Changing glocal scape through the lens of the nexus between religion and migration in the age of artificial intelligence

Abstract

This study examines the nexus between religion and migration within a world in constant flux, now more so with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). Focusing on the global flows of migration and the ways that religious identities, practices, and institutions adapt to and shape them, it explores the role of AI technologies in mediating, entrenching, or interrupting these processes. Through interdisciplinary work across migration studies, Artificial Intelligence and digital sociology, the article frames religious migrants as active participants as well as objects of techno-cultural changes.  The theoretical framework employed is Nyamnjoh’s concepts of incompleteness and mobility, which offer profound insights into accounting for human interdependence and sociocultural processes in diverse contexts. It suggests that AI not only automates systems of border control or digital evangelism, but also reframes ethical discourses, concepts of belonging, and spiritual solidarity across diasporas. Ultimately, the paper identifies the ways in which the nexus of religion and migration, through the lens of AI, reconfigures glocality—how global technologies meet local spiritual and migratory experience in new and contested ways.  This study contributes to ongoing discourse and scholarship on the nexus between migration, religion and the complexities associated with the use of artificial intelligence in immigration management.