diaspora originally emerged in the Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, to describe Jews living in exile outside their homeland.It comes from the Greek word diasperien, from dia-, 'across' and -sperien, 'to sow or scatter seeds' 40 .In this paper, I present the conceptualisation and use of the term diaspora based on Vertovec 41 summary on three general meanings as (i) social form; (ii) a type of consciousness; and (iii) a mode of cultural production.
As social form, diaspora refers to Safran's 42 definition denoting 'expatriate minority communities' associated with the paradigmatic case of the Jewish diaspora.Diaspora shares six primary characteristics including forced dispersal; collective memory; alienation in host countries; the myth of return; idealisation of homeland; and group consciousness and solidarity.Within this definition, diaspora is associated with negative experiences of displacement, victimisation, alienation, suffering and loss alongside a dream of (returning to) the (lost) homeland (ibid), as experienced by exiles, expellees or subjects of forced migration.However, Tölölyan 43 and Cohen 44 questioned Safran's emphasis on the coerced dispersal from the homeland as one of the prerequisite conditions of diaspora.According to them, even the Jewish diaspora of old was not solely forged by coerced displacement but also by voluntary emigration from the homeland in order to find better economic opportunities.Additionally, Tölölyan and Cohen refer to other Hebrew terms, gôla and galût, instead of diaspora, that describe the banishment, displacement, exile and suffering of the Jews during the destruction of Judaea by the Romans.
Another referential definition of diaspora as social form refers to Baumann's 45 conceptualisation, which defines it as (i) the process of becoming scattered; (ii) the community living in different countries; and (iii) the place in which the dispersed group reside.This definition somehow echoes the conceptualisation of diaspora offered by Safran, Tölölyan and Cohen as an identified (ethnic or religious) community becoming (or already being) scattered in different foreign lands across the world yet remaining connected on the basis of their collective memories and co-responsibility 46 .In this definition, diaspora also denotes the strategy of boundary maintenance perpetuated by minority (ethnic or religious) immigrant communities to preserve their (cultural) identity and tradition alongside their integration or adaptation into the host society 47 .
In doing so, as well as to maintain its privilege as a distinct expatriate community, diaspora embodies what Sheffer 48 calls a 'triadic relationship' between (i) the homeland where they came from; (ii) the hostland where they reside; and (iii) transnational links they have maintained with fellow people living in different countries.In other words, the social, political and economic life of diasporic communities is projected simultaneously to three different local, national and transnational orientations both in the host country, the homeland and other related countries where their fellow people reside.This 'triadic relationship' is a crucial feature of diaspora, informing also the other two meanings as a type of consciousness and a mode of cultural production.
As a type of consciousness, the conceptualisation of diaspora revolves around a complex state of mind, with dual or paradoxical (religio-)cultural awareness and an unfinished and changing identity construction, which is constituted through immigration and (re-)settlement in foreign lands 49 .Cohen 50 states that the dual or paradoxical nature ofdiasporic consciousness can be regarded as a critique of the normative definition of diaspora limitedly connoted to a distinct immigrant community with specific 'ideal type' criteria as offered by Safran.Needless to say, members of diaspora are al-ways subjected to the process of cultural translocation in which their (ethnoreligious) traditions are negotiated, transplanted, modified and hybridised in two or more places they and their fellow people have lived in 51 .
Diasporic consciousness describes an awareness of multi-locality, a sense of being 'here' and 'there' at the same time 52 .On the one hand, this consciousness is negatively formed through alienation, a feeling of being strangers and/or perhaps the experience of discrimination due to their (ethnic or religious) minority status in host countries.On the other hand, this diasporic consciousness is positively shaped by the identification with the bigger (or imaginative) socio-political or cultural entity either in the past or in faraway lands, which is exerted to challenge the socio-cultural superiority of the host society 53 .
