In fifty years, who will be here? Reflections on globalisation, migration and spiritual identity

Abstract

This paper focuses on the significance of debate within and beyond religious communities over faith representation in relation to globalisation and migration. It analyses ways in which globalisation affects forms of religiosity and spiritual identity, among the young and their elders in religious communities, using two case studies: one from Islam and one from Buddhism. It argues that the issues presented by globalised communication and migration will have a major effect on young people as they assume shifting identities in a changing world. It examines cross‐generational tension and change and underlying trends related to forms of capital that produce these. Within this, questions of what informs conversion will be analysed. In conclusion it suggests that the modernising agenda pursued by capitalist democratic societies is likely to be insufficient to ensure that religious communities will commit themselves to social cohesion, because this has to be more intimately related to forms of capital and provide religious communities with a sense of proactive, rather than reactive, purpose. Indeed, the pressure to modernise may be counterproductive, in causing fractures within these communities, if it results in a weakening of leadership and religious identity and disaffection of the youth. For the next generation and those who might find themselves here in fifty years time there needs to be a willingness to dialogue from a position within which national and religious identity are not estranged and within which the latter has not been emaciated by the former. This we might call a position in which ‘spiritual capital’ can be aligned with the other forms of capital required for a meaningful sense of citizenship.