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Religious retrotopias, illiberalism and migration: the relevance of a Franco-Slovak comparison

Srdečne pozývame na Ústavný seminár Sociologického ústavu SAV, v. v. i.

Vo štvrtok 30. 1. 2025 o 13.30 budú našimi hosťkami na ústavnom seminári Anne-Laure Zwilling (Strasbourg University/CNRS) a Anne Lancien (Science Po Paris/EPHE). Po krátkom úvode „20 years of international networking on religions", ktorý prednesie Anne-Laure Zwilling bude nasledovať prezentácia Anne Lancien: „Religious retrotopias, illiberalism and migration: the relevance of a Franco-Slovak comparison”.

Seminár v anglickom jazyku sa uskutoční v miestnosti 94 na Klemensovej 19 v Bratislave.

we warmly invite you for the Seminar of the Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences on Thursday 30th January 2025 at 13.30 after a short introduction „20 years of international networking on religions" by Anne-Laure Zwilling (Strasbourg University/CNRS) Anne Lancien (Science Po Paris/EPHE) will present lecture "Religious retrotopias, illiberalism and migration: the relevance of a Franco-Slovak comparison”.

The language of the lecture will be English. Seminar will take a place in the room 94.

Anne-Laure Zwilling: „20 years of international networking on religions"
EUREL network (https://eurel.info/spip.php?rubrique126&lang=en) projects site was opened to the public in 2003. Since then, the two founding research centres (DRES and GSRL) have contributed to the EUREL project, of which Anne-Laure Zwilling (CNRS established researcher at UMR 7354) is the director since 2010. Slovakia is a network member country since 2006. In the activities of the EUREL network, in addition to the website, a number of scientific conferences have been organised and several monographs have been published linking research in sociology, other social sciences and law. The presentation will point to further opportunities for international cooperation in the field of religious research in Europe.

Anne Lancien: „Religious retrotopias, illiberalism and migration: the relevance of a Franco-Slovak comparison”
European societies are currently facing a multifactorial crisis that is shaking their foundations and their certainties. In the East, communist and socialist utopias failed by drifting towards authoritarianism; in the West, the promise of democracy has failed to break with ever-increasing inequalities and to ease social tensions. The continent deals with identity-based withdrawal, but also with global challenges: environmental crisis, health threats, the return of war to the continent. The future has then lost all its progressive character; it is now in the past that societies draw their ideals and it is this link between utopia and nostalgia that the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman describes as retrotopia.
This presentation will focus on religious retrotopias and how they relate to the issue of migration. These specific retrotopias are increasingly mobilized by political parties, especially illiberal ones, and consist of presenting Christian values, history and culture as an idealised horizon threatened by migratory movements.
This talk will focus on the following paradox: why, in secularised societies characterised by the eviction of religion from the political sphere, religious nationalism has become so successful that it is now a component of illiberal political parties? More broadly, what role does migration play in these politico-religious developments, and how is it instrumentalized?
Some initial avenues for reflection will be suggested. Above all, it will show why a comparison between France and Slovakia is particularly enlightening. Finally, these reflections are intended to initiate initial exchanges on the subject of a broader European cooperation project, Horizon or ERC, with the Franco-Slovak comparison as a starting point.