Final Post

What I learned...

Today I write my final post in summary of the last month and what I have learned throughout this experience. First and foremost, I have learned that research takes much patience and hard work. It is a game of trial an error. I have learned the trickiness of selecting a research topic. This entails seeking balance between wanting a unique topic and selecting a topic with enough information on it. This means, one should seek to have a topic where not many conclusion have been drawn. At the same time, there has to be enough data and information to back up your claim, or else the conclusion becomes abstract and irrelevant. I also learned different ways of searching information such as cross referencing, and looking for relevant authors in the bibliography of useful articles and books. Research involves a component of creativity that I enjoy while seeking information. In my case, this consisted searching articles from a certain time period after a conflict to learn about the repercussions. Learning what different types of research databases exist has been one of the most useful components of this course. After some time of getting familiar with them, I was able to access which ones were most useful to me and why. If I continue to research similar topics, I will certainly have many outlets for information.

My Favorite Part...
I really enjoyed wrapping my head around all that goes into research. While seeking information and skimming and scanning articles, I learned so much on the subject of refugees, immigration, and policies related to all of those topics. My knowledge on the subject has really increased. 


What I Disliked...
At the beginning, I did not realize that sometimes you may not always find what you are looking for. I think this experience would be different the second time, having more realistic expectations. 


What I Hope to Do in the Future...
Having now explored archival research and enjoying it, my desire to involve myself in field research has increased immensely. I would like to try research that requires me to interact with people to get results.

Religious Repression

Just as for the terms "political repression," "forced migration." and "voluntary migration," I have dedicated a significant amount of time toward defining and providing examples of "religious repression." I also searched for "religious persecution" and "religious oppression," to get a well-rounded view of the definition. After hours of searching, I realized that finding it actually defined in an academic paper is not as obvious as you think it may be. I was surprised that so many papers just delved right into the subject without first defining it.

Definitions:
The following text provide definitions of religious repression:

Article title: "Religious Persecution in Cross-National Context: Clashing Civilizations or Regulated Religious Economies?"
Author: Brian Grim

On page 20 Grim defines religious persecution as “physical abuse or physical displacement due to one’s religious practices, profession, or affiliation”

and religious regulation as“the legal and social restrictions that inhibit the practice, profession, or selection of religion.”

Grim uses the United States State Department list of countries that are characterized by religious repression, as well as the International Repression Report (IRR). The IRR's second index measures the following: "the social regulation of religion and is defined as the restrictions placed on the practice, profession, or selection of religion by other religious groups, associations, or the culture at large” (page 23)


The following article is from the Encyclopedia of Religion. First Article Title: "Persecution: Jewish Experience"
The first page defines religious persecution, as well as why it is so hard to define religious persecution.



Examples:
The following text provide examples of religious repression:

Article title: "Freedom, law, and prophecy: A brief history of Native American religious resistance"
Author: Lee Irwin

This article refers to religious repression from the United States government towards the Native Americans. When researching, I noticed this example come up a lot. Even though I of course knew this happened, the United States of America is not the first country that comes to mind when I think of governments guilty of religious repression. The paragraph below is an exert from the text:

“These laws not only abrogate First Amendment rights in a conscious and well documented policy of religious oppression, they also reveal a systematic attempt on the part of highly placed government officials to stamp out Native American religious practices. They also represent a determined policy to reconstruct Native religions in conformity with dominant Protestant majority values in a myopic vision of what constitutes "civilized" religious behavior. Such policy is found consistently in the Annual Reports of many commissioners of Indian Affairs from the creation of the office in 1832 through the appointment of John Collier in 1934.”


My next example incorporates modern day policy in the United States. This was by far the most interesting article to me. The article discusses an unusual topic, how “non-believers” are discriminated against in terms of accepting asylum applications. Dolance explains that the US has a history of turning away atheists by claiming that they do not fit the refugee category of religious repression. Article Title: "U.S. Asylum Law as a Path to Religious Persecution" by: Jack C. Dolance II