To some extent, diasporic consciousness shares certain similar ideas to Du Bois' 'double consciousness' 54 .Drawing from the variety of experiences of Black people from across the Atlantic in Britain, the US and the Caribbean, Paul Gilroy delineates Black diasporic consciousness as negatively hinged on the history of slavery and racism and positively on the socio-political struggles for equality against the White Anglo-Saxon domination.Importantly for Black people, this diasporic consciousness delineates the rediscovery of their historically fragmented cultural identity.Hall 55 introduces the idea of an 'imaginary coherence' as a strategic tool adopted by Black people across the continents to make sense of the shared experience of dispersal yet fractured memories of historical pasts.The invocation of Africa is more or less as an imagined idea of the point of origin, a reference to the glorious historical or cultural entity which is exerted to challenge Western (White) domination.
However, Hall 56 further insists on the constant instability of identity, which is always reconstructed in the interplay between past, future and present: Cultural identity … is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being'.It belongs to the future as much as to the past.It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture.Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories.But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation 57 .
In short, the diasporic cultural identity is not fixed, constructed at one time.This identity, on the one hand, might be presented as a single and unified category such as the Jews, the Armenians, South Asians or Muslims yet concealing a multiplicity of opinions, traditions, religious sects, political affiliations, lifestyles and so forth.On the other hand, identity is subject to change.Its meanings would proliferate or be transformed when encountering different socio-cultural and political conditions.
As a mode of cultural production, the conceptualisation of diaspora concerns the process of cultural integration or adaptation to host societies through the reproduction of the home country ethno-cultural traditions, which intersects with its paired concept, transnationalism 58 .
[M]igration … involve[s] the transference and reconstitution of cultural patterns and social relations in new settings, one that usually involves the migrants as minorities becoming set apart by 'race', language, cultural traditions and religion.… [The process is accompanied by] transnationalism … refer[ing] to the actual, ongoing exchanges of information, money and resources -as well as regular travel and communication -that members of diaspora may undertake with others in the homeland and elsewhere with the globalized ethnic community. 59ving been accompanied by ethno-cultural reproduction, diaspora does not connote solely the myth of return usually asserted by immigrants 60 ; the conditions might hinder their taking a mainstream integration incorporating into and adopting the cultures of the host society.Nonetheless, combined with the increased intensities and scales of immigrants' transnational engagements and practices, diaspora is preferably celebrated as a nomadic mode of life, "dwelling and travelling within and across nations" 61 Related to this, Cohen 62 disregards the negative connotation of diaspora as suffering and alienation, yet insists on its virtue as an exuberant ground for cultural development and advancement.The tension, negotiation, engagement and accommodation between the cultural baggage brought in from the homeland, the new national values of the adopted lands and the transnational connections with fellow people have potentially inspired an immense motivation to progress.The Jewish diaspora in Babylon, Cordoba and Istanbul were famous for their great contributions to medical and scientific developments and the expansion of the international and inter-regional trading networks.Further, as exemplified by Chinese people and Indians in the contemporary era, their transnational connection with fellow people overseas has become a valuable asset to conduct and expand various business activities thus obtaining better social statuses and economic prosperities outside their traditional homeland 63 .
In this context, diaspora is always linked to the creation of the 'third space' 64 in which both immigrants and non-immigrants negotiate and crisscross their boundaries either affecting or being affected by one another.For immigrants particularly, it requires effort to feel 'at home abroad' 65 by reproducing their culture, traditions and lifestyles and building social institutions required to serve their peculiar socio-religious, economic and cultural needs; efforts that potentially reshape and change the socio-cultural fabric of the host societies 66 .These efforts might be self-initiated and mobilised among immigrants with their own resources and/or supported either by fellow ethnic members, nationals, co-religionists or the states of origin and contextualised by multilayered local, national and international socio-political structures.
