JASSD Volume 2 Number 4 2019

RELIGION AND MIGRATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: ANY COMPATIBILITY?

Gbari Usman Sylvester, Ph.D Anselm Ikenna Odo
Abstract

This paper attempts to find out, if there is any, the compatibility of religion and migration in the contemporary world. People often see migration as being detrimental to religion. This claim is premised on the conception that different religions in most cases lose their identity during their encounter with other religions. Leveraging on this assumption, the researchers through an expository method of study, is set to make an appraisal base on the wide-spread notion concerning religion and migration. There is always a positive and negative effect behind everything under the sun. it should therefore, be taken that migration has both positive and negative effects on religion. However, the researchers are of the position that, the positive effects of religion outweigh the negative effects. Some of these positive effects includes the acquisition of new knowledge in the act of migration, the privileges of migrants having more spiritual encounters as they visit different pilgrimage centers etc. this goes without inferring that there are no adverse effects to this migration process as we agreed earlier. Sometimes, some migrants on their encounter with other religions may get convinced by their teaching and thus begin to lose faith in their own religion, some, having been exposed to the secular world may be attracted by the worldly pleasure, therefore lose faith. at the end of this paper, the researchers made the following recommendations among others; these include: Migrants need to express and live their religious creed. They should avoid marginalization, meanwhile the loss of religious identity will lead to the loss of ethical values and these migrants will be even more disoriented and uprooted in the host society. Again, religious communities of the host society and of the migrant communities should promote exchange and sharing habit.

Keywords: compatibility, contemporary, migration, religion, world
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