On Being a Pilgrim Today: A Sociological Perspective

This study explores the meaning of being a pilgrim today, in an era characterized by mobility, fragmentation, and the rediscovery of the sacred in personal and relational forms. The research adopts a qualitative and ethnographic approach that intertwines direct observation, walking experience, and phenomenological reflection. Through the journey to the sanctuary of Viana do Castelo, the author observes how contemporary pilgrimage is not merely an act of faith but a practice of seeking meaning, freedom, and symbolic belonging. The theoretical framework draws on the works of Zygmunt Bauman, Victor Turner, and Danièle Hervieu-Léger, who provide key insights for understanding pilgrimage as an experience of liminality, transformation, and collective memory. The pilgrim emerges as a figure of threshold — suspended between tradition and modernity, spirituality and corporeality, solitude and communion. The experience of walking thus becomes a metaphor for the contemporary human condition: an inner and relational journey in which the sacred is not a destination but a presence that reveals itself through movement, encounter, and the attentive reading of place.