The rise of transnationalism, understood as the socio-cultural, political and economic life of immigrants spanning two or more countries (e.g. home and host countries) allowing the building of diverse forms of networks exchanging goods and ideas back and forth, has greatly affected the way immigrants integrate and adapt to the receiving society.As Glick Schiller et al 67 suggest, transnationalism is used appropriately to describe the innovations and (cultural) creativity of immigrants in their integration to the host countries while maintaining cultural (or religious) distinctions and forming transborder networks with fellow people living at home and other immigrant host countries.The term 'transnationalism from below' was coined by Smith and Guarnizo 68 , referring to the ability of immigrants as active social actors to enact the global and international networks dominated by nation-states and transnational corporations and to form transnational circuits that serve (and/or shape) their own socio-cultural, religious, political and economic interests both at home and in host states.
Diaspora thus denotes a social condition experienced by immigrants, which is structured through migrancy, (re-)settlement, past memories of the homeland, adaptation or integration to new countries and existing transnational links with fellow people overseas 69 .Given that immigration either past or present is not always unidirectional or permanent as a one-way process, it always involves an interplay between immigrants and diverse layers of socio-political structures they have lived with, which is not only localised in their new homes but transcends nation-state borders and ethno-religious and cultural boundaries 70 .Diaspora is likely to be accompanied by the establishment of transnational ties to and from places where immigrants came from and now reside in 71 .

D. Religion in Diaspora: Examining the Role of Religion in the Immigrants' Integration
Recent sociologists of immigration have paid serious attention to religion in terms of how it influences the process of (re-)settlement, adaptation, integration and identity formation of immigrants as well as how religion and religious practices of immigrants are reshaped, changed and modified, adapting to the host countries' religious or secularised environments 72 .Importantly though, immigrants' religion, especially where it differs to the majority populace of the receiving society, is supposed to have a significant impact on setting up immigrants' integration trajectory through the formation of rather exclusive and/or separated ethno-religious groups.In contrast, however, it is also important to examine the impact of secularisation in the host society on the way immigrants treat religion in their socio-cultural and political life in diaspora.Having integrated through a mainstream trajectory into the secularised host society, immigrants might have become less religious, more individualised and may disassociate from their own ethno-religious communities.
Warner 73 elaborates the recurrent themes relating to religion in the context of immigration, particularly exemplified in the US.Those themes in-clude (i) the increase of (ethno-)religious awareness among immigrants transplanted from the home country yet situated by the emergent new consciousness regarding their religious minority status in the host country; (ii) the dynamic reconstruction of religious identity, expanded or narrowed across race, ethnic or sectarian lines; (iii) the increased intention to join or form religiouslybased communal associations or institutions; and (iv) the internal differentiation and fragmentation affected either by generational succession or the arrival of new groups bringing in new ideas and changes to the established religious associations.
Warner's argument is developed from two primary propositions, the first of which concerns the persisting social and individual role of religion in modern society, particularly on immigrants 74 .The proposition directly challenges the secularisation thesis espousing the demise of religion in modern society as discussed in the previous section.Second, immigration and (re-)settlement in foreign lands have inevitably involved the (structural or cultural) adaptation of immigrants including their individual or communal religious life to the socio-religious or secularised environment of the host society 75 .In other words, whilst it might continue exercising its influence, the religion of immigrants is also subject to change, constrained internally and externally by the dynamic of the community and the host society.
To build a theoretical framework examining the role of religion as well as its transformation and changes in the immigration context, I adopt the concept of diaspora based on Vertovec's 76 three meanings: as social form, a type of consciousness and a mode of cultural production, elaborated in the first section of this chapter.As Hinnels 77 explained, immigration potentially transforms immigrants who become part of a minority (religious) group with immediate impact on their religious life and practices 78 .The concept of diaspora is deployed to analyse the social condition as well as the process by which immigrants' religion is going to be reshaped, changed and modified to adapt to the religious or secularised contour of the host society 79 .At the same time, religion potentially exercises its influence on immigrants' socioeconomic, cultural and political activities and importantly shapes their mode of integration into the host society 80 .

