Research report: Studying the religious socialization of Sikh and 'mixed-faith' youth in Britain: contexts and issues

Against a backdrop of phases of Sikh settlement in the UK, this article provides an overview of scholarship on UK Sikh communities. Attention turns to four ethnographic studies conducted by the author, two of which focused on unambiguously Sikh communities, and two of which challenge presuppositions of the boundedness of faith communities. Of these one was a study of two historically stigmatised caste-specific Punjabi communities; the other is currently examining the religious identity formation of young people in families in which only one parent is Sikh. Pointers and questions are identified that arise from these UK studies for researchers in mainland Europe. These include methodological considerations and encouragement to contribute to debates in the sociology of religion and to take account of Sikhs' increasing appearance in creative literature