The Latin American Pentecostal community of superdiverse Berchem

Marco Jose Rueda Aguila Anr: 688984

Master’s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences Specialization: Data Journalism

Faculty of Humanities Tilburg University, Tilburg

Supervisor: prof. dr. J.M.E. Blommaert Second Reader: dr. M. Spotti

October 2016

Abstract:

The globalization and the gradual increase of worldwide information and communication technologies has brought deep transformations in some of the landscapes of European urban areas. Such changes are related as well with the escalation of international migration, which means an unprecedented mixture of people with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds living in the same environment. This phenomenon, which is called super-diversity, demands new formulas aimed at solving people identity, adaptation and integration challenges arisen from this complex situation. In this context, the ethnographic study of a community reveals itself as a powerful technique to observe and comprehend who are them, where are they from and how do they relate with their host country as well as with their country of origin. In particular, this study revolves around the Latin American Pentecostal community of Berchem, an Antwerp’s district in which ‘superdiverse’ features are found. Pentecostal churches are one of the most significant appearances in the neighbourhood within the last ten years. The research discloses the way in which Pentecostal churchers are connected to the last stage of migration by investigating their role within the community in which they operate. These places, which are a matter of debate among public institutions in Belgium, provide social and emotional assistance to their converts, which makes of them important infrastructures in superdiverse environments. Nevertheless, due to the nature of such churhces, at some point they can also obstruct the natural integration process of the newcomer.

“The humanist side of our writing, as reporters, consist in showing a real, honest picture of the world we live in, not a set of stereotypes. This is one of the main tasks of literature, art and every form of cultural manifestation.” Ryszard Kapuscinsky

Table of contents:

ABSTRACT: ...... 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS: ...... 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 5 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 6 1.1 GLOBALIZATION ...... 8 1.2 SUPERDIVERSITY ...... 9 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 10 1.3.1 Methods ...... 11 1.3.2 The access to the field ...... 11 1.3.3 Data collection ...... 12 1.4 STRUCTURE OF THE PAPER ...... 15 CHAPTER 2. MIGRATION AND RELIGION ...... 16 2.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF MIGRATIONS BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND EUROPE ...... 16 2.1.1 EUROPEAN MIGRATION TO ‘THE AMERICAS’ ...... 16 2.1.2 Latin American migration to Europe ...... 17 2.2 MIGRATION AND RELIGION ...... 22 2.2.1 European evangelization of the continent ...... 22 2.2.2 Religious identity within migrants in the Americas ...... 22 2.2.3 The surge of Evangelism and Pentecostalism in Europe ...... 23 2.3 MIGRATION AND PENTECOSTALISM IN ‘LATIN AMERICAN BELGIUM’ ...... 24 2.3.1 General background ...... 24 2.3.2 Pentecostalism in Belgium ...... 25 2.4 MIGRATION AND RELIGION WITHIN THE LATIN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN ANTWERP ...... 26 2.4.1 Personal stories ...... 26 2.4.2 Analysis of statements of the participants ...... 32 CHAPTER 3: ANTWERP, SUPERDIVERSE BERCHEM AND THE LATIN AMERICAN PENTECOSTAL COMMUNITY...... 34 3.1 ANTWERP ...... 34 3.1.1 Basic information ...... 34 3.1.2 Antwerp diversity ...... 35 3.2 SUPERDIVERSE BERCHEM ...... 35 3.3. THE LATIN AMERICAN COMMUNITY OF ‘EVANGELIST BERCHEM’ ...... 37 3.3.1 Diversity of the community’s spatial distribution ...... 37 3.3.2 Labour market integration ...... 40 3.3.3. The foundations of the community ...... 42 CHAPTER 4. THE LATIN AMERICAN PENTECOSTAL CHURCH ...... 47 4.1 THE ‘MOVIMIENTO MISIONERO MUNDIAL’ ...... 47 4.2 THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH ...... 48 4.3 ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE CHURCH ...... 49 4.4 SOLIDARITY NETWORKS ...... 50 5. DISCUSSION ...... 51 REFERENCES ...... 54

Acknowledgements

This research has been, without any doubt, one of the most challenging and difficult situations I have ever had to face in my life. But, and I am pretty sure of this, also the most unexpected and enriching experience for me within the last years. As I didn’t have any previous background either in ethnography or religious studies, it took me a lot of reading and thinking to adapt my perspective to the task I was meant to do. Nevertheless, as a journalist I feel blessed of having this opportunity, which has changed my perception about so many things that surrounds us that would be impossible to enumerate in here.

First and foremost, I would like to show the deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Jan Blommaert, for introducing me to his unique neighbourhood, as well as being a constant source of help. He has always been able to give me meaningful insights when I needed them, even when he spent some time off from work. At the same time, I would like to thank Gosia Szabla, who also researched the Polish community of Antwerp, for her meaningful support during the first stage of my research. Her advices were the best I could ask for during the first contacts with the field of research.

Second, I want to say a deep thank you to my girlfriend, Africa, who has been an invaluable support during all the time I spent with the Latin American Pentecostal community of Antwerp. During the research I experienced good moments, but sometimes I also felt really insecure about my relationship with the Latin American community. In these moments, she was the most understanding and supportive person, always encouraging me to give the best of myself.

Last but not least, I really want to express my deepest gratitude to my uncle, Jonathan, who was able to supervise and help me not even once, but twice, with language and grammar corrections in a record-breaking span of time.

Chapter 1. Introduction

Over recent decades, the growth of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in many European cities has been an unprecedented social phenomenon. This has been due to the rise in international migration flows, especially those coming from Latin America and Southern Africa (Maskens, 2015). Such an increase in migration, which is driven by a desire to find security or prosperity is at the heart of the economic globalization process which began two decades ago (Kahanec and Zimmerman, 2008). Migration flows of this kind, which are rooted in inequality, have resulted in new forms of interaction between different ethnic groups brought together in a foreign country. In this context, the rise of Pentecostal churches and the complex social interactions it triggers occur in certain social environments, where these churches are gaining visibility. These environments fall within the sociological concept of ‘superdiversity’: an increase in the social, cultural and economic diversity of migration that has led to an increase in the complexity of our societies (Vertovec, 2007).

As a part of this study, I have visited a Pentecostal church run by Latin Americans immigrants in Berchem, one of the southern districts of the city of Antwerp. The focus of the research is the aforementioned ‘superdiverse environments’. In other words, urban areas in Western Societies where the acceleration of human mobility processes have caused a deep transformation in their landscapes.

The wide variety not only of their origins, but also of the overall migratory experience of the different people that make up this community, means that I will concentrate my project on unravelling the causes that help to explain the growth of these new faith based communities as well as the social relations that the ‘converts’ develop both inside and outside the church. In particular, I will participate as an observer within the church of the Movimiento Misionero Mundial, an evangelist organization founded in Antwerp in 2010, and which has spread from Latin America to all parts of the world. The church is currently located in the Statiestraat- Driekoningenstraat, a main street of the multicultural district of Berchem, and at its peak has had a congregation of 35 and 40 people, all arrived from different parts of South America and the Caribbean.

In my research, I will attempt to explain the rise of these churches in terms of the global population movements which have intensified during the last two decades. First, it is necessary to understand migration as human and cultural exchanges consolidated over time between countries and regions of the world. Furthermore, understanding how the ‘push and pull’ factors that drive migration operate is fundamental in order to fully map the connections between sender and receiver countries. This approach allows us to understand migration fluxes between Latin America and Europe as resulting from asymmetric relations of power, which then creates development imbalances in this exchange (Yepez, 2014: page 2). Of course, these processes cause deep transformations in societal structure on both sides. Consequently, migration brings new challenges for integration or self-identity of the migrants into the host community.

