Religion took center stage as refugees and asylum seekers started arriving in Europe in the summer of 2015. In the increasingly secularized Europe, religion, paradoxically, has gained or regained significance in many policy and public debates. These debates often focused on the perceived incompatibility of the cultural and religious characteristics of the arriving refugees with European norms and values.

In this webinar, anthropologists from Adam Mickiewicz University and scholars of religious studies from Utrecht University will share their research and ideas on the debates on refugee reception — debates which often frame Islam as a threat to the perceived identity of Europe as a Christian continent. The anti-refugee stance of many governments will be juxtaposed with contestations of populist attitudes towards refugees and with activities undertaken to ‘welcome the stranger’ by civil society actors in Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Turkey.