Overview

This seminar aims to demonstrate how to undertake an analysis of the movement of religious associations among Bolivian migrant women present in the city of São Paulo from the post-colonial feminist perspective.

This seminar intends to highlight: 1) The importance of religion for studies on migration, raising the importance of the religious dimension in the recomposition of the meaning of life and identity from the ethnic group; 2) To emphasize the importance of articulating the gender perspective for migratory studies, stressing the main challenges that such an articulation poses in terms of working with Bolivian migrant women in the city of São Paulo; 3) Religious associativism as a mechanism for building networks of solidarity and maintenance of identity and migrant group awareness, and how this phenomenon is experienced by Bolivian immigrant women in the city of São Paulo; 4) The postcolonial feminist perspective as a theoretical reference that presents important assumptions that can contribute towards bringing feminist reflection to the religious experience of these women, as well as contributing to overcoming the public/private and domestic/political dichotomy, and the discourse that victimizes Bolivian women migrants, who classify them merely as women who seek religion simply to alleviate their many sufferings, and therefore passively receive fundamentalist discourses that perpetuate the unequal relationship between women and men.

As the seminar’s theme is a doctoral research under the Post-Graduate Programme in Religious Studies of the Methodist University of São Paulo, the developments carried out in the construction of the thesis, up until September, will be presented, also focusing on the importance and the main contributions of this Doctoral Internship Exchange Programme held at the Centre for Social Studies (CES).

Bio note 

Priscila Kikuchi Campanaro holds a degree in Social Sciences and Theology, MA in Religious Studies and is currently a PhD candidate in the post-graduate programme in Religion Sciences at the Methodist University of São Paulo. Her research focuses on themes regarding gender, religion and feminist theology. Presently conducting a part of her doctorate at CES, under POLICREDOS.

Activity within the Observatory of Religion in the Public Space | POLICREDOS