Mobilities, Boundaries, Religions: Performing Comparison in the Mediterranean

The aim of this article is to provide a discussion on the Mediterranean as a helpful framework for comparison. In order to illustrate what kind of comparison we have been thinking of, we will be dealing with two case studies that investigate the relationship between mobility and religious identities. The first case study focuses on mobility across Greek and Albanian border regions, whereas the second investigates migration from rural areas of Morocco to rural areas of central Sardinia (Italy). The theoretical ground in which the research is situated merges approaches on migration to southern Europe (Grillo and Pratt 2002, Cesari 2002), approaches on borderlands, and reflections on boundaries as analytical tools (Donnan and Wilson 1999), and finally focuses on the social meaning of religious identity.