E. Religion as a Source of Diasporic Social Forms
First, related to diaspora as a social form, religion can be seen as an ethno-cultural source that is able to bond and coalesce immigrants regardless of their different ethnicities and race to form a minority (ethno-)religious group.This premise is widely agreed on by scholars of diaspora including Cohen 81 , Safran 82 , Tölölyan 83 , Sheffer 84 , just to name a few.However, it has been disputed whether religion constitutes diaspora in and of itself 85 .Cohen 86 argues that diaspora is appropriately attributed to discreet immigrant ethnoreligious groups (e.g.Jews and Sikhs) but not to minority immigrant religious groups with worldwide connections (e.g.Christians or Muslims) 87 .As adherents to 'world religion', the latter groups are inherently characterised by their proselytizing missions, opening membership up to everyone, enabling territorial expansion, which then contradicts the very idea of diaspora.
However, Baumann 88 and Hinnels 89 insist that religion is not only a complementary element in diaspora but its primary feature, which make the ethno-cultural bond steadfast and enduringwithin groups of people living scattered in foreign lands.The Jewish diaspora of old was able to form a strong ethnic bond and remain distinct because of its different religious identity to the majority of host societies 90 .It can be concluded that through immigration from the original homeland and (permanent) settlement as a minority in a new land but preserving cultural values and traditions, maintaining exclusive group boundaries and in certain ways resisting acculturation to the mainstream host society, an immigrant (ethno-)religious community might form a diasporic religion 91 .With this conceptualisation, the label diaspora can be attributed to several minority immigrant religious groups in Western countries including Hindus and Muslims 92 .
Instead of prolonging the dispute regarding the invocation of diasporic religion, it is preferable to follow Vertovec's 93 emphasis on the very nature of diaspora as an 'imagined connection' (a modified form of Anderson's 94 'imagined community'), of immigrants on the basis of shared cultural commonalities, which include religion.At first, diaspora is supposed to describe the coalescence of immigrants with fellow people across ethnic and racial differences due to the existence of a shared sense of belonging to a (global) religious community (e.g. the Islamic Ummah).Through certain identified and knowable cultural commonalities, standardised religious rules as well as joint involvement in rituals, congregations and religious feast celebrations, each member might be able to define in-group and out-group boundaries vis-àvis the host society 95 .The coalescence would eventually cement a sense of solidarity and co-responsibility among them 96 .
Second, the imagined connection would be expanded encompassing fellow co-religionists living both athome and in other immigrant countries as well.This resembles Shaffer's 97 'triadic relationship' between home, host and other countries that is inherent in the context of diaspora.With advanced telecommunication technologies that connect peoplein all corners of the world, immigrants are becoming aware, well informed and are trying to intervene and/or get involved in certain local, national or international events affecting their fellow co-religionists residing in different countries.This opens opportunities for them to exercise a sense of solidarity and co-responsibility and forge an internationally unified religious community.
There exist a large number of religiously inspired actions initiated by immigrants concerning events or movements occurring in their home countries such as the inter-community dialogue among South Asian religious diasporas in Britain (Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims), regarding the religious conflict in India 98 ; the insurgency involvement of the Sikh diaspora over Khalistan 99 ; the struggle of the AlleviKurdish-Turkish diaspora in Germany for public and formal religious recognition in Turkey 100 ; the involvement of the Muslim Association of Britain in the Stop the War Coalition against the US-led invasion to Iraq 101 ; and certain faith-based international charitable missions labelled 'diaspora philanthropy' conducted by immigrant communities to their country of origin 102 .

F. Religion at the Forefront of Diasporic Social Identity
The second meaning of diaspora (a type of consciousness), the shared condition of being a member of a minority religious group, of being alienated and of being strangers is very elemental.Yang and Ebaugh 103 elucidate that the transformation from a religious majority status in the home country to a religious minority status in diaspora has had a tremendous impact on the (re-)construction their religious identity.On the one hand, immigrants are thought to learn and become aware of the contrasts between their religion and the religion adhered by the native population.This condition is sometimes worsened by the prejudice and hostility of the natives regarding their religious differences.On the other hand, immigrants are also required to make significant efforts to establish religious institutions such as organisations, communal associations and houses of worship in order to pursue, transplant and reproduce religio-cultural traditions from their home country to the diaspora.These combined conditions would inevitably cause immigrants to be more conscious of their religious identities and traditions 104 .
