Attached Paper Annual Meeting 2024

Embracing Hybridity and Belonging: Pastoral Care for Diasporic Children

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

Diasporic children's identities negate hegemonic cultural and religious constructs and call for a space that accepts people’s ongoing change, resistance, and assimilation in belonging and flourishing as their God-given right. Pastoral care for diasporic children amplifies how diasporic children’s resistance and resiliency manifest through a hybrid identity that enables them to belong in two spaces – that of their family and that of mainstream culture. Moreover, pastoral care for the diasporic children resists the political and social ideologies that make children's identity formation and flourishing inequitable and calls for hybridity and belonging as the main praxes for theological reflection to participate with diasporic children and affirms the need for hybridity to create a place of belonging for in-between identities in churches, schools, and political and social spaces for equality and equity of all children.

Key Words: Hybridity, Belonging, In-between Religion, In-between Culture, In-Between Political Practices.