Córdova (2015) identifies three different factors, called ‘motivational levels’ as partial explanations for the globalized migration between these two regions since 1990. These factors are categorized into three levels: ‘macro’, ‘meso’ and ‘micro’. The first level refers to the structural reasons behind migration, such as economic or political issues that affect population wellbeing. Secondly, the ‘meso’ factors identifies the relations, once the ‘macro’ migration circuits have been established, “built by individuals that are based on communication and interaction between migrants in the country of destination and the potential migrants still living in their home country” (Córdova, 2015: page 25). The final level corresponds to the personal and familiar strategies set in motion to confront difficulties encountered in the countries of arrival and to overcome those situations (Córdova, 2015). It is the interplay of these factors which elucidate such trajectories and give us information about which problems are facing migrants when they arrive in the host country and the different modes of integration achieved by the diaspora members (Blommaert, 2016).

The development of the Pentecostal-Charismatic churches is a phenomenon resulting from the latest stage of migration under globalization. Due to their features, these spaces appear to be significantly important for the integration of certain groups of people into the host society. Through their dynamic use of mass and social media, these churches have developed a new way of spreading “the word of the Lord” (Blommaert, 2013; Meyer, 2006) by encouraging converts to participate and to feel proud of their religious affiliation. In addition, people within the community, especially young members, make use of these communicative resources in order to engage within such online networks and to ‘like’ or share the publications posted by their religious organization.

As a result of the complex mixture of their diasporic experiences, Latin American migrants form a community within these churches which has two main functions. The Charismatic function is to support individuals emotionally and the social function assists newcomers with their material needs (Karagiannis and Schiller, 2006). These two functions allow the individual to engage with a community that helps him or her to overcome difficulties encountered in the host society, so that migration becomes a powerful mechanism for conversion.

“The appearance of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in a superdiverse neighbourhood such as this one can, thus, be related to members’ experiences of superdiversity: isolation, the lack of networks and communities, the need for support from such networks and communities.” (Blommaert, 2013: page 114)

It is precisely this statement that defines a key feature of the function of these places: the creation of networks of solidarity around them. The lack of access to public services and other material needs, such as housing or labour, make it necessary for newcomers to engage with informal organizations that provide them with such facilities, and many of these churches work as nodes to serve these “informally allocated resources” (Blommaert, 2013: page 120). Throughout my research, I will take an in depth look at how these networks are structured, the people that take part of them and the services that are offered and demanded.

Throughout the research I will adopt an ethnographic approach regarding the object of study. Therefore, during my investigation I forced myself to adopt a participant role within the group. On some occasions, this was very challenging and came close to jeopardizing the whole project. During the fieldwork, I observed how the emotional and social determinants of their migratory experience shape an individual’s success and engagement within the community. This was similarly observed by Plata (2010) in his study of a Pentecostal church in Brussels. In view of this, the research will attempt to provide an in-depth analysis of all of these aspects.

1.1 Globalization

Globalization is a modern phenomenon. Although the term first appeared in the 1961 Webster’s Dictionary, it was not use in practice until entered the 1990s (Kukoc, 2006). According to Blommaert (2010: page 1). The term globalization is a “catchword for a particular historical phase”, namely the contemporary capitalistic world that arose after the end of the Cold War. Specifically, globalization entails a transformation in the structure of modern societies, which triggers unseen forms of social and individual organization. Such change implies, as with “all major transformations in history”, a multidimensional shift that is technological, economic, social, cultural, political and geopolitical (Castells, 1999: page 1). Therefore, the globalization process is the result of a concatenation of factors that, although seemingly unconnected, have brought about fundamental changes in the way we perceive the world. Manuel Castells (2000) points to the exponential development of information and communication technologies as the nexus by which all these changes are connected. The immediate consequence of the advent of these technologies is that geographical constraints affecting social change gradually recede (Waters, 2001) and force us to think about social phenomena from both local and global perspectives (Blommaert, 2010), adding complexity to contemporary social research. This latter aspect of globalization studies is directly opposed to cultural homogeneity assumptions that tend to overlook changes and transformations taking place at microscopic levels of society (Robertson, 1995: page 25). Hence, it is plausible to think that since boundaries are blurred, new trends and patterns regarding the distribution and organization of human lives may emerge. The definition of globalization proposed by David Held and his colleagues is along these lines:

“Globalization can be thought of a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions – assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact – generating transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction, and the exercise of power” (Held et al, 1999: page 16)

However, many experts have a limited view of the scope of the transformations that globalization has brought to our lives. For instance, it is argued that globalization has not democratized power structures nor increased mobility across social classes. Such a statement seems to be supported by the observation that the access to knowledge and technological infrastructure, two basic elements in globalized economies, is unequally distributed among societies. Thus, while economic globalization brings new opportunities, it also brings new problems and threats such as the rapid growth of worldwide social inequalities and exclusion that has resulted from this process (Castells, 2000).

Moreover, the global dynamics affecting this change have also been central in intensifying human mobility processes by broadening the scope and complexity of this phenomenon. The huge acceleration of international migration flows in the last twenty- five years is closely tied to the ongoing globalization process (Kahanec and Zimmermann, 2008; Li, 2008). In particular, migration waves from less developed regions to developed societies, influenced by the increasing worldwide information and communication technologies, have significantly changed the social environments of these countries (Blommaert, 2010).

1.2 Superdiversity

The resulting outcome of this phenomenon is a complex mixture by which “more people from more places migrated into more and different places and for more different reasons and motives than before” (Blommaert, 2013a: page 9; citing Vertovec (2007)). The geographical areas involved are known as ‘superdiverse’ societies. This concept refers to those environments where globalization has modified and expanded the social, cultural and linguistic diversity of societies, bringing chaos -in the sense that predictability based on former assumptions is largely gone- as a new form of order (Blommaert, 2013a). To understand what forces are driving this phenomenon, Blommaert (2013a) identifies two major aspects affecting this process: the end of the Cold War and the advent of the Internet and the communication technologies revolution.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended the polarization of the world into communist and capitalist systems, blurring the geopolitical barriers that separated both systems. This means that the existing order that prevailed in the world has changed, allowing the aforementioned new patterns and channels of human mobility across the world (Blommaert, 2013). Blommaert (2013: page 8) explains the previous world order as follows:

“The effects of that order included the fact that one would literally never see a car with, e.g., Bulgarian or Romanian licence plates on Western European roads. Migration prior to the early 1990s was a well-regulated phenomenon, organized on a cross-national basis in such a way that the profiles of ‘migrants’ into Western European societies were rather clearly defined and predictable”.

At the same time, the Internet and wireless communication technologies have become widespread, enabling virtual communication which removes all kinds of geographical, social or cultural constraints and profoundly alters the ways in which people interact between each other (Blommaert, 2013a).

