Nature and the Sacred. The «Migrant Imagery» between Animism, Religion and Ecospirituality: an Exploratory Study among Asylum-seekers

In this paper we will analyze the phenomenon of ecospirituality, highlighting its most relevant aspects. In the first part of the article we will frame this unprecedented phenomenon in the broader scenario of post-modern society, in order to identify the reasons for its genesis and its growing success. In the second part, through a qualitative explorative analysis, we will show the features of what we have defined as the “migrant imagery”. We will focus on the theme of “sacralization of nature” (Cardano, 1995 e 1997) thanks to the information obtained from the interviewed subjects (asylum-seekers and beneficiaries of humanitarian and international protection from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Togo and Ivory Coast). In this way it will be possible to detect any similarities and discrepancies between two different cosmologies, one shaped by Western modernization, the other largely not involved in this process. We have found out elements of similarity – in ways that we will explain – between the Western worldview and that of the asylum-seekers communities, concerning the experience of the sacred. We have also noted a sort of “reversed overlapping”: while Western postmodernity seems to witness a return of the sacred, the “forced migrants”, to the extent of the examined sample, are the social indicator of an ongoing process of secularization or rationalization of the animism, through a gradual Christianization and Islamization. The hypothesis is that religious belief with its typical syncretic meanings can work as an “intercultural resource” (Caputo, Pinelli in Arici, Gabbiadini, Moscato, 2014), in relation with other important factors of social integration.