Resisting, Reacting and Reinventing: Exploring the Role of Minority Religious Solidarities in Milan and London During the Pandemic

The chapter first explores the ways in which religion played a crucial intermediary role for minority populations during the global health crisis as well as its socio-economic consequences. We focus on political and legal factors as these shaped the official recognition of migrants from different religious backgrounds, how migrants operated in the public sphere and how they criticised or made requests to local authorities. The ways in which religions have incorporated and reinterpreted the onset of the pandemic and the restrictions on social interaction were also influenced, therefore, by the degree of political and social recognition they had acquired during their settlement in a new country. We also examine the symbolic dimensions of the emergency guidelines since these guidelines raise an epistemological/ontological question about which types of values should be prioritised during a crisis. Because biomedical and economic arguments prevailed during the pandemic one of the major issues raised during the interviews was the conflict between these arguments and the religious principles avowed by these minorities. We then proceed to explore how the minorities developed a local-level perspective towards their concrete experiences during the pandemic. Some of the issues we identify are transversal, while others apply specifically to either Milan or London.