Géraldine Mossiere

Research project

Transregional paths of converts to Islam: Social projects, moral ideals and mobility regimes

Project summary

Although emblematic of contemporary religious mobilities, conversions to Islam are usually thought of by virtue of a “methodological nationalism” that fails to reflect the transregional aspect of the itineraries of converts we met in Quebec, most of whom came from Europe and maintain physical and virtual links with the Maghreb. Our project proposes to explore the mobility pathways of new French Muslims in order to grasp the dynamics of transregional circulation and connection at various spatial scales of a France-Quebec-Maghreb geographic triangle that updates certain historical relationships. More specifically, we will examine the ideological projects, representations of place and moral ideals that motivate these journeys on the one hand, and the logics of external (migration and religious management policies) and internal (organization of the social bond) institutional regulations that mark them out on the other. In this way, we will highlight the mechanisms shaping a social order that sees itself as alternative. This ethnographic and documentary research is based on an interdisciplinary perspective combining anthropology, ethnography, political science, history, law and religious studies. By embedding the conversion to Islam in a complex and profound space-time matrix, the project integrates the religious factor in an original way into trans-regional mobility practices and modes of regulating physical and symbolic exchanges.