‘Homing desires’ : a long term ethnography of a mosque in Lisbon

Séance du séminaire Urmis Paris « Migrations, Circulations et Altérités » avec l’intervention de José Mapril (Professeur au département d’anthropologie, Universidade Nova de Lisbonne, Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia, CRIA – NOVA FCSH, Chercheur invité à l’Urmis)

Discutant : Dominique Vidal (U. Paris / Urmis)

Attention, le séminaire se tient à l’adresse suivante : salle 2017, Bâtiment Sophie Germain, 8 place Aurélie Nemours, 75013 Paris (2ème étage, accès par escalier).

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Abstract: The recent literature on home has focused on the importance of imagination and performativity in the making of places. In this article, I bring together the imagined and the material dimensions of home making, to show how people (re)attach themselves to multiple places and, in the process, project idealized moral orders. These arguments draw on an ethnography of a mosque in Lisbon, established in 2002 by a group of Portuguese-Bangladeshi entrepreneurs, who have been negotiating with the municipality for a space to accommodate its growing congregation. In 2012, the city hall announced the construction a new square in Lisbon, the ‘Moorish square’, a development project that will include several multifunctional spaces, some of which will be used to relocate this mosque. This article examines these negotiations as part of making a sense of home and revealing the anxieties over the regulation of lived Islam in the city.

Keywords: Islam-Muslims, recognition, (in)visibility, governing religions, urban development, Lisbon