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Reinterpreting the Relationship Between Centre and Periphery: Pilgrimage and Sacred Spatialisation Among Polish and Congolese Communities in Britain

Pilgrimage in Britain has been transformed through the process of global migration since the end of the Second World War. In this article we focus on changes taking place within Christian pilgrimage through an analysis of the ways in which the relationship between centre and periphery has been reinterpreted. The first case study involves Polish pilgrims at a Roman Catholic shrine in the Kent countryside while the other focuses on Congolese Kimbanguists. The comparison reveals the ways in which global flows of people and ideas mediated through transnational networks have helped to blur the ideological boundaries between different Christian traditions. Furthermore, local places in the periphery are reinterpreted in conditions of increasing complexity where sacred centres in the countries of origin have to adapt to the emergence of new peripheries, which link up with other peripheries in the Kimbanguist case, and with differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Poles (settlers and sojourners) in the Polish example.