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1. Diaspora (Gk., ‘scattering’) in the context of its early Jewish origin denotes the Jewish communities in diverse places outside the ‘Land of Israel’ (Palestine), and far from Jerusalem. Since the sixteenth century, the term has been used to designate Protestant and Catholic minorities living in an environment of different Christian confessions. Over the last three decades, the concept of Diaspora has achieved a great popularity in social and cultural scientific research. It is often applied in a very ge…

1. Migration, the spatial mobility of individuals and groups, represents, after deliberate extension (→ Mission), the most important factor in the spread of religions. Although we meet the nineteenth- and twentieth-century movement of individuals and population groups in hitherto unheard-of numbers, the fact must not be overlooked that, even in prehistoric times, human beings traversed land and water routes into other spaces and onto other continents (for example, Aryan…