Global Migration & the New Cosmopolitanism Articles

The New Cosmopolitanism: Global Migration and the Building of a Common Life

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The Contending Modernities Global Migration working group is pleased to announce an interdisciplinary conference to be held in London, UK on 14 & 15 October 2013 – The New Cosmopolitanism: Global Migration and the Building of a Common Life. The conference grows out of the working group’s research project in London, which focuses on the ways that broad-based community organizing enables secular and religious citizens to build a common life. The conference will bring this research into dialogue with a wide range of theoretical and empirical research on the role of faith in public life in pluralist and culturally diverse societies. Read the full article »

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Community Organising in London’s Congolese Diaspora


Community organising has significant potential for redressing low levels of democratic participation – through processes which actively engage citizens, encourage integration, and allow the voices of all individuals to be heard at local, national and international levels. My experience of engaging members of London’s Congolese diaspora in community organising has highlighted the increasing demand for both intentional processes of integration, and the opening of spaces within which citizens can actively engage in public life. Read the full article »

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Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism: New Reports, Workshop, and Film


The ambition of Contending Modernities is to bring academic research into dialogue with policy-making and grassroots practice. Its east London research project – with the Contextual Theology Centre (CTC) – is focused on the ways that community organising enables diverse communities to work together to discern and promote a common good. As well as producing research papers, it is generating a number of resources for the wider community.

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The Theistic Meaning of Morality


An exciting feature of the Contending Modernities project is the way it links the academic with the deeply practical. In east London, the project has enabled us to develop new resources for Muslim engagement in public life — something I blogged about back in August. And we are currently conducting wider research on the way faiths work together to discern and promote the common good. It is also helping us to look at some apparently very abstract issues — including the relationship between morality and metaphysics — and show their relevance to the debates around faith in public life. Read the full article »

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A New Covenant of Virtue


Central to Contending Modernities is the interplay between academic research and resources that can be used at the grassroots. In east London, we are seeing the first fruits of this approach with the publication of “A New Covenant of Virtue.” The booklet contains an essay by British and American writers on the Quranic motivation for Islamic engagement in multi-faith community organising, alongside a series of short case studies by local Muslim leaders on what this work looks like in practice. The booklet was launched last week in east London at a multi-faith “Iftar,” the meal with which Muslims break their Ramadan fast each night.

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Contending Modernities in East London


In its religious intensity and diversity, east London is an exciting testing-ground for “Contending Modernities.” It is an area with a long history of migration, and the religious and cultural diversity it brings, raising the question: How do migrant communities with diverse religious and cultural identities shape a common life? Catholic and Muslim migrants in particular have historically both been treated with some suspicion in the UK. The experience of Catholic and Muslim engagement in broad-based community organizing runs counter to such suspicions. Community organizing harnesses precisely the “problematic” quality of these faiths — above all their loyalty to a truth that transcends the nation-state, and a “critical distance” from the status quo — as a means of working for justice.

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Indian Catholics Responding to Globalization


When I first began researching call center workers in India, I was surprised to come across an article on a British news website about how the Catholic Archbishop of Bangalore had expressed public concern about rapidly mushrooming call centers. While most people outside India assume that call centers and “outsourcing” must be an unqualified boon for the country, the Archbishop fretted about their impact on the lifestyles of Indian youth.

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Muscular Liberalism or Multiculturalism?


Last month, in a speech before the Munich Security Conference, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that multiculturalism had weakened Britain’s collective identity and helped to make young British Muslims vulnerable to extremist ideologies. In response to these failings, he argued that European governments needed to build stronger national identities that rejected “passive tolerance” in favor of “a more active, muscular liberalism.” But unless there is some other coherent idea for engaging the new realities of multiple and overlapping identities, any failures of multiculturalism will not be addressed by abandoning the concept.

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Multicultural Modernity in Montréal


A remarkable experiment in urban modernity is taking place in Canada. Seeking a humane response to the reality of global capitalism and global migration, the government of Québec has enthusiastically embraced the concept of a “social economy.” Although this concept is explicitly secular, its Catholic heritage can be seen in its commitment to social justice and the common good.

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