ABSTRACT
In September 2010 an international conference was held in Porto on Local Diversity and Global Challenges: Religions and Migrations in Southern Europe. The goal of the conference was to gather scholars from Southern Europe, especially from Portugal and Italy in order to discuss the growing diversity which paved the way for Southern European countries to gradually turn into global societies. Traditionally Roman Catholic, Southern Europe is today watching the proliferation of other religious groups, among them, Islamic, Eastern Christian, and neo-Pentecostal groups from Africa, Asia (China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam) and Latin America (Brazil, Colombia, Peru). Within the framework of this conference the book Religion in Motion: Migrants and Religious Diversity in Portugal and Italy was issued (Vilaça and Pace, 2010).