This had already been noted by Vertovec (2007), who coined the term ‘superdiversity’ to address the changes to the nature of immigration that the United Kingdom has been experiencing over the last two decades. The arrival of these new groups precipitated severe modifications to the social landscape of London brought about by a “transformative ‘diversification of diversity’” (page 1025) in global migration patterns. Such changes, visible to some extent in all modern societies, oblige researchers to analyse diversity “not just in terms of bringing more ethnicities and countries of origin, but also with respect to a multiplication of significant variables that affect where, how and with whom people live” (ibid). These additional variables include socio-cultural factors such as language or religion, but also other issues, such as the different migration channels and legal status among diaspora members, their gender and age profiles, their spatial organization, or the ways in which migrated people stay in contact with their country of origin, being precisely the interplay between these factors that help to unravel superdiversity networks and structures (ibid). In that sense, Vertovec (2007: page 1026) proposes a methodological shift when studying different ethnic groups living in the same environment. This inevitably requires gaining “a multidimensional perspective on diversity”, which inevitably results from acknowledging the three key features of superdiversity: complexity, mobility and unpredictability (Blommaert, 2013).

1.3 Research questions

Having stated the main theoretical aspects which form the context of our study, the following investigation will revolve around answering the following two research questions:

I. Who are the people that form the Latin American evangelist community of Berchem and how do they engage with each other?

II. Why do these people gather in the evangelist church and what is the function of these church for the Latin American community of Berchem?

1.3.1 Methods

Superdiversity itself poses new questions and challenges to traditional studies of migration and diversity. In that regard, superdiversity stimulates new quantitative and qualitative techniques that attempt to overcome such challenges (Vertovec, 2007). Along these lines, Vertovec (2007: page 1045) calls for “more and better qualitative studies of superdiversity”.

In the current era, which is characterized by rapid and constant social change, it is urgent to find effective ways of understanding superdiversity which can unravel the complex dynamics which underpin the structural and the social interactions of superdiverse societies (Blommaert and van de Vijver, 2013). Hence, the research will revolve around an ethnographic observation of the subject matter within a specified span of time. In contrast to most scientific approaches, which aim to reduce and simplify complexity, ethnography attempts to identify the complex networks and structures that take place in social environments (Blommaert and Dong, 2010).

1.3.2 The access to the field

I went to Berchem for the first time in September 2015 and shortly after on 20th September I met the people who would be the subjects of my study for the first time. I went there on a Sunday when members of the church spend the whole day interacting with their community. I was afraid of arousing the suspicions of some members of the church and therefore I entered the field as an undercover researcher. I claimed that I was walking around the neighbourhood and that I had stopped at the door because I heard Spanish voices from the inside, and that this attracted my attention. Their immediate reaction was to say that “God had steered me there because he wanted me to know him”. Once in the field, I found out that people belonging to the church were open and friendly. First, I was approached by the pastor, who introduced me to two other men. Following this, I was presented to the rest of the congregation, who were all women. Overall, everyone seemed happy for me to be there.

During the first months of my study, I spent most of the time in the church participating in the Sunday activities of the community. Following each fieldwork session, I immediately wrote down every detail that I could recall both about the environment and the community itself. During that time, my research was directed at establishing the relations between these two objects of study that my research was aimed to deal with.

After having been accepted into the community, I decided to change the tone of my investigation by starting to reveal my identity to various members. Up to that moment, I had explained my presence as resulting from my ‘curiosity’ at hearing Spanish in the street and also that I had an interest in religion. After gaining a level of trust from the congregation, I started to identify who I considered to be the most ‘reliable’ people and tell them about my research project. That was the point at which I realised that the research was going to be more challenging than expected. The friendship and openness of the first days turned into silence and suspicion with many of the members of the community, becoming reluctant to being interviewed. They talked between themselves and it was obvious that some members felt uncomfortable with my presence there. Adding to this worry, in November I received a phone call from Karen, a Peruvian woman who regularly attended the church, warning me that I could get in trouble if I continued attending. She told me that things within the church were not as they seemed and that some of the community members were in trouble with the law. Because of this, my investigation was raising suspicion amongst them and consequently I could be in danger. At that time, even though my study was not complete, I was forced to interrupt it for the next two months and a half. In February, I was able to talk with Chanel, a nineteen year old woman who I met in the cult and who had accepted me on Facebook. She was a relative of the people that were allegedly ‘threatening’ me. During this conversation, she asked me why I had stopped going to church and if something bad had happened to me. She seemed really worried about me, so I decided to attend church one more time to see how they could react. Surprisingly, I did not notice any suspicious behaviour to reinforce the warnings I had been given. Therefore, I concluded my observations in the field from February to March 2016. In the end, I appeared to have gained the friendship of most of the community members with some of them allowing me to become a ‘Facebook friend’ or to keep in touch via Whatsapp.

1.3.3 Data collection

As previously mentioned, superdiversity is driven by complexity, mobility and unpredictability. Hence, I must take account of these new assumptions in my investigation (Blommaert, 2013). We carried out our investigation within this conceptual framework and hence it must deal with a subject that is complex and from which very little can be inferred a priori because of its constant changing features. For instance, Blommaert and van de Vijver (2013) claim that not having a solid understanding of such an ‘object’ –that is, the culture or community being studied- can quickly raise methodological and epistemological conflicts. To avoid such problems, or what Cicourel (1964) called the ‘ecological validity’ issue, the data gathering process will revolve around a triangulation of qualitative research methods (Patton, 1999). Following the studies of Denzon (1978) and Patton (1999), the type of triangulation used in this study will be a ‘method triangulation’. The techniques developed will consist of a participant observation of the community, interviews and digital data gathering based on observations drawn from community members’ social media activity.

The fieldwork

Throughout the entire fieldwork process, I have collected diverse and numerous data to develop a better understanding of the social environment in which I was working. Initially, I developed my own semiotic landscape of the different languages and cultural signs in the area as a first step towards recognizing the different ethnic groups and their visibility. Although I did not carry out an in-depth investigation into the different linguistic signs in the neighbourhood, I formed an impression of the patterns of visibility of the Latin American community in Berchem, which I later discovered was related to specific features of this community in this area. I created a diary in which I recorded my observations chronologically, including my findings and the other activities that I carried out during the investigation. Furthermore, I made notes on every single detail or event that I noticed, as well as taking pictures and making recordings in order to enrich my observations. However, it was informal conversations which provided me with some of the most interesting findings. In view of the unwillingness of many community members to give formal interviews, this technique has been one of the most valuable sources for my study.

Participant and non-participant observation

As stated above, I began my field study as a non-participant observant, which gave me a privileged position from which to observe the community during my first days of research. Then, after gaining the confidence –even the friendship- of the community members, I revealed my true identity so that a participant observant, actively taking part in the everyday life of the community. Nevertheless, I still stayed undercover for some church members who were not part of the ‘core’ of the community –they were only temporary church members- and, with them, I was still working in a non-revealed manner.

Interviews

Table 1.1 Participants

Name: Age: Sex: Country Year of Years living Living in: of origin: arrival to in Europe: Antwerp(*):

Chanel 19 Female Peru 2003 12 Berchem (Antwerp)

Karen 48 Female Dominica 2005 10 Brasschaat n (Antwerp) Republic

Nelson 35 Male Dominica 1999 3 Merksem n (Antwerp) Republic

Jesus 39 Male Colombia 2010 5 Edegem/Berchem (Antwerp)

David 43 male Ecuador 2003 1 Lille (France)

I carried out interviews with five different individuals over the course of my investigation. I recorded data that required a fact-checking process, including identifying topics that needed re-asking or bullet points of the interview. Except for one person, who explicitly asked not to be on record, all the interviews were taped and detailed transcripts were subsequently made. My research sample consisted of the Latin American evangelist church attendants and the topics for the interview were selected according to the notes I had taken during my first stage of fieldwork carried out between September and October. I openly asked for volunteers within the community without considering any economic, social or demographic factors. Although no one explicitly refused my invitation at first, most of the members were reluctant to participate either saying ‘no’ later or by avoiding me. I only interviewed those who explicitly accepted the invitation to participate, and in some cases, it took a considerable effort to persuade them to agree. Between October and November, I was able to conduct two life interviews with different members. Following this, when I returned to the church in February, three more people agreed to be interviewed. In view of the difficulties I found scheduling interviews, I was forced to conduct those interviews through Skype. In addition, I frequently communicated with two of the interviewees through Facebook and Skype, which allowed me to ask more in-depth questions on some topics.

