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McComb, Veronica. "The Bonds of Faith: Religion and Community among Nigerian Immigrants to the U.S., 1965-present," American and New England Studies Program, Boston University, May 16, 2010. Advisor: Marilyn Halter
The pre-migratory ethno-religious complexities of the lives of Nigerian Muslims and Christians are compounded when they migrate to the United States, where they are forced to confront their own elaborate homeland identities and challenged to find a comfortable spiritual and social space within the American racial milieu. Subsequently, many migrants find that their previous conceptions of kinship and community, family, gender, and race are challenged and redefined in their new environments. “The Bonds of Faith” explores how religion shapes the identity choices of first generation Nigerians and their children as they settle in America.
While recent scholarship has examined the relationship between race and religion among post-1965 Asian and Latin American immigrants, the study of immigrant religions from Africa and the African diaspora remains under-examined. This interdisciplinary study explores personal identities, family life, gender dynamics, and the role of the second generation in the construction of Nigerian spiritual communities in Massachusetts and Texas. It incorporates oral history interviews and participant observation as its primary source base and features analysis of Nollywood films and the fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as well as Internet-based research via ethno-religious community websites and ethnic press publications.
Chapter One “Piece by Piece: Nigerian Immigrants, Religion, and the Foreign- Born Black Narrative” situates the Nigerian immigrant narrative within the history of foreign-born black migrations and underscores the relative absence of the religious component in studies of black immigration. Chapter Two “Forging the Bonds: Community Building and Kinship Networks in the United States” explores shifting notions of kinship in the re-construction of religious and cultural communities. Chapter Three “Brothers and Sisters in Spirit?: Assimilation and Intra-Racial Bonds” investigates intra-racial tensions between Nigerians and African Americans that exist as a result of competing notions concerning the salience of race in individual lives. Chapter Four “Fortifying through Faith: Religion, Gender Dynamics, and Cultural Conservation in the Family” positions the changing responsibilities of women in the family and religious community as the impetus for adjustments in gender roles and family dynamics, including the transmission of culture to the second generation.
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