عنوان

Leavening society :

Number

TLets810836

Title Proper

Leavening society :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Trotter, Stephen Richard

Title Proper by Another Author

the role of religious organisations in integration processes in Norway

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Glasgow

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2019

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2019

Text of Note

This thesis explores how religious organisations can influence integration processes in Norway through a case study of the Catholic Church, a Catholic charity, and a Catholic youth association. In order to fully understand the role of religious organisations, this thesis also examined secular identities/identifications/organisations and how, if at all, they diverge in influencing integration processes. I provide an extensive literature review that sets up a discursive framework, which allows me to draw together a range of concepts and understandings, and to critically analyse the findings in their appropriate context. The framework suggests a continuum of understanding integration processes, marked by three ideal types: a Redistributie Discourse of Exclusion (RED/Redintegration), a Social Integrationist Discourse (SID), and a Moral Underclass Discourse (MUD). Rather than imposing a view of integration processes on the participants and research, the discursive framework allows them to express nuanced understandings of how integration processes operate and how they may be shaped. Integration processes are processes of societal reconstitution, and require an in-depth exploration of the contexts in which they occur. With the religious/secular emphasis of the thesis, this entails exploring both constructions of the nation and the development of Catholicism in Norway. Utilising a range of qualitative methods, centred on ethnography, I gathered data from multiple organisations, religious and secular, and across multiple locations, over the course of fourteen months. This continuous, in-depth, qualitative research is essential to capturing the processual and contested nature of integration processes. What I discovered was that the perception of the end goal of integration processes was fundamental to how different organisations influenced integration processes. Similarly, what stood out was how the Social Integrationist Discourse was prevalent in both the secular and religious organisations. The functional emphasis of SID renders perspectives susceptible to Moral Underclass Discourses. The Church and its youth organisation, on the other hand, had a more open-ended perspective on integration processes, which was also expressed by the migrant research participants; exhibiting a Redintegrationist discourse.

BL Religion; GN Anthropology; HM Sociology

University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y