Transnational Migration and Pentecostalism in Europe

Contemporary immigrant communities are largely characterized by networks, activities and life-patterns that entangle both their “old home” and “new home” societies, as well as with other host contexts. This “simultaneous embeddedness” and multiplicity of involvements in more than one context produces a heterogeneous set of sustained transnational activities. The transnational nature of several new African Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in diaspora challenges the assumption that immigrants usually cut off ties and links with their homeland after integration into the new host context. The increasing mobility and itinerancy of religious adepts and members between the homeland and the diaspora cannot be over-emphasized. drawing from recent religious ethnography, the paper explores how this complex peregrination partly demonstrates an instance of religious transnationalization of new African churches in the diaspora. The paper also discusses reverse-mission dynamics as an evolving dimension of the transnational process.