Pratiques religieuses et production de l’espace public en migration : comparaison entre deux champs migratoires

Abstract

By observing the presence of what we consider a ‘religious tool’ – a set of expressions convened to stimulate a territorialization of religious practices – we present religious practices identified as a base of spatial production in public space, in migratory contexts. By comparing the Mexico–United States migratory field (with Catholic migrants in Los Angeles) and that of Senegal–France (with Muslim migrants of Soninké origin in Paris), we show the similarities and differences that religious practice produce in terms of spatial anchoring in the public space. We conclude that dissimilarities are mainly a consequence of a differential management of religion – in its relation to ethnicity – in the public space within host societies, and are scarcely related to the specificities of Catholicism and Islam.