ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on women's religious mobility in post-migration life and underlines that migration should no longer be perceived as the exception to a sedentary rule. Just as it is important to consider people's mobility before migration, it is also critical to demonstrate how mobility extends beyond migration and into everyday life as mobility often frames the migrants' understandings of their new lives'. Fieldwork for this study has focused on women resident in Paris, who are religiously mobile within the city and go on pilgrimage to Lourdes and San Damiano. The chapter also focuses on African Catholics that consider it very powerful not only because of its popularity in Africa but also as the original site of Mary's appearances in Europe. The African Parisian women visit this Marian metropolis once a year, for the Assumption in August. This timing coincides with summer holidays when relatives come over from Africa or elsewhere in the diaspora who love to make the pilgrimage.