According to Peek 105 , the rise of religious identity, either surpassing, accompanying, replacing or opposing other forms of social or personal identities such as race, ethnicity and nationality, is linked to an understanding that immigration itself is a theologising experience.The minority complex in terms of race, ethnicity, religion and/or economic deprivation faced by immigrants generates trauma-like experiences that potentially turn immigrants towards religion 106 .Religious institutions in diaspora (e.g.mosques, churches, temples) are offering not only ritual services but are also meeting other socio-economic needs; retaining religious identity and becoming an active member of a church are not only intended to compensate for the loss caused by immigration but also to gain types of material and other benefits needed in life.In addition, the increase of ethno-cultural diversity in (Western) host societies at large has made immigrants more aware of their own religious cultural traditions, which then shapes their identity formation 107 .
taken by Muslim immigrants in the West have polarised their religious identities into different forms including the secularised or westernised, the wholly religious and/or indifferently preserved in their ethno-traditionalist religious model 116 .

G. Diasporic Reproduction of Ethno-Religious Traditions as a Mode of Immigrant Integration
The last meaning of diaspora as a mode of cultural reproduction is considered the foremost part of this theorisation and is thought to enrich our understanding of two other concepts of diaspora: social form and type of consciousness.The section is concerned primarily with the role of religion in setting up immigrants' ethno-religious integration trajectory through reproducing ethno-religious traditions and forging minority immigrant religious communities in parallel to those of the host society.The process is contextualised by the rise of globalisation and transnational phenomena, which allow immigrants to establish social networks and import goods and religious ideas back and forth between homelands, host lands and other immigrant host countries.These dynamic tensions between 'continuity and change' affecting religion while at the same time influencing or taking influences to and from elsewhere resembles the very virtue of religion in diaspora 117 .
First, adopting the ethno-adhesive immigrant integration path 118 , it is argued that the existing ethnic or racial and religious prejudice of the unfriendly civic political culture of the host society and the preference of immigrants to stay around their fellow co-ethnicists and co-religionists and their reluctance to surrender the home country ethno-religious traditions have set up an alternative integration trajectory through ethno-religious cultural reproduction within exclusive minority immigrant communities.The creation of this trajectory is closely related to the capacity of religion to enable its adherents to transform both the social and spatial landscapes of places they live in and to bring certain new ideas, values and traditions crossing different politico-regional and cultural borders.
As theorised by Tweed119 , religion is always able to make a home while at the same time able to cross borders and travel across time and space.In other words, religion is about 'dwelling and crossing'120 .To build this theory, Tweed refers to the efforts made by Cuban Catholic immigrants to (re-)construct a consecrated shrine in Miami devoted to a Cuban religious idol.The shrine, on the one hand, illustrates an attempt to (re-)localise religion to a place where immigrants can make a (local) pilgrimage.The devotion to a Cuban Catholic idol, on the other hand, indicates the way religious ideas travel across national borders and endure over time121 .This development, nevertheless, has created a Cuban ethno-religious niche as a primary vehicle for integration into American (religious) society.
As exemplified in the case of the US, nevertheless, immigration to new places has compelled ethno-religious traditions and social institutions to change in order to adapt to local acceptable forms 122 .The formation of religious institutions, particularly houses of worship across different religious groups (e.g.mosques, temples or gurdwaras), is likely to imitate the hallmark US Protestant congregational church models, with independent characteristics and formal membership offering various social services beyond ritual and religious matters 123 .This structural adaptation, however, tends to be limited to organisational levels considering the delicacy of religious entities, which are defined as sacred, fixed and eternal while any deviation would be considered heresy.As shown in Abusharaf 's 124 study of a Moroccan-turned-Yemeni mosque in New York, the structural religious adaptation reshaped the way Muslim immigrants organised to form an Islamic mission in parallel with native American churches while at the same time struggling to maintain their religious distinctiveness.
