Caring and Connecting: Reworking Religion, Gender and Families in Post-Migration Life

This chapter deals with West and Central African women in Paris and their religious strategies to overcome the kin-related problems they face in their post-migration life. No longer living in close proximity to the extended family, they have to make continuous efforts to develop an alternative kin network. The women develop an intense programme of religious travel to Marian sites across Europe that offers them the opportunities to build new women-centred families around the central figure of Mother Mary. The chapter argues that their intensified religiosity results in a feminization of kinship based on spiritual ties that gives them support and respect as well as a feeling of home in a foreign environment. The study is based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork between 2009 and 2012.