Spiritual brokers: African Pastors and the mediation of migratory processes

Abstract

In this article, we examine the notion of instability by engaging with migrants’ re-constructions of belonging, in both global north and south cityscapes, under the auspices of Pentecostalism. We analyse African Pastors’ life histories in order to generate insights into how they mediate the tensions of migratory processes with their evolving personas as pastors. The research is based on three years of fieldwork (2012–2015) with Pentecostal church leaders in Bilbao, Spain, and Johannesburg, South Africa. These geographically distant contexts enable us to see the ways in which pastors negotiate the instabilities of migratory processes. Along the way, they develop a sort of spiritual brokerage amongst fellow congregants which allows African Pentecostals to create spaces in which tactical forms of identity and belonging combine to accommodate the super-diversity of migrants’ lives.

Dans cet article nous examinons la notion d’instabilité par une implication dans les reconstructions par les migrants de leur appartenance, aussi bien dans les paysages urbains mondiaux du Nord que du Sud, sous les auspices du Pentecôtisme. Nous analysons les histoires de vie de pasteurs africains afin de générer des aperçus de la façon dont ils exercent une médiation, en tant que pasteurs, dans le cadre des tensions qu’engendrent les processus migratoires. Les résultats de recherche s’appuient sur trois années de travail sur le terrain (2012–2015) avec des leaders d’églises pentecôtistes à Bilbao, en Espagne, et à Johannesbourg, en Afrique du Sud. Ces contextes géographiquement distants nous permettent de voir comment les pasteurs négocient les instabilités des processus migratoires. En cours de route ils développent une sorte d’intermédiaire spiritual parmi les personnes qu’ils côtoient dans leurs congrégations ce qui permet aux pentecôtistes africains de créer des espaces dans lesquels les formes tactiques d’identité et d’appartenance se combinent pour s’adapter à l’hyper-diversité des vies des migrants.

Keywords:

• African migration
• Pentecostalism
• social insecurity

Mots-clefs:

• migration africaine
• pentecôtisme
• insécurité sociale

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Peter Kankonde Bukasa and Lorena Núñez, the editors of this special issue, ‘Vital Instability: Ontological Insecurity and African Urbanisms’, for their valuable inputs throughout the reviewing process and refinement of the arguments that have been presented in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Rafael Cazarin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5693-5628

Erma Cossa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-3017

Notes

1. See the introduction to this special edition.

2. The use informants’ real names were authorized by themselves in oral consents recorded in each interview.

3. ‘Foreign’ here to be considered non-traditionally local or regional religious forms.

4. Statistics from Padrón Municipal de Habitantes, Bilbao, 2014.

5. The Autonomous Community of the Basque Country comprises three provinces: Alava, Bizkaia and Guipúzcoa. The city of Bilbao is the capital of Bizkaia and its metropolitan area represents the largest urban conglomeration amongst the Basque capitals and across the whole of northern Spain. Bilbao's metropolitan area has a population of approximately 950,000 people and is considered to be the fourth largest city in Spain.

6. Complex social formations marked by dynamic interplays of variables such as ethnicity, language, legal status, religious traditions and labour networks that co-condition integration outcomes.

7. https://joburg.org.za/images/stories/2013/June/2013-16%20idp%2017may2013%20final.pdf

8. In our perspective, this ‘proper way’ or ‘the right way’, as put by Pastor Edward in Spain, is precisely what all church leaders we interviewed said that they are entitled to transmit through their interpretation of the bible. As if each one, and all of them, master the right spiritual knowledge and the born-again right experience as opposed, for instance, to the baptism of the catholic church as an institutional step and not necessarily part of a personal transformation.

9. In October 2013, the church had expanded beyond its main headquarters in Yeoville, into two smaller branches: one in the northern province of Mpumalanga and the other in Honeydew, Johannesburg.

10. Translated from the fragment “Le don de glossolalie a donc une fonction de démarcation ou, à l'inverse, de ‘nivellement’, que le pasteur lui-même utilise tour à tour, selon M.P. di Bella (1988, 905), ‘pour stimuler l’égalité parmi ses membres ou bien pour acquérir une position dominante en son sein’.”.

Additional information

Funding

We would also like to thank the Research Centre ISOR – Investigacions en Sociologia de la Religió at the Autonomous University of Barcelona as well as the Eusko Jaurlaritza PhD Fellowship Program (BFI-2011-263-AE) and the Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea UPV/EHU, all of which helped to fund this research.