This session explores transculturalism as an active process where religious elements are transformed and merged into complex new identities within the “Third Space” of migration. Moving beyond assimilationist models, the unit utilizes multi-sited ethnography to document how Muslim, Christian, and Hindu communities reconstruct traditions across Asia and North America. Case studies investigate how religious institutions adapt to specific political economies, from the “layering” of Islamic communal life in Japan’s segmented labor markets to the bi-directional flow of Nigerian Pentecostalism in Texas. By analyzing the “calculus of change,” contributors examine what is lost, gained, or reinterpreted—such as the emergence of women as ritual specialists in Hindu Adhiparasakthi communities. Ultimately, the unit demonstrates how religion functions as both a stabilizer and a catalyst for change, grounding global migration trends in the lived theologies and everyday practices of migrants navigating transnational borders.
This paper considers the importance of place in Nigerian transnational religion. It centers the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), a Nigerian Pentecostal institution, to examine how Nigerian faithways in the US are shaped across the Atlantic. The RCCG is one of the organizations that have positioned Nigeria as the hub of Pentecostalism in the world. Besides its Nigerian core in Lagos, the RCCG has its American core in Texas which has the largest population of Nigerians in the US. The existing connection between Texas and Nigeria creates a transcultural community sustained to a large extent by mobility. It posits that institutions and norms that migrants take with them do not always terminate at destination points but often become part of the continuous exchanges across certain nodes of movement. Using oral interviews, the paper argues that established migrant religious institutions are part of, and better facilitate, these exchanges.
This presentation examines the role of Christian faith in identity formation and communal belonging among Chinese American and Chinese Korean Christians. Christianity, given its universalist assumptions regarding one God over all creation, provides inherently transcultural resources for shaping self and community perceptions. In both the United States and South Korea, Chinese migrant churches provide practical and relational resources for settling and building community. But behind these well attested phenomena is a complex negotiation of culture and identity for Sinophone Christians whose national, ethnic, and cultural belongings resist simple categorization. This research, based on interviews and participant observation with Chinese American and Chinese Korean Christians and congregations, investigates and compares how Sinophone Christians of multi-cultural backgrounds utilize their faith to make transcultural sense of their migratory contexts and situations.
The presence of Muslim communities in Japan is often framed as a product of recent globalization. This paper challenges that view, situating Islamic communal life within longer historical and institutional processes. Drawing on the historical research of Muslim migration and theoretical insights from migration studies and institutional development, it examines how Muslims navigate Japan’s postwar dual labor markets and regulated immigration regimes. Migration decisions, embedded in transnational networks linking sending and host societies, are shaped by structural factors rather than individual economic incentives alone. Over time, these processes foster the gradual emergence of mosques, religious networks, and community organizations that sustain Islamic life in a society where Muslims remain a small minority. By situating Muslim migration in historical and institutional context, this paper contributes to broader discussions on the development of Islamic diasporas and the roles of institutions in shaping religious life beyond Muslim-majority regions.
This paper examines how migration and transcultural processes shape religious identity through an ethnographic study of women’s leadership in the Hindu Adhiparasakthi tradition in the United States. Using human‑geographic approaches that understand belonging as an active practice, it explores how gender, migration, and religious authority intersect as women increasingly serve as ritual specialists, signaling a shift from traditionally male‑centered models. The NJ community has evolved into a multistate hub for ritual praxis and belonging, strengthened by digital communication technologies adopted during the 2020 pandemic. These tools have broadened participation, deepened transnational ties, and supported efforts to establish a new temple, anchoring collective identity and cross‑border religious networks. The study highlights multidirectional patterns linking digital media, ritual practice, and community engagement, showing how global and local iterations of community adapt inherited forms to new social and geographic contexts and how transcultural processes continually reshape communal identities.