God Needs No Passport

The Transnational
Studies Reader

The Changing Face of Home

The Transnational Villagers

What they are saying about God Needs No Passport

"This superb book has defined the meaning of transnational religion for twenty-first century America. Levitt has brought to life the people whose lives connect communities in Boston to those in Brazil, Pakistan, Ireland, and Gujarat. She renders vivid portraits of  those who live both "here and there" and whose lives demonstrate the dynamism of immigration in a new era. This is essential reading for anyone who would understand the energies of immigration in our time."

Diane Eck,
Professor of Religion,
Harvard University

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"In this landmark study Peggy Levitt puts a human face on the globalization of religion.  Levitt explores the global reach of faith and religious institutions through the words of migrants from India, Pakistan, Ireland and
Brazil. This remarkable book goes beyond political rhetoric and stereotypes about immigration and religious diversity to uncover the fascinating realities of faith that crosses borders along with the migrants, both aiding their process of becoming American, and continuing their connecions to their homelands. This book is a wise and indispensable guide to understanding 21st Century American society."

Mary C. Waters,
M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology Harvard University;
author of Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American
Realities.

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"A significant contribution to our understanding of the connections between American religion and immigration. This engaging book will be of great value to scholars interested in the ways in which American culture is being reshaped by globalization."

Robert Wuthnow,
author of America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity

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"Peggy Levitt deftly advocates for the recognition of a renewed pluralism in
America, one that goes beyond tolerance to embrace change based on shared
values. An extraordinarily thoughtful and thought provoking exploration of
the transnational dynamics of religious diversity."

Josh DeWind,
director of the Social Science Research Council International
Migration Program and
co-author of The Handbook of International Migration:
The American Experience.

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BOOKS

God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (The New Press, 2007) argues that current debates about religion and immigration are based on assumptions that are out-of-sync with our national reality because they fail to grasp the strong connection between changes in immigration and changes in religious life. When we talk about how religion influences American culture and politics, we still really mean Protestantism. When we think about what religion is, where we look for it, and how it works we tend to think in traditional terms. Jewish and Catholic colors are included though they hardly dominate the design. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are barely visible. Today’s immigrants, however, are remaking the religious landscape by introducing new faith traditions and Asianizing and Latinoizing old ones. They don’t trade in their home-country membership card but challenge the taken-for-granted dichotomy between either/or, United States or homeland, and assimilation vs. multiculturalism by showing it is possible to be several things simultaneously and, in fact, required in a global world. 

"God Needs No Passport is a compelling narrative, the best I know, of transnationalism at work. Ordinary immigrants do the work through their everyday practices and particularly through their religions. Levitt threads an elaborate tapestry of family ties, social networks, and transnational religious flows linking Massachusetts towns and the Boston suburbs to Valadares (Brazil), Gujarat (India), Karachi (Pakistan) and Inishowen (Ireland). In the process she challenges all kinds of stereotypes: the methodological premises of social scientists who continue to view societies as territorially bounded boxes, the prejudices of American nativists who view the new immigrants as a threat to our national cohesion and the fears of secular humanists who believe that religion is the source of intolerance and conflict."

José Casanova, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, The New School

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The Transnational Studies Reader, Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt, eds. Transnational phenomena and dynamics are the subject of an increasing body of scholarship but are not well understood. More often than not, this research treats specific practices and processes as if they were unconnected to each other. Those who study transnational social movements, migration, or knowledge flows tend to see themselves as part of separate conversations. Yet, to understand the “how, why, and with what consequences” of life across borders, this kind of bridge-building must be done. What’s more, bridge-building is just a first step. Understanding the world as a transnational space requires rethinking basic epistemology and ontology, revisiting history, and inventing new methodological and conceptual tools to adequately capture the complexity of multi-sited and multi-layered experience.

"All of the social and human sciences have been transformed by transnational scholarship. This has yielded new perspectives on issues from migration to religion to the role of corporations. And it has made it imperative for students and scholars to become familiar with work from several disciplines. Professors Khagram and Levitt have made a valuable contribution by bringing together so many informative and influential texts and helping readers gain an overview of these exciting lines of work."

Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council

"Drawing on sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science, this book shows conclusively that good theory demands attention to transnational perspectives. Through articles on social phenomena as diverse as capitalism, religion, class, and art, the book proves that this approach is essential to understanding our increasingly transnational world."

Sally Engle Merry, New York University, USA

"Few subjects are as critical in world affairs as how the forces of integration are smacking into reassertions of the particular. This book sheds considerable light on this intersection, and helps to illuminate core dilemmas of policy and cultural cohabitation on our small planet today."

John G. Ruggie, Harvard University, USA

The selections in the Transnational Studies Reader lay the intellectual groundwork for this work. They examine the forms and consequences of different kinds of transnational activities and collectivities in a variety of social arenas. They illustrate, albeit sometimes incompletely, how a transnational gaze brings to light relationships and dynamics that are obscured when we take the nation-state for granted.

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The Changing Face of Home, Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters, eds. The children of immigrants account for the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population under 18 years old—one out of every five children in the United States. Will this generation of immigrant children follow the path of earlier waves of immigrants and gradually assimilate into mainstream American life, or does the global nature of the contemporary world mean that their trajectory will be fundamentally different? The Changing Face of Home is the first book to examine the extent to which the children of immigrants engage in transnational practices. It presents an important first round of research and dialogue on the activities and identities of the second generation vis-a-vis their ancestral homelands, and raises important questions for future research.

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The Transnational Villagers (U.C. Press, 2001) shows how Dominican migrants became integrated into the United States while they continue to invest, vote, and pray in their homeland. It argues that migrants and those who stayed behind, though separated by physical distance, occupy the same social space. Immigrant incorporation and long-term transnational attachments were not antithetical processes but happen simultaneously and mutually influence each other. This book also introduces the concept “social remittances” which underscores that not just economic but social and cultural exchanges (ideas, practices, social capital, and identities) result from migration and are an important part of the migration-development equation. 

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© 2008 Peggy J. Levitt