BIO

Shinji Hirai is a Japanese anthropologist who has lived in Mexico City since 1998. He has carried out ethnographic research on Mexican migration to the United States and the transnational cultural processes, with particular interest in the construction and the social and cultural impact of the Mexican migrants’ nostalgia in a transnational context. Recently he has obtained a Ph.D. degree at the Department of Anthropology, Metropolitan Autonomous University, Iztapalapa campus.

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The Virgin of the Assumption Travels to California: Mexican Immigrants and the Construction of Symbolic, Emotional, and Transnational Circuits

In this work, I present two ethnographic cases on the replicas of the sacred image of the Virgin that traveled from the Mexican migrants' homeland to California. On one hand, the introduction of these religious images into their destinations in the United States has played an important role in the development of the migrants’ religious practices that contribute to the reinforcement of the social ties between them and to the maintenance of the traditions and religious and social identity rooted in their homeland. On the other hand, these popular religious practices have also been appropriated and institutionalized by the church of destination to incorporate the migrant population into the local parish. Interweaving between migrants’ popular initiative and the intervention of the church of destination, the transnational symbolic and emotional circuits have been built in the religious dimension of their life.

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