‘Dare to Be Different’:A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Diasporic Chinese Protestant Ministries of Chinese International Students in the Netherlands in the 2010s

Dare to be different: A sociolinguistic perspective on diasporic Chinese Protestant ministries of Chinese international students in the Netherlands in the 2010s Since the 2010s, the Netherlands has seen an increasing number of local and transnational migrant Chinese Protestant institutes operating across the country. Many of them organise or once organised particular religious services for Chinese international students in Dutch universities. These services meet with a mixed reception as they seek religious conversion, preach conservative social values, and have a significant impact on the stu... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Jin, Di
Dokumenttyp: doctoralThesis
Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
Verlag/Hrsg.: Ridderprint
Schlagwörter: Sociolinguistics of Globalisation / Chinese Diaspora / Socio-cultural Characteristics / Religious language Practice
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26827365
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/2a2079d8-aabd-45a1-bbf5-dffb168b3111

Dare to be different: A sociolinguistic perspective on diasporic Chinese Protestant ministries of Chinese international students in the Netherlands in the 2010s Since the 2010s, the Netherlands has seen an increasing number of local and transnational migrant Chinese Protestant institutes operating across the country. Many of them organise or once organised particular religious services for Chinese international students in Dutch universities. These services meet with a mixed reception as they seek religious conversion, preach conservative social values, and have a significant impact on the student participants’ language practices. The Chinese student religious services in the Netherlands provide a window into thriving non-Western Christianity in the Western world, further cultural diversification of the Chinese diaspora, and the interplay between language and religion. However, the dynamics of the services and of the broader Dutch Chinese Protestant community in the 2010s are largely unknown to both Dutch society and academia. Thus, drawing on an ethnographic approach, this study aims to shed a light on the very religious activities and interpret their implications for disciplines in migrant studies, religious studies and sociolinguistics. With regard to non-western Christianity, there has been a proliferation of churches and adherents in the Dutch Chinese Protestant community; the migrant Chinese religious institutes exhibit hues of religious fundamentalism. In the meantime, somewhat uniquely, the local Dutch Chinese churches have a strong occupational background of the catering industry whereas the transnational religious institutes have several new features of religious fundamentalism. As an arrival infrastructure in the Dutch Chinese community, the Chinese student services function like cram schools in China and attract some student participants for religious as well as secular benefits. However, the services are discarded by the other because of various socio-cultural and socio-political differences between ...