Religious Change in Mauritius

This project explores potential causes of religious decline in Mauritius, a multi-ethnic, religiously pluralistic island nation undergoing fast-paced economic and demographic transitions, and well as broad cultural changes. We are interested in looking at education, material security, and social factors (e.g., family structure, exposure to external cultures) to test existing theories explaining non-belief and move towards more causal relationships. We will test the relationship between decline in belief and individual level variables such as experiences of religious socialisation (e.g., through CREDS, Lanman, & Burmester, 2017), level of formal education, material security, and household structure (e.g., nuclear vs extended). We will also test these relationships at the group level to explore variations across religious groups in these causal processes.