Migration and Pentecostalism

This doctoral research is concerned with the impact of the symbolic and ritual system of Pentecostalism on the trajectories of first generation migrants. Pentecostalism emerged from revivalist Christian movements that appeared at the dawn of the 20th Century. Its world-wide spread has led to an organisational and ritual plasticity and to a transnational character that is prevalent today. In this PhD thesis I aim at analysing the impact of Pentecostalism on migration processes, in particular the link between geographic mobility and a system offering both a definition of the world and symbolic, ritual or social systems for interacting with the world. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork in migrant churches (mainly) in Switzerland, I will show how a migration-related action framework is produced and shaped within the ritual activity. This framework includes conceptions of territoriality, geographic, symbolic and social mobility, space and time as well as attitudes towards legal norms related to migration. Furthermore, I will investigate when and how ritual practices are mobilized in order to “negociate” specific constraints that result from the migration process and their impact on migration trajectories.