Diasporic Hybridity: How It Impacts Religious Identity and Practice in Today’s Pluralistic World

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to introduce a Special Issue on "Diasporic Hybridity", and how this phenomenon impacts religious identities and practices in contexts/societies characterized by religious diversity and pluralism. Diasporic hybridity refers to a compendium of experiences consisting of the following key features: an uprooting (intentional, unintentional, or even coerced) from what was considered an original homeland and the movement to a new, often inhospitable place/context/situation in which individuals and/or communities come to acquire a complex hybrid identity due to being simultaneously located in two (or more) worlds.

Moreover, diasporic hybridity is also frequently accompanied by phenomena such as a sense of being in multiple worlds without a real home; the various and sundry experiences of marginalization, discrimination, and oppression; and the intricate negotiation between and balancing of multiple, asymmetrically related worlds present in oneself or one's community, among other things.

With all of these abovementioned nuances as foundational presuppositions, we pose this key question: What are the concrete ways by which diasporic hybridity influences and impacts religious identities and practices in contexts characterized by religious pluralism and diversity?

This Special Issue aims to advance our understanding of the phenomenon of diasporic hybridity and its relationship with the themes of religious diversity and pluralism. We also seek to elucidate the effects this has on our contemporary globalized world.  To these ends, submissions from scholars across disciplines such as religious studies, theology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and cultural studies are encouraged. By compiling interdisciplinary scholarship on this topic, we aim to offer further insights into the abovementioned topic.

Furthermore, this Special Issue aims to add a variety of new viewpoints and empirical discoveries to the current literature regarding the interplay between hybridity, diaspora, religion, and pluralism. By uniting researchers from other disciplines and possibly investigating a variety of case studies from various geographic regions, this Special Issue will provide a forum for critical engagement with the theoretical frameworks that form our understanding of hybrid identities in various diaspora contexts, religion, and pluralism.

Dr. Julius-Kei Kato
Dr. Peniel Rajkumar
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• diasporic hybridity (in the context of “diasporic hybridity,” all of the key expressions below)
• religion and diaspora
• religion and hybridity
• religious pluralism
• religious diversity
• religious identities
• religious practices
• interreligious dialogue
• religious communities
• yheology and pluralism
• postcolonial thought