Social identities are once more controversial in today’s highly modern societies. «One’s own identity» is of major concern to civil society, politics and religious denominations across Europe. This research project scrutinizes the role of social and religious identities in contemporary societies. The project “Social Groups and Religious Identities in Civil Society (RESIC)” investigates the structure and prerequisites of social identities, the impact of religious immigrant communities on the individual and organisational level as well as the overall causal effects of religious social identities in civil society and politics. The project follows an interdisciplinary mixed-method approach. It covers Germany and Switzerland and combines two representative surveys, two qualitative, in depth-community studies on Bosnian Muslims and Croatian Catholics, and two special surveys on members of these migrant communities.

Jointly, the qualitative and the quantitative parts of the RESIC-project address the lacuna of the content and impact of social identities of religious groups and communities against the backdrop of the growing importance of civil society and the increasing diversity of religions. Thus, this combined undertaking will shed new light on the consequences of the perpetuation and change of collective identities of religious groups and communities for contemporary politics and the integration of modern democratic societies. The added value of this project and its close linkage of quantitative and qualitative sub-projects is to enhance the understanding of the role and impact of religion and religious communities both in democratic civil societies and in the process of societal integration on the micro-, meso- and macro-level.