Popular religiosity and the transnational journey: Maintaining diaspora identity through the sacred

• Main Author: Tondo, Josefina Socorro Flores
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Filipino diaspora; Religion and sociology; Identification (Religion); Group identity; Anthropology; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12454
• Institution: De La Salle University

Diaspora communities created by massive migration of people from places where popular religious devotions abound make for an interesting area of diasporic studies. Amidst New Zealand's secular society, the trajectory of popular religiosity is seen among Filipino diasporan communities. This paper will show how the social-economic-political and the religious- spiritual continuously interact in a shared and often intertwined space within the Filipino diaspora. Filipino popular religious devotions and rituals connect the sacral-spiritual to the secular-material assisting the diaspora's creation of "home space" in a foreign land. The transnational border crossing of the Filipino popular devotion to the Infant Jesus in the "Sinulog" ritual dance have aided and facilitated the maintenance, conservation and preservation of imagined "Filipino" identity in a foreign land. The diaspora observance of the "Sinulog" ritual dance in New Zealand illustrate and emphasize the role and importance of religious tradition in identity maintenance, formation and (re)construction among Filipino migrants and has become a prominent diaspora identity marker in the Filipino cultural production, consumption and transformation in the international stage.