Japan came top of the list with visa-free access to 191 countries, followed by Singapore and South Korea. The rest of the top 10 was dominated by Western nations.

Meanwhile, a Malaysian passport allows its citizens to travel to 178 countries visa-free. The Malaysian passport has such prestige because Malaysia is a developed country that has strong bilateral relations which a number of regional and international bodies.

The UAE (18th) and Brunei (23rd) were the only other Muslim nations which ranked highly on the list. The UAE has climbed a remarkable 47 places over the past 10 years and now has a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 171.

In general Middle Eastern countries made strong gains on the list as part of overall efforts to boost trade and tourism. The UAE and Saudi Arabia each climbed four places, while Oman climbed three. Saudi Arabia is now in 66th place, with citizens able to access 77 destinations around the world without a prior visa, while Oman sits in 64th place, with a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 79.

But migration and mobility trends in the Middle East were largely driven by conflict. Deepening conflicts in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and with renewed anti-government protests in Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon, forced displacement which will most likely continue to dominate migration and mobility patterns within the Middle East. Moreover, most Muslim passports appeared at the bottom of the list with Afghanistan ranked last in 107th place. It has only 26 visa free destinations…

Source: 5pillars.uk

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic (June 29, 2017)

Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Space and Place

This is the first book to explore how religious movements and actors shape and are shaped by aspects of global city dynamics. Theoretically grounded and empirically informed, Religion and the Global City advances discussions in the field of urban religion, and establishes future research directions.

David Garbin and Anna Strhan bring together a wealth of ethnographically rich and vivid case studies in a diversity of urban settings, in both Global North and Global South contexts. These case studies are drawn from both ‘classical’ global cities such as London and Paris, and also from large cosmopolitan metropolises – such as Bangalore, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, Singapore and Hong Kong – which all constitute, in their own terms, powerful sites within the informational, cultural and moral networked economies of contemporary globalization.

The chapters explore some of the most pressing issues of our times: globalization and the role of global neo-liberal regimes; urban change and in particular the dramatic urbanization of Global South countries; and religious politics and religious revivalism associated, for instance, with transnational Islam or global Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity.

About the Authors:

David Garbin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent, UK. His research focuses on the interplay of migration, ethnicity, diaspora, space and religion, in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, North America, South Asia and Central Africa.

Anna Strhan is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent, UK. Her research explores the interrelations between space, religion, ethics, and values. She is the author of Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals (2015).

Table of Contents:

Introduction, David Garbin (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Kent, UK) and Anna Strhan (Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Kent, UK)

• Part One: Power, visibility and the politics of space

1. On the Road: Pentecostal Pathways through the Mega-City, Simon Coleman (Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto, Canada) and Manuel A. Vásquez (Professor of Religion, University of Florida, USA)

2. Urban Planning and Secular Atheism in Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore, Peter van der Veer (Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, and University Professor at Large, Utrecht University, Netherlands)

3. Occupying the Global City: spatial politics and spiritual warfare among African Pentecostals in Hong Kong, Benjamin Kirby (University of Leeds, UK)

4. Pentecostal Productions of Locality: Urban Risks and Spiritual Protection in Cape Town, Marian Burchardt (Post-doctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany)

• Part Two: Religious media, publics, and global cultural flows 

5. ‘The Future as news’: Astrology and mediated religion in Global Bangalore, Sahana Udupa (Associate Professor, Central European University, Hungary, and Senior Research Partner, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany)

6. Theorizing Mediatization and Religious Agency in European Global Cities, David Herbert (Professor of Sociology, Kingston University, UK and Professor of Religion and Society, University of Agder, Norway)

7. Godlessness in the Global City, Lois Lee (Lecturer in Secular Studies, University of Kent, UK)

• Part Three: Centralities, peripheries, and religious reterritorialization

8. Marching for Jesus in Paris: Religious territorialization, public space, and the appropriation of centrality in a fragmented city, Yannick Fer (CNRS Researcher, GSRL, France) and Gwendoline Malogne-Fer (post-doctoral research student, GSRL, CNRS-EPHE, France)

9. Transnational religion, multiculturalism, and global suburbs: a case study from Vancouver, Claire Dwyer (Reader in Geography and Co-Director of the Migration Research Unit, University College London, UK)

10. Place And The (Un-)Making Of Religious Peripheries: Weddings Among Kenyan Pentecostals In London,Leslie Fesenmyer (ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow at COMPAS, University of Oxford, UK)

• Part Four: Global migration, everyday multiculturalism, and religious place-making

11. At Home in The Multicultural City: Islam and Religious Place-Making in Stuttgart, Germany, Petra Kuppinger (Professor of Anthropology, Monmouth College, USA)

12. Religion as ‘urban white noise’ – material practices of everyday religion at the ‘unquiet frontiers’ of the hyper-diverse city, Chris Baker (William Temple Professor of Religion and Public Life, University of Chester, UK and Director of Research for the William Temple Foundation)

13. Between wandering and staying put: Piety and urban mobility among young Somali women in multicultural London, Giulia Liberatore (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at COMPAS and Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK)

14. Religion, Migration, and the ‘Worlding’ of Urban Daily Life: Local and Transnational Pentecostalism in Rio De Janeiro, Gerda Heck (Assistant Professor of Sociology and Migration and Refugee Studies, American University in Cairo, Egypt) and Stephan Lanz (Senior Lecturer, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany)

Reviews

– “This volume opens up the world of urban religions, showing how they connect globalization and urbanization through everyday acts of place-making, co-operation and conviviality. Impressive in its geographical purview and inter-disciplinary ambition, this is an important collection and one that deserves to be read by all those interested in the state of our cities.” (Phil Hubbard, Professor of Urban Studies, King’s College London, UK)

– “By taking on what makes a city truly religiously ‘global’ and what makes a global religion truly urban outside the west, on a variety of scales and in a variety of places, Garbin and Strhan’s edited volume successfully reframes our understanding of the urban religion-globalization nexus.” (Peggy Levitt, Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies and Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College, USA and author of God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (2007))

Source: Bloomsbury Publishing