Chapter 1
In: Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 12 (2021)
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Abstract
This chapter highlights the prospects of employing a policy mobilities perspective to advance the study of secular flows across different socio-political contexts. Originating in geography, the policy mobilities literature offers diverse theoretical and methodological tools to study the movement, mutation, and assemblages of policies across borders. Applying this framework to the sociology of religion, the chapter features two exploratory case studies. The first study examines the impact of France’s laïcité (state secularism) narrative on the Canadian province of Québec’s changing secular policy agendas in the past decade. The second study surveys the spread of “burqa bans”—laws against face covering in public spaces in five European Union countries (France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Austria, and Denmark). Qualitative data from these examples suggest that policymakers and other stakeholders routinely rely on other cases as a reference point, and interact with and learn from their external counterparts; yet rather than a simple transfer, they domestically mobilize such policies in novel configurations. The chapter contends that a policy mobilities outlook holds a vast potential to help the literature go beyond viewing religious freedoms as nationally isolated phenomena, and take into account the globally interconnected nature of historical and contemporary secularities.