I designed two different set of questions according to which medium I used for my interviews. For in-person interviews, I encouraged a free-flowing discussion, starting with broad questions about their experience, when they came here or their personal experience in Belgium so far. However, I always had certain topics that were of broad interest, which I directed the interviewee towards if necessary (e.g: labour experience in the host country or reasons for migration). For the interviews conducted via Skype I had to consider factors such as potential communication losses or the reduced expressiveness of the respondents. In addition, I had a close relationship with those individuals who agreed to take part in my research, so I was able to guide an open conversation around topics which it knew to be of interest to them.

Online observation

According to Sade-Beck (2004: page 13), “there is a good foundation for the use of qualitative research methodologies based on the integration of online and offline data gathering in Internet ethnographic research”. Along those lines, Sade-Beck (2004) argues that integrating online data-gathering methods with traditional ethnographic analyses allows for an expansion of concepts as ‘field of research’ or ‘research population’ by surpassing traditional geographical boundaries, as well as allowing the researcher to access the subject matter by developing an ethnographic approach on such a complex and diverse field (Varis, 2014).

The study I carried out was a clandestine online observation, also referred to as ‘lurking’, of the activities of some community members through their publications and interactions on Facebook. To do so, I added them as ‘friends’ on the social network. Specifically, I mostly followed the activities of the youngest members of the community, who were highly active on that platform. In contrast, there was barely any online activity by those elder community members, which suggests a gap in the social media usage between younger and older generations in the Latin American community residing in Antwerp. I also joined the Facebook group of the Movimiento Misionero Mundial (MMM) in Belgium. This is the worldwide evangelical organization to which the church belongs and where the community gathers together. The purpose of collecting additional sets of data through the Internet was to enrich the existing groundwork by analysing how the subjects behave in an online environment. For example, do they use the Internet to reinforce their faith, or do they act in a different way by hiding their religious beliefs?

1.4 Structure of the paper

In the first section, I have introduced both the theoretical background which provides the context of the research as well as the research methodology that I have employed. The next chapter will provide an extensive background study of the historical migration patterns and the rise of Pentecostalism in Europe which results. In addition, I will highlight the relationship between migration and religious practice based on the information provided by the participants in the study. The third chapter will then describe the setting of the study: the city of Antwerp and its superdiverse district of Berchem. Furthermore, I will discuss the social position of the community studied in this location. Following this, the fourth chapter will provide an in-depth analysis of the organization and functioning of the Pentecostal church in which the Latin American community gathers. The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of these churches within this group and, in particular, the structure of the informal solidarity networks created within the church.

Chapter 2. Migration and religion

2.1 Historical background of migrations between Latin America and Europe

2.1.1 European migration to ‘the Americas’

There is a long history of migration fluxes between Europe and Latin America (Ayuso, 2009). The first wave of these population movements dates back to the XVI century, when Spanish colonizers landed in America for the first time in 1492, bringing about a turning point in international relations and trade between both regions.

“After the arrival of Christophorus Columbus to America, the movement of Europeans to that continent was strengthened by the settlement of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British and French colonies along all the region during the 16th century. Since then, North-South migration fluxes continued during three and half centuries, establishing the political, cultural and social ties that today allow the exchange of migration waves between both regions.” (Córdova, 2015: page 25)

There has been a constant exchange of population between Europe and Latin America over the last three centuries, beginning during the start of the 16th century and lasting until the last relevant migration waves in the 1950s. Due to the different circumstances affecting migration over time, the European immigration in Latin America takes place in three differentiated historical stages (Córdova, 2015; Yepez, 2014).

The first period is from the 16th to the 18th century and, despite the absence of official records to provide evidence on this issue, it is estimated that around three million European citizens headed towards Latin America over that period. The arrival of workers to the New World from the Old totally changed the economic, cultural and social organization of the region by establishing a colonial regime based on ethnic and racial hierarchies. Within this system, American natives, Africans, which were mostly transported from their continent as slaves and robbed from their citizen status, or Asian immigrants, were all discriminated against in favour of the incoming European emigrants (Yepez, 2014).

The next stage in the history of these movements coincide with the period known as the ‘Great Migration’ age (Córdova, 2012), which refers to the international migration fluxes during the early parts of the 19th and 20th century. This phase is influenced by the dynamics of profound social change that took place on both sides. In South America, the wars of independence and the following liberation from Spanish and Portuguese colonial regimes began a process of development for which huge amounts of human labour and capital were required. This ‘call effect’ attracted new European migrants, who saw new opportunities in Latin America. It is remarkable that during this time countries such as Argentina or Chile were registering higher income levels than Spain, Italy or Portugal (Córdova, 2015). On the other side, the economic modernization of Europe left many people unemployed, which along with the hostile political climate and wars on the continent forced people to migrate in the search of better working and economic conditions, escaping from the highly hierarchical societies in Southern European countries (Yepez, 2014).

The third stage refers to the last period of European migration to Latin America between the mid-1940s and the late 1950s. During this period, the rise in agricultural and livestock exports, as well as the increase in demand for labour, plays a crucial role for attracting new immigrants (Yepez, 2014). This was particularly true of people headed to Venezuela, Chile and Cuba. Then, from the 1970s onwards, migration flows between Europe and Latin America started to shift towards the opposite direction (Córdova, 2015).

2.1.2 Latin American migration to Europe

1960s-1970s: The political exile during Latin American military regimes

From the second half of the 20th century onwards, the migration path from Europe to Latin America was reversed due to changing trends in global migration processes. The return of Europeans from Latin America to Europe since the 1960s preceded the subsequent waves of Latin American people to the ‘Old continent’ (Ayuso, 2009).

The integration process of Latin American immigrants in Europe is highly dependent on the different legal frameworks that have affected migration in the continent throughout history. Generally speaking, during the mid-20th century labour immigrants were accepted in Europe which needed a cheap and flexible workforce, usually not taking into account their legal status in the host country (Huysmans, 2000). This situation started to change from the 1970s, when immigration started to become a public concern (Huysmans, 2000), coinciding at that time with the first waves of Latin American emigrants to Europe. The temporary character of this group in the continent did not encourage an approach to migration in terms of policy implementation on integration and multiculturalism. In addition, at that time many countries were implementing restrictive policies to limit the access of foreign workers due to the weak economic situation triggered by the 1970s oil crisis (Ayuso, 2009). For instance, during that decade several countries from Central and North Europe suspended foreign workers’ contract programmes that were launched during the post-World War II period (Gil and Pedone, 2014). Nevertheless, European governments were sympathetic to political refugees and asylum seekers, accepting migrants into their societies (Ayuso, 2009).

