ABSTRACT
Rapidly increasing numbers of young people are growing up in multi-faith locations in Britain. Some come from long-established British families, some belong to British families with much shorter histories in Britain, and others have arrived from different geographical and social settings in their own lifetimes. All these young people have experienced change in their lives, either through the transformations of the neighbourhoods they have grown up in, or through migration from one milieu to another during the trajectories of their early years. Whether or not they are religious themselves, all are likely to have been affected in some way or another by the religious beliefs and practices of those in their localities. The purpose of this book is to respond to calls from Grace Davie and others ( Davie, 2007a ; Barker, 2010a ) to put the study of religion back at the heart of enquiry and to provide empirical evidence to inform theoretical debates about religious belief and expression in multi-faith Britain. It reports on an investigation of the meaning of religion in the lives of young people from a range of faith positions in three selected religiously diverse locations, and interrogates their religious identities and how these have been developed and negotiated. Through a detailed look at their subjective lives, and the contexts in which these are lived, it provides a contemporary and interdisciplinary perspective on the vexed questions of ‘who are we?’ and ‘how do we all get on?’ in these unprecedented times.
