This work package is concerned with examining the funerary needs and socio-cultural practices of bereavement in a super-diverse society, as well as the plethora themes and challenges they give rise to. The three research objectives addressed in this work package are:
(1) to examine the challenges that the funeral sector faces in a diversifying society
(2) to quantitatively measure the funeral needs and preferences of those groups who are not sufficiently accommodated in law and policy today
(3) to ethnographically examine local and transnational funerary practices among Belgian Muslim communities and their local needs for inclusion.
Regarding research objective 1 and 2, we will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a comprehensive understanding of the funerary needs of Muslim and Jewish communities in Flanders, their choice of burial location, as well as the social, cultural, political, legal and logistical obstacles they encounter. We will further investigate how different stakeholders - including municipalities, funeral undertakers, and cemetery coordinators and caretakers - respond to these challenges, and the ways in which these tensions or conflicts arise in the process. As for research objective 3, it will come to life through collaborative ethnographic fieldwork alongside various reciprocators from Belgium’s Muslim communities and members/collectives from the country’s Muslim funerary sector in the hopes of gaining insight on the existing gaps in, and requisites for, the (better) accommodation of Muslim cemeteries, rites and funerals. It will also consist of a profound exploration of how notions of Care, loss, grief, identity and belonging (in addition to a multitude of other emerging themes) manifest themselves within and around these spaces, practices, interactions and reflections. Research objective 3 will also employ alternative mapping techniques (such as affect mapping) and photo-voice approaches to complement and expand upon the aforementioned ethnographic endeavor, in an attempt to further include the project’s reciprocators in the co-creation and co-production of its knowledge and data.