Since the 1970s, the first ‘relevant’ migration flows of the Latin American diaspora started to reach Europe (Ayuso, 2009). This mobilization took place in a parallel manner to the demographic growth and an increasing ‘rural exodus’ in Latin America, which set in motion a huge urbanization process of cities such as Mexico City, Lima, Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro (Córdova, 2012). These firsts offshore flows are however considered to be ‘low intensity’ migration flows, since their scope was limited in comparison with the volume of Latin America people displaced particularly since the 1990s.

Within this period, Latin American diaspora consisted of political refugees and asylum seekers fleeing dictatorships and military regimes in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil or Peru. These governments forced people to migrate in search for freedom and security (Padilla and Peixoto, 2007). The profiles of the migrants were those of the political opposition to these regimes i.e. highly skilled professionals, intellectuals, academics, teachers or artists (Yepez, 2014). The prosecution that those people suffered helps to explain the willingness of European societies to take in these political refugees. In particular, European countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain or Germany among others hosted Chileans, Argentineans, Uruguayans, and Brazilians migrants between the 1960s and the 1980s (Padilla and Peixoto, 2007).

European citizens’ perception of towards these newly arriving ethnic groups was influenced by the circumstances of this migration. The dispersal of Latin American communities through all Europe, as well as their socioeconomic status or the reasons for leaving their country, influenced the way the European society received those newcomers.

“ (...) the main picture about Latin American presence in Europe was related to leftist intellectuals, indigenous musicians, craftsmen, university students and artists” (Herrera and Yépez, 2007: page 9).

Yet, the same researchers point out another important peculiarity of this first migration:

“ (...) The social imaginary that predominated among Latin American migrants was highly influenced by the special characteristics of their migratory experience: settling in the country of destination was a temporary issue, for instance, in the case of many musicians and traders; or even forced, as it was for political refugees. In any case, the idea of being ‘on the move’, not integrated, and the picture of returning to their home country were very rooted in them and, therefore, it completely shaped their experience.” (Herrera and Yépez, 2007: page 9)

After the fall of the dictatorships and subsequent introduction of democracy, many emigrants left Europe and returned to Latin America. However, many others stayed and adopted European nationalities (Ayuso, 2009), providing a basis for the arrival of Latin American emigrants during the following decades.

From political to economic refugees: Latin American migration in Europe since the 1980s

Throughout the 1980s, the waves of migration that flowed into Europe from South America and the Caribbean set new patterns in terms of motivations and migration channels, which requires new explanations for migration (Ayuso, 2009; Córdova, 2015; Yépez, 2014; Yépez and Herera, 2007). In the context of financial crisis and structural adjustment programmes in most of Latin American countries, many middle-class impoverished workers and university students abandoned the region in order to look for better labour and professional opportunities (Yépez, 2014; Córdova, 2015). As a result, the political refugees and asylum seekers of the last decade were replaced by economic emigrants who were escaping from the poor working conditions of their home countries (Ayuso, 2009). At the same time, Spain or Portugal started to become the focus of Latin American immigration thanks to their cultural ties as well as the favourable economic and political situation these countries had experienced since the 1970s (Córdova, 2015).

This new stage in the human mobility process between Latin America and Europe was also characterized by an increase in the diversity of the countries where migrants came from. During the 1980s, there was a notable increase in the emigration of Caribbean women who were generally less qualified than middle-income migrants from the Southern Cone, and which then became an important migrant group during this period (Ayuso, 2009).

Despite this increase in the variety of migrant channels and statuses, these flows were still less numerous in Europe than Asian or African migration flows of the same period (Yépez and Herrera, 2007). Hence, European citizens did not perceive that there was an integrated Latin American community in their countries. Instead, the main belief about this group was that they were transitory migrants. Nevertheless, as Yépez and Herrera (2007: page 22) show, “although perhaps they were not statistically significant, these groups would make easier the arrival of new Latin American economic migrants during the 1990s and after the 2000s, representing a massive increase in comparison with previous fluxes.”

The Classification of Latin American migration waves to Europe since the 1990s

Historically, there has been constant migration between Latin America and Europe. From 1990, this phenomenon became more dynamic and intense, signifying an unprecedented rise in the volume of Latin American people leaving their countries and moving towards wealthier regions. A good example of this is that by the 2000s almost half of the total of Latin American migrants residing abroad had abandoned their countries during the 1990s (Ayuso, 2009).

There are several reasons that help to explain such an acceleration of international migration flows in the 1990s. Martínez, Cano and Contrucci (2014) link this increase in global migration to the current process of globalization and the expansion in international trade. In addition, the authors point to the increase in social and economic inequalities between regions as one of the causes why migration is growing. Along these lines, Yépez and Herrera (2007: page 23) states that, “migration as a mass phenomenon occurs when there exist different development levels between sender and receiver countries”. In addition, it is important to bear in mind that the main reasons why these people emigrate relate to the social problems of Latin America: inequality, unemployment, undeveloped financial markets, ‘failed states’ or the absence of national development policies (Ruiz, 2006).

Since 1950, the United States has been, by far, the main recipient of Latin American emigrants. In fact, the numbers speak for themselves. In 2012, there were almost 53 million ‘Hispanics’ living in the USA, of which 18.8 million were born in a Latin American country (Córdova, 2015). Even excluding Mexicans, the largest migrant group in the United States, this nation still hosts 50% of all Latin American people living outside their country (ibid). The increasing harshness of immigration admission requirements since the 1990s, especially in the Mexico-United States border, became even stricter after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, forcing many migrants to look for alternative destinations within European Union countries (Yépez and Herrera, 2007).

Consequently, human flows coming from Latin America have been progressively diverted towards other destinations, such as Asia or southern Europe (Ayuso, 2009). Therefore, the patterns of Latin American emigration to Europe that emerged throughout the 1980s have not just been consolidated but also diversified. In the case of Europe, Spain had rapidly become the centre of attraction for Latin American migration in the region. The historical, linguistic and cultural ties between Latin America and Spain, Portugal and Italy, added to the ease of entry into these countries compared to the rest of Europe, attracted most migrants there (Ruiz, 2006). Moreover, Yépez and Herrera (2007) highlight the large informal labour sectors in those countries, where many international migrants were employed, and the regularization programs launched in these countries.

“The numbers highlight the leading role of Spain, where two thirds of the Latin American population in Europe reside. […] Besides, Latin Americans presence and visibility are higher in Spain, Italy or Portugal than in the rest of Europe, since Latin American population stand out with higher percentages over the total population in those countries: 35.2%, 9.2% and 15,3% respectively, while the proportion in the rest of Europe is less than 5% over the total migration” (Ayuso, 2009: page 6).

However, the diversification in countries of origin brought about new geographical patterns of distribution of the Latin American diaspora in other areas of Europe. Although these communities were mostly established in Spain, to where all different types of Latin Americans emigrated, there were also established South American communities in Italy, France, Portugal, and in the United Kingdom and Netherlands, where Caribbeans became more visible (Ayuso, 2009).

Since the 2008 financial crisis and the consequent worldwide economic downturn, the patterns of arrival and distribution of the Latin American immigration in Europe have significantly changed. In particular, the Latin American population of other European Union centres has grown while that of Spain decreased by 4% (98.900 people) between 2010 and 2013 (Córdova, 2015). Despite this, Spain remains the most popular country for Latin American migrants, while the economic crisis has opened the possibility of Latin Americans moving from Spain to other European countries, the United States or returning to their home countries (Yépez, 2014). Increasingly, the distribution of the Latin American diaspora in Europe has become less predictable due to the increasing mobility and diversification of these groups.

The ‘securitization’ of the European migration policy

According to Guiraudon (2000: page 251), “since the beginning of the 1980s, migration and asylum policy in Europe has increasingly been elaborated in supranational forums and implemented by transnational actors”. In fact, this was a result of the TREVI network in 1975, the Schengen agreements (1985) or the Single European Act (1986) which led to the inclusion of migration as a central part of EU targets in 1992 (Huysmans, 2000, 2006). As a consequence of the suppression of the internal barriers and the advent of free mobility across the Schengen area, governments agreed to collaborate to manage migration from third world countries (Ayuso, 2009). Increasingly, the European Union has participated more in developing and coordinating migration policies affecting third country nationals. In 2005, ‘The Hague programme’ was launched by the European Commission. The plan included five directives with two main objectives: develop new ways for regularizing legal immigration and to combat illegal immigration (Ayuso, 2009). To work towards the first goal new legal paths were introduced to meet the needs of the labour markets in different communities. To meet the second target FRONTEX, the European system of border management, was created together with an integrated information exchange system (Schengen Information System or SIS) among member states and the European Union common visa policy for third country nationals. In general terms, European Union actions on migration policy have been branded as “restrictive and control-oriented”, which has resulted in a “securitization of migration” coming from countries outside the Schengen zone (Huysmans, 2000: page 756).

Despite these measures, the role of the European Union in regulating international migration is far from a coherent and multidimensional common migration policy (Bazzaco, 2008). Therefore, a great degree of decision making regarding this issue still resides at the national level (Guiraudon, 2000). For instance, EU member states determine special requirements for migration entry and expulsion conditions through national regulations and bilateral agreements signed with third countries (Ayuso, 2009). Despite EU efforts at legislation to elaborate a common framework regarding entry and exit conditions (visa policies, borders management), this has not been achieved and policies on multiculturalism and integration are still far from being commonly agreed (Bazzaco, 2008).

2.2 Migration and religion

2.2.1 European evangelization of the continent

The Spanish conquest of America lead to the discovery of a new civilization with cultural, social and economic structures which were radically different from those of the conquers. Hence, when the Spanish expedition arrived in the New World, one of their first tasks was to set up ‘missionary programs’ aimed at evangelizing Indian groups. In those missions, natives were taught European agriculture techniques, as well as leather manufacturing and additional skills required by the colonizers (Jackson and Castillo, 1995). The purpose of this evangelization process was to adapt native Indians to the colonial order in which the American society was organized. According to Jackson and Castillo (1995), such programs were framed in a broader effort of changing Indian society and religion in all of those territories that were occupied by Spaniards and the following European settlers. As a result, European settlers imposed a new socio-economic and religious structure in the Philippines, Peru and New Spain among others (Miranda, 1960; Jackson and Castillo, 1995).

2.2.2 Religious identity within migrants in the Americas

The links between migration and religion have been extensively documented throughout history (Schermerhorn, 1949; Levitt, 2003; Karagiannis and Schiller, 2006). For instance, during the Great Migration period, many of the emigrants to the Americas found in religion a way of overcoming tough situations resulting from “difficult living and working conditions, loneliness, and discrimination” (Karagiannis and Schiller, 2006: page 139).

2.2.3 The surge of Evangelism and Pentecostalism in Europe

The Evangelist and Pentecostal churches derive from fundamentalist branches of Protestantism rooted in the ‘Holiness’ movements, which encourages the necessity of living a life without sin. This ‘holiness’ is achieved through having a personal relationship with God rooted in a strict moral code that strongly constrains the converts’ social conduct. These religious movements appeared in Latin America and the United States during the first half of the 20th century in the middle of the economic downturn provoked by the 1930 global financial crisis (Saranyana and Alejos-Grau, 1999).

In their study on traditional and modern approaches to religion and migration, Karagiannis and Schiller (2006) point out that researchers have widely misjudged the importance of religion in diasporic migration by focusing on linear analyses of religion as a matter of ethnicity and identity preservation.

“Researchers made the assumption that in their initial states of settlement migrants organised their churches on the basis of homeland identities and they documented transnational connections between homeland institutions and immigrant organizations.” (Karagiannis and Schiller, 2006: page 140)

Without doubt this assumption holds true since religious organization greatly contribute to the formation and reassertion of identity as a reaction against feelings of alienation and other cultural and political contexts (Van Dijk, 1997). Furthermore, religious engagement, especially in Pentecostalism, can lead individuals to construct religious and even sexual identity (Maskens, 2006). Furthermore, Pentecostal movements also understood the importance of providing a response to the ongoing transnational migration processes from less developed to wealthier societies.

“Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on a ‘mobile-self’ and a ‘portable charismatic identity’, is a religion that speaks to experiences of dislocation, fragmentation and increasing mobility.” (Meyer, 2006: page 29)

Since the first half of the 20th century, social studies that predicted a secularization of the global society throughout this century marginalized religious studies of migration in the United States and, especially, in Western Europe, where religion has historically been historically associated with tradition. In light of these principles, religious differences between migrants were seen as an obstacle to achieving integration within the host community because of the presupposed cultural and religious homogeneity that prevails in Western European countries (Karagiannis and Schiller, 2006).

Nonetheless, the last twenty years have seen a resurgence in which transnational migration studies once again emphasized the relationship between migration and religion, coinciding with the rise of Pentecostal-Charismatic movements in Europe. This new research paradigm has brought to light the social role of diasporic religious organizations in providing welfare services to newcomers (Karagiannis and Schiller, 2006). This is what I mean by the ‘misjudgement’ about the role of religion made by previous scholars. Furthermore, churches assist migrants not just socially and emotionally, but also by enabling other things such as community building or by creating social and economic assistance networks for immigrants and other needs of the ethnic group (Hirschman, 2004). This aspect was also noted by Blommaert (2013) in a conversation with a pastor of a Nigerian-Pentecostal church, when he stated that these churches fulfill the role that public institutions and services leave aside.

“(...) such churches play a crucial role as a first-line system of informal solidarity for people whose reliance on and access to formal (state-organized) systems of solidarity was severely limited. Clandestine migrants are not eligible for welfare benefits (...) The church was a vital instrument for gaining access to informally allocated resources for people living in such extremely vulnerable conditions, and churches were very successful because of their low threshold of accessibility.” (Blommaert, 2013: page 120)

2.3 Migration and Pentecostalism in ‘Latin American Belgium’

2.3.1 General background

The presence of Latin American people in Belgium is a consequence of the different migration periods between this region and Europe. In their analysis of this phenomenon, Sáenz and Salazar (2007) identify two historical stages of the arrival of Latin American migrants in Belgium: the first wave in the 1970s, and was caused by the dictatorial regimes on the continent and the second wave from 1990, was due to “economic reasons derived from neoliberal policies set by different Latin America governments” (page 168).

In the first case, emigrants were received with a high degree of acceptance by Belgian society and, particularly, the left wing political sectors in the country. Broadly speaking, civil society organizations played a very active role in organizing solidarity networks for the restoration of democracy in Latin America. After that period, some of the emigrants in Belgium decided to stay in Europe to study and work. Given their status as refugees or asylum seekers, working and residence permits were normally granted to Latin American migrants (Saenz and Salazar, 2007). The second migration wave, during the 1990s, was mainly a product of economic factors and coincides with the introduction of restrictive migration policies in Europe, causing a rise of undocumented Latin American migration (Saenz and Salazar, 2007).

The form of the Latin American diaspora in Belgium is the result of the same social, economic and political factors that have driven its arrival in Europe. In addition, the changes in Belgian legislation over time have affected the patterns of presence and visibility of this group in the country. In this regard, the first law implemented in 1974 was aimed at stopping labour migration in a context of economic recession in Europe. This regulation set a limit in the number of qualified workers accepted by the country. On the other hand, the law foresaw measures to foster reunification of families by giving permission for the relatives of migrants to enter the country (Saenz and Salazar, 2007). Since at that time most of the Latin America diaspora members in Belgium were political refugees or asylum seekers, this regulation did not jeopardize their arrival.

The subsequent law, implemented in 1980, then developed new conditions of access, permission to stay and expulsions based on criteria regarding length of stay in the country, humanitarian reasons or family ties within the country (Saenz and Salazar, 2007). At the same time, it imposed several limits on migrants legally entering the country, which resulted in a huge increase on the number of ‘illegal’ or undocumented Latin American labour immigration in Belgium. The Belgian government introduced the 2000 regularization program as a first attempt to tackle this issue. This offered long- term residence permits to migrants that fulfilled the following requirements: being present in Belgium before October 1 1999; having applied for asylum a long time ago; acknowledging humanitarian reasons; suffering from a severe illness or having lived in the country for six years (Levinson, 2005). In 2006 a new regulation introduced faster procedures for granting asylum, as well as new reforms on family reunification or job opportunities based on ‘labour shortages’ (Saenz and Salazar, 2007). Despite these efforts, such measures were only considered for certain migrant groups, while for others no solution was proposed. Hence, many Latin American migrants still engaged in the informal labour market and social services, since they were considered to be ‘illegal’ migrants (Saenz and Salazar, 2007).

2.3.2 Pentecostalism in Belgium

In their book on the genesis of European Pentecostalism, Kay and Dyer (2011) proposed that the spread of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in Belgium which started in the 1980s was the result of the growth of international migration mostly from Africa and South America. Such churches first appeared in Brussels, then in Antwerp and gradually spread to other areas of the country. As the authors point out, the first religious organization under this denomination joined with the United Protestant Church Belgium (known as VPKB because of its Belgian acronym), to which other Pentecostal organizations were added later. Churches assigned to this organization are given government subsidies for carrying out different activities. In contrast, ‘independent’ Pentecostal organizations are not provided with any kind of economic or social assistance by public authorities. In this regard, Blommaert (2013: page 119) explains the attitude towards government of some of these non-subsidized religious congregations:

“(...) the churches are suspicious of the outside world, notably the Belgian State, because of the hostile climate towards ‘cults’ and ‘sects’ that was the outcome of a Belgian Parlamentary Commission inventarizing, exploring and sanctioning the activities of cults in the late 1990s. Churches that offer healing sessions are quickly perceived as cults, and such churches, consequently, ‘keep their noses clean’ in relation with the state.”

2.4 Migration and religion within the Latin American community in Antwerp

Having putting the relationship between Latin American migrant processes and the advance of Pentecostalism in Europe and Brussels into context, we now relate the personal stories of some members within a Pentecostal organization in Antwerp.

2.4.1 Personal stories

Chanel, her mother Lala and the Florentino family

Migration

“I was very little when I came here. The only thing I remember is the crazy amount of paperwork I had to fulfil to come and that I took a lot of time to achieve it”.

Chanel Florentino (19) abandoned the Dominican Republic in 2003 in order to reunite with her mother, the ‘sister’ Lala (50), who had emigrated to Antwerp in 2000. As she explains, Lala entered Belgium as a tourist and without any relatives in Europe. She prolonged her stay in the country, becoming an illegal resident after three months. According to Chanel, her mother left the country because of economic reasons and the possibility of raising her daughter in better conditions. Chanel explains that her mother met a very gentle Belgian woman, who helped her to settle in Belgium. After some time, she found a job in a residence for elderly people where she is still working. There, she works doing beds, serving meals and other care services. When her mother became a legal resident in the country, she could then travel back to the Dominican Republic to bring Chanel to Belgium. During her first year, which she remembers as especially tough, Chanel felt lonely and separated from her culture and her family. Furthermore, she didn’t speak Dutch and, therefore, she failed her first year at school. Also, during this year her grandmother passed away and they both went back to the Dominican Republic for a few months, an experience that she describes as “very traumatic” because of the difficulties that they were already going through.

Chanel and Lala’s situation changed the year after she had arrived when they managed to bring her aunt Julia alongside with her cousins Mariel (19) and Sarah (15) to the country. Two years later, her other aunt, Mireia, her cousin Yanny (19) and her two little cousins arrived in the country thanks to them already being there. Chanel describes herself being very closed to her family in all aspects of life. Since the rest of her family is still living in Santo Domingo, the capital of Dominican Republic, Chanel and her family travel every summer to their home country to visit their relatives. Chanel has a three year old daughter, Naomi, resulting from a relationship with a Yonatan, her Dominican boyfriend, who Chanel met during one of the summer visits to her country. Although they decided that Noemi, her daughter, would live with Chanel, she always looks forward to visiting the Dominican Republic during the summer where she has a great time with her family.

Asked about her prospects in Belgium, she admits that she doesn’t like the country because of the huge cultural differences and the lack of an established and visible Dominican community in Antwerp. Her dream is to live in the United States, where she knows there is a large Dominican community, so she would feel at home there. Nevertheless, she thinks that Belgium is a perfect place to raise her children, so she is not planning any move in the short term.

Religion

Chanel joined the church four years ago together with her mother. Since their current parish in Antwerp did not yet exist at that time, they joined the Movimiento Misionero Mundial, their religious organization, in Brussels. They attended the service every Friday and Sunday despite it being expensive for them to travel each week to Brussels. After some time, her mother and her aunts, along with other ‘sisters’, who no longer belong to the church, decided to found the church of the Movimiento Misionero Mundial in Antwerp. Initially the church temporarily sent pastor Mitch Ilario and his wife Saret Vergara to help. Before the church was established in Antwerp, the sisters carried the burden of all the organizational tasks as well as the cult activities. Later, pastor Mario and his wife were moved to Curaçao and a new pastor called Alfredo, who was preaching in Brussels, was moved by the MMM to Antwerp.

“I do that for my daughter, she deserves the best possible education”

Talking about her experience as part of the congregation, Chanel admits that she has been going ‘in and out’ of the church. However, since having her daughter she has decided to stay permanently in the church. When asked about her uncles, she says that they really do have faith and that they have convinced her to engage within the parish on a long-term basis. Chanel’s experience is marked by her difficulty in maintaining regular attendance to the church because of her ‘bad behaviour’ during childhood. For instance, she used to like going out to parties as well as dancing and listening reggaeton, a highly popular Latin music of which Pentecostal followers do not approve. The perception of Chanel as somebody ‘problematic’ is also rooted in her closest environment. Speaking with her aunt Julia about Chanel, she claims that her niece was “hard to keep under control”. Similarly, Chanel recognizes that her cousins are not like her in that they had never gone to any Dominican café or disco as she had done. Nevertheless, the birth of Chanel’s daughter when she was 16, resulted in her choosing to radically change her life and she is now attending to church regularly. She stopped going out at night and now spends all her time with her family and the rest of the community. Nowadays, and thanks to the support of her family, she is being prepared to be baptised into the church and her daughter is attending the “school for youngsters”, a Sunday activity organized by the church to provide a religious education for the church’s followers.

“When she arrived in Antwerp, my mom hadn’t met the Lord yet”

Chanel’s mother, the ‘sister’ Lala, did not have a religious background when she first arrived in Belgium. “She was Christian, of course”, Chanel says, “but in a different kind of way. She did not have very good relation with Christ, she couldn’t yet feel it with her soul”.

Nelson (35)

Migration

“I came to do something decent with my life; I only had troubles back in the Dominican Republic.”

Nelson is also from the Dominican Republic, where he lived until he was nineteen years old. In 1999, he emigrates to the Netherlands to be reunited with his mother, who had been living there since 1996. The arrival of his mother in Europe coincides with the period of migration between 1992 and 1999 by which flows from Latin America to Europe were dominated by Dominican and Peruvian women escaping from the economic conditions in their home country (Córdova, 2015).

Nelson spent more than ten years in the Netherlands where he held different jobs, such as cleaning warehouses and working as a waiter in cafés, and he claims that the job he liked the most was repairing and maintenance of electronic devices. In 2012, he decided to emigrate to Belgium where he also had family and where he meet his current wife, Santa. He described his experience of finding a job in Antwerp as being very difficult. “When I came to Belgium, the labour situation was very bad, so we (Dominicans) were the last choice when it came to recruit people. I’m not going to say that it is racism, it is understandable that they will choose Belgian or Turkish people first, since they are more rooted here.”

Religion

“Jesus Christ has changed everything in my life for the better.”

Nelson started to go to church when he lived in Rotterdam with his mother. Back in the Dominican Republic, he was never interested in ‘knowing Christ’. He also admits that he was not good at school which he left at 13 and that he used to drink a lot at that time, which made him frustrated with his life. Nevertheless, he totally changed his behaviour when he started to attend church services, which he believes is the best decision he has ever taken in his life. Currently, he is one of the most active members within the church in Antwerp and sometimes he co-hosts the services lead by the pastor Alfredo.

Karen (48)

Migration

Karen is from Peru. She explains that her dream was always to live in the United States, but the difficulty of obtaining a visa prevented her from migrating there. She applied for it, but permission was not granted. After some time, a friend of hers who had emigrated to Belgium told her about a very nice man, which interested her. In 2004, she travelled to Belgium for a month to meet him, returning in 2005 to get married. Thanks to this, she was granted a three-months stay that would become in a long-term residence permit if she got married within three months. She met this requirement and therefore could stay longer in the country. After eight years, she separated from her husband, with whom she is now in legal battle now for the custody her ten years old son, Thomas.

Religion

“I didn’t have any friends or contacts to help me with my problems. As I was alone, I decided to attend the church to look for support.”

Karen joined the church within the last year in order to look for legal support that initially was going to be given by ‘sister’ Julia, one of Chanel’s aunts. She used to attend meeting services every Sunday, actively participating in the activities organized by the congregation. Nevertheless, she stopped going to church in December 2015.

“For me, religion is like yoga. A mental therapy, nothing else. However, the church is a totally different story.”

Karel declares herself to be a ‘believer’. She believes in Jesus and she prays on a daily basis, although she didn’t enter in the church for any of these reasons. She states that she doesn’t at all like the way religion is practiced within these churches. She believes that their members are closed to the outside world and selfish in their behaviour. She cites as an example when the church was organizing a trip to Geneva to visit their members in Switzerland: “Julia did not let me go to Geneva and the only reason was that she was not finally going”.

Jesús (39)

Migration

“Honestly, I didn’t want to come or to continue studying. My only motivation to come here was to finish my studies and go back to my country.”

Jesús came alone in 2010 from a little city in Colombia so as to pursue his PhD in Physics. He admits that when, back in Colombia, it was suggested to continue his studies in Belgium, he was not very keen on the idea. Once here, he recognizes that he had problems to adapt to the country and the culture, especially because of the lack of human interaction between people: “The main problem was that I had no idea of what I was going to find here. And, of course, the change was at first shocking, mostly because of the little details. For example, seeing that people did not meet together to have lunch or did not say ‘Hello’ if you came across somebody in the street. I’m not trying to say that it was a bad change, it is just that for me these little things made a difference from what I was used to seeing. To sum up, coming here was a hard decision for me”.

In view of his student status, he did not face any problems regarding legal entry to the country. In his case, the university handled all the necessary requirements to make his relocation easier, entering Europe on an student visa and, three years later obtaining a long-term residence permit. When Jesus finished his PhD, he accepted an offer to continue his research at the university. During that time, he brought his family to Antwerp to live with him. Jesús kept working at the university as researcher and teaching assistant. A year later, he was offered an extension to his contract and the opportunity to take part in a three years research Project funded by the Belgian institution in Physics. By that time he was actively participating in the church’s everyday life where he co-hosted services along with pastor Alfredo.

Religion

“When they offered me the chance to work as a full-time researcher for the university, I thought: this is the reason why I came here. Nevertheless, The Lord spoke to me and I received his peace. For me that is the most important thing in life; the real security.”

According to Jesús, he has been Christian since he can remember. He was raised in a poor family and embraced Christianity during his early life. As a result of his personal experiences during childhood, such as having to leave his family to study in a bigger city, he has always relied on his faith to overcome tough situations. Furthermore, religion in the host society has provided him with valuable friends that have been very important for him during his integration process: “The change was tough but not overwelming thanks to the brothers and sisters, specifically Sister Lala and Sister Julia, as well as other brothers who were participating in the church at that time. All of them have been like a family to me. They supported me in everything and I’m very grateful to them for that. I used to spend every single day with them.”

When Jesus found himself in the situation of having to choose between working as a researcher and dedicating himself exclusively to the church, he decided that he had to consult with God. He had the chance to do this during a weekend retreat, which he describes as “an event with a great significance for me”. After this experience, he rejected his university offer of a contract and started to participate full-time in the church. He says that his head of the department could not understand his decision: “He -the head of the department- was really surprised by my choice. Of course, he was shocked, I could understand that. But he had always been fond of me and he respected my decision: that is something I really appreciated.”

He then took the decision that he wanted to become a leader of the MMM. His training for this consisted of studying and co-preaching in the congregation of Antwerp. Following this he was offered temporary preaching services in the recently founded MMM church in Luxembourg. Currently, he is waiting for legal arrangements to be made for him in order to move to Luxembourg with his family, where he has been elected as the official pastor of this new church.

David (43)

Migration

“When I left Spain, I realised that it was not Europe. For me, it’s kind of a piece of Latin America inside Europe. The ‘real’ Europe starts from France upwards.”

David left Ecuador in 2003 in search of better job opportunities and working conditions in Spain. After he settled in Madrid, he found a job in a very famous confectioner in the center of the city called ‘Chocolatería San Ginés’. Thanks to his employer, who backed him during the 2005 immigrants regularization process, he was able to obtain legal residence in Spain. He then spent eight years working in Madrid and was planning to move to another city in the south in order to work for the same company there. During that period, he was also able to bring his wife, María, and his two children, Pablo and David, to Europe. However, as a result of the severe economic crisis in Southern Europe, he was dismissed from his job in 2012. Therefore, he emigrated to Lille with his family, where he has been moving from one temporary job to another.

Religion

“I don