On the boundaries of social inclusion. Case study of an African Pentecostal church community in Helsinki and Paris.

Abstract

The question that my research addresses is that of studying how community participation generates social inclusion. This question is important in modern societies that are at the same time witnessing an increasing level of diversity and that tend to be considered individualistic in orientation. In my research, I take a special interest in a migrant religious community because in such a case the logics of integration policies, the dynamics of social inequalities and the conditions of social inclusion are at once challenged and perceptible.

In order to address these questions and themes I have chosen to study an African Pentecostal parish which members are in great majority recent migrants. An important aspect of my study is its comparative design. By studying a parish of the same church in two different European countries, Finland and France, I have sought to conduct an analysis of similarities and differences in terms of generation of social inclusion, the role of communities and ethnoracial and social inequalities in the two countries. Furthermore, the comparative research design has been an important medium for my study on one hand, to support the dialogue between theory and empirics, and on the other hand, to analyze the individual experience in a specific structural configuration. In this case-oriented research, in-depth interviews constitute the main empirical corpus. In addition to interviewing, I have also borrowed elements from the ethnographic research tradition emphasizing prolonged presence on the field, engaging in relations of reciprocity within the community studied. Hence, observation has been an important method in the research and my ethnographic diaries have completed the interview material, both having been analyzed primarily with a thematic approach.

By constructing a typology of community relations I demonstrate that the relation of an individual to a particular community varies in function of their position in the social hierarchy, the force of their social bonds and the degree of their economic integration. The three idealtypical community relations I have found are expression, compensation and refuge. The first one puts an emphasis on the possibility of expressing a particular minority identity. The second relation stresses the importance of finding social recognition. The last one establishes a relation of dependency between the individual and the community, especially in material terms. The first two idelatypes are the most commonly found in Helsinki, whereas in Paris, the emphasis is on the two last ones. Interestingly, the community relations close to the third idealtype were not observed in Helsinki. Even if there are differences in the form of maintained relations the church community appears as an important element of social inclusion in both cases. Indeed, it provides a possibility to its members of collectively challenging to the racial stigma, gaining visibility and resisting to marginalization.

I explain the cross-national differences in the community effect that is being generated by the parishes primarily by their divergent insertion in the society of installation and by the role of social politics in the integration of migrants to the national mainstream. In Finland, the members of the church enjoy better socio-economic status and social security than their French counterparts. However, it seems like lack of ethnoracial diversity and practices of racial discrimination in Finland shape the experience and possibility of social inclusion of the migrants than they do in France. On the contrary, in France, the members of the church are in average in a more precarious situation. They church is installed in a neighbourhood where factors of risk of social exclusion are concentrated and where thus the community is more geared toward protecting its members than to building relations to the society surrounding it.