The next aspect driving immigrants' integration and adaptation hinges on the recent globalisation of religion and the rise of transnational religious ties.Rudolph and Piscatori 125 states that "religious communities are among the oldest of the transnationals" as shown by the journeys of Sufis, Catholic missionaries and Buddhist monks bringing and transforming religious ideas across the vast array of regions since antiquity.Related to this, on the one hand, the current immigration of people across regional and national borders with different socio-cultural and political environments generates both de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation of the particular religion taken by immigrants to the new place 126 .On the other hand, the rise of globalisation means that as communication is eased across the globe, (the practice of) religion has been placed in the continuous interplay between universal homogenisation and localised or circumstantial heterogenisation 127 .So, the study of immigrants' religious life should not be restricted solely to the internal or external dynamic of their adaptation to the host society but should take into account continuous influences to and from global and transnational religious activities 128 .
Transnational religious practices involve diverse actors (i.e.persons as well as local, national and transnational institutions) and exert diverse forms of networks, activities, pathways and directions of flow for exchange of goods and ideas to and from the sending and receiving countries 129 .According to Levitt 130 , there exist three forms of transnational religious organisations: (i) the extended hierarchical transnational model (e.g.Catholic churches); (ii) the negotiated transnational model (e.g.Protestant churches); and (iii) the recreated transnational model between home and host countries without any established connection to similar or larger local, national or international bodies.
Aside from the emergence of diverse organisational forms, the most important issue is the way these activities affect the adaptation of immigrants' religious lives.Bowen 131 , with a reference to Muslim immigrants in France, exemplifies this phenomenon, relating the creation of the Islamic virtual transnational forum where scholars, clerics, community leaders and lay Muslims have engaged in debates and discussions on the practice of Islam, not isolated to the local or national boundary (of France) but in connection with different national and transnational contexts worldwide.Cesari 132 mentions the presence of transnational Islamist revivalism, originatingin immigrants' home countries (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood and the Tablighi Jamaat) that now operate within Muslim immigrant communities in the West 133 .In other words, the adaptation of immigrants' socio-religious life has occurred in complex ways not solely determined by the local conditions of the receiving society, but influenced by transnational religious developments in the home country and other immigrant host countries.
The recurrent trips of immigrants back home for religious and sociocultural events or activities have also generated importation of goods, religious ideas and practices to and from host countries.These transnational religious circuits have ultimately enriched the levels of internal religious pluralism in both countries 134 .Particularly in diaspora, Warner and Wittner 135 suggest that the emergence of internal differentiation within a religious community is caused not only by generational succession but also by new transnational influences coming in.The phenomenon echoes the fusion and fission theory in which immigrants tend to unite into a single religious community regardless of ethnic or sectarian differences whenever their number is small but eventually disintegrate once their number increases 136 .In addition, the increase in internal religious diversity and fragmentation would affect the construction of religious identities that, according to Hall's 137 argument, are always contested and undergoing reconstruction.
Another prominent factor affecting the religious life of immigrants is the mainstream integration path for adapting to the societal and individual secularisation in the host societies, which happens alongside the ethno-religious integration trajectory above.As discussed by Cesari 138 , through an encounter with Western secularised societies and cultures, Muslim immigrants have experienced considerable changes in their religious practices.On the societal level, the administration of Islam, which varies according to different forms of State-Church relationship across Western European countries including cooperation, state-sponsored religion or total separation) has affected the ways in which Muslims organise themselves and form ethno-communal religious associations 139 .
The attempt to administrate the organisation of Muslim immigrants within the body of the state is encouraged for certain reasons including the integration and assimilation project of immigrants and the perceived threat of Muslim terrorists to homeland security 140 .In this context, the state administration of Islam, on the one hand, offers various advantages including public and official recognition (and exemptions) as well as statefunds for Islamic affiliated schools, mosques and Muslim community centres.On the other hand, this allows the state to intervene in internal Muslim community affairs like the election of new leaders, the selection of religious materials for Imams, the curricula of religious teachings for students and so forth.The process leads to the secularisation of Islam, since Muslim religious bodies and cultural practices have to be governed within the secularised state regulation.The administration includes the restricted use of religious symbols in the public sphere as seen in the case of l'affaire du foulard in France141 .
Another form of secularisation emerges with the individualisation of Muslim religiosity, which is defined as a matter of personal choice, detached from communal or traditional imposition and from legitimate Islamic religious authority.Islam seems to be treated either as an ethical resource, an emotional attachment, an ethno-cultural identity or simply as an assertive identity without a mutual correlation with a devotional observance of rituals or other sanctioned religious rules142 .The individualisation of religiosity has been endorsed by the availability of a huge number of Islamic teaching resources in the internet, which eventually enable every Muslim to learn and interpret Islam on an individual basis without the guidance of any legitimate clerical authorities 143 .In addition, this individualised and secularised Islamic understanding has also potentially generated the de-territorialisation of Islam which is linked to the rise of Islamic neo-fundamentalism and radicalism within Muslim immigrants who treat Islam as if a pure, fixed and a totalised doctrine uprooted from any socio-cultural, historical and political contexts144 .
To sum up, the integration of immigrants has become more complex and multilinear influenced by the reproduction of their ethno-religious traditions, the influence of global transnational religious ties from home and other immigrant countries and the prevalence of secularisation of the host society especially in Western countries.As a result, the complex conditions have allowed immigrants to act creatively within multilayered structures both in their host, home and other related countries and to forge mixed, hybridised and syncretised ethno-religious traditions, lifestyles and social practices 145 .
For example, according to Vertovec 146 with reference to Muslim migrants in the West, their integration has cost them their ethno-religious trajectories and identities being polarised into several forms.These include (i) the secular, by abandoning any religious aspects; (ii) the cooperative, by contextualising religious practices adapted to, mixed and blended with local cultures; (iii) the cultural, by emphasising home cultural traditions and ethnic affiliations yet detached from any religious influences; (iv) the religious, by following a universally standardised religious practice and involving such religious (sectarian) associations; (v) the ethno-religious, by pursuing religious practices as blended with ethno-cultural traditions brought in from home countries; (vi) the behavioural, by practising religion, as a private matter, without further affiliation to any ethnic or sectarian religious groups; and (vii) the ideological by following or joining such religious political groups.To note, Vertovec argues that these possible trajectories "are not mutually exclusive" as they might occur simultaneously in different places or within the same immigrant ethniccommunities.

H. Conclusion
Throughout the paper, I have discussed the role of religion vis-à-vis the prevalence of secularisation in the integration of immigrants into the receiving society.By deploying the concept of diaspora as social form, a type of consciousness and a mode of cultural reproduction, religion has potentially coalesced immigrants across different ethno-national, racial and socio-economic backgrounds; set up an ethno-religious integration path through the institutionalisation of socio-religious bodies and the formation of minority ethno-religious immigrant communities; negotiated with the religious or secularised environment of the host society; and re-constructed, though always contested, the immigrant socio-political and religious or secularised identity.The role of religion in the context of immigration has been further endorsed by the active expansion of transnational religious movements originating from the home country.As a result, the integration pattern of immigrants has become multilinear, either through the mainstream path into the secularised receiving society or the ethno-religious one into established minority religious communities.The complex integration process of immigrants has potentially resulted in the polarisation of their religious trajectories manifested in their loyalty to the ethno-religious tradition of the home country, their transformation into the standardised religious tradition and their adoption of secular values from the host society.
*Amika Wardana, S.Sos., M.A., Ph.D. is a lecturer in Sociology Department of Sociological Education Faculty of Social Science Yogyakarta State University and Honorary Research Fellow Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies University of Exeter Stocker Rd United Kingdom.E-mail: masmicko@gmail.com;a.wardana@uny.ac.id; a.wardana@exeter.ac.uk