GREEK-ORTHODOX RELIGIOSCAPES AS DOMAINS OF MIGRATORY INTEGRATION AND HYBRIDISATION IN GERMANY AND GREAT BRITAIN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

This paper aims to introduce an alternative research approach in dealing with migrant communities as religioscapes, from the perspective of religious aesthetic. Namely, it focuses on the Greek and Greek-Cypriot migrant communities in Germany and Great Britain and examines their religiocultural symbolic constellations in the public sphere, particularly, those which illustrate aspects of their self-perception and migration narratives. In both cases churches serve as arks of culture and identity. In the lapse of time, community and church, being closely knit, jointly constructed their migrant narratives of de- and re-territorialisation, cultural adaptation and hybridisation, essentially their own distinct sense of being and belonging. Therefore, one observes the phenomenon of interwoven migrant and church narratives. The particularities of these constantly under construction identities are manifest in the architectural, hagiographical/iconographical themes, aesthetics and concepts of their churches. It is typical, however, of the Byzantine iconographic tradition to include and demonstrate the socio-political conditions of its time and place; and, those visual manifestations, as part of a sociocultural reality, possess a contextual dimension in their symbolic content, while being an act and a medium of communication in their own right. It is therefore feasible to decode their aforementioned content and articulate the narrative therein.