Research Articles
Sacred spaces and border crossing: Sinhalese dreams of a Sri Lanka-Sicily round trip
Author:
Mara Benadusi
Department of Political and Social Sciences,
University of Catania., IT
Abstract
The paper focuses on the metaphor of the saints’ body/border as a means to analyse the social field of the migratory flows between Sicily and Sri Lanka. The saints’ body is viewed as important on a symbolic-sacred level, but even more broadly as a centre of what migrants experience in the in-between space spanning ‘here’ and ‘there’: as living simulacra of a civic-religious cult that crosses borders, the saints’ relics function as a site of agency and a medium of communication. Far from a rigid and pre-established container that constrains migrants’ lives, the social field established by the flows between Sri Lanka and Sicily is an embodied and circular space forged in part through civic-religious practices that make migrants feel at home in the borders.
How to Cite:
Benadusi, M., 2016. Sacred spaces and border crossing: Sinhalese dreams of a Sri Lanka-Sicily round trip. Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences, 38(2), pp.95–105. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/sljss.v38i2.7394
Published on
21 Jul 2016.
Peer Reviewed
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