“God is in control”: middle-class Pentecostalism and international student migration

ABSTRACT

In this article I explore the role of Pentecostalism in the lives of middle-class Brazilian students-turned-migrants in Australia. Brazilian students lead precarious lives in Australia. They are transitioning into adulthood, living away from the homeland and without their families for the first time and they experience downward mobility. In addition, they are at the mercy of constant changes in Australian migration policy. Drawing on three years of multi-sited fieldwork in Australia and Brazil in three Pentecostal churches (the Australian megachurches Hillsong and C3 and a Brazilian church), I argue that Pentecostalism supports these students in their migration pathway. This is particularly the case because these are Seeker churches. By focusing on youth culture, entertainment, and informality and by addressing real-life situations, these churches cater to middle-class sensibilities. I also contend that their religious beliefs and practices are interwoven with the students’ narratives of migration to Australia. Thus the students pray for visas, jobs, and sponsorships for permanent residency and they see every obstacle and achievement as God’s work in their lives. For them, God determines whether they can stay or must return home. Importantly, citizenship in God’s kingdom gives them a more significant sense of belonging than that of the Australian state.

KEYWORDS:

• Pentecostalism
• Hillsong
• international students
• migration
• class

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Connect groups are small groups of people from the congregation who meet outside church weekly or fortnightly to study the Bible, share a meal, and support each other.

2. See, for example, Philippians 3:20: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

3. C3 was established in Sydney in 1980, Hillsong in 1983, and the Brazilian church in 2007. C3 and Hillsong have expanded globally in the past two decades by targeting young people and through their intense use of new media. Hillsong has received the most scholarly attention (Connell 2005; Goh 2008; Maddox 2012; Wagner 2013; Riches and Wagner 2017).

4. For a more detailed account of how the Brazilian church supports settlement and integration in Australia and why many Brazilians move between the Brazilian and Australian churches in their endeavour to integrate in Australian society and connect to the homeland, see Rocha (2013, 2017).

5. This is a stark contrast to Ilana van Wyk’s study of the UCKG in South Africa (2014). She found that the church does not foster horizontal community ties among its followers because it de-emphasises socialisation and focuses on tithing, donations, and vertical connections between the individual and God.

6. “He gives power to the weak. And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under the Future Fellowship Grant number FT130101430.

Notes on contributors

Cristina Rocha

Cristina Rocha is Professor of anthropology and Director of the Religion and Society Research Cluster at Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia. She is the President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion and co-edits the Journal of Global Buddhism and the Religion in the Americas series, published by Brill. CORRESPONDENCE: Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith NSW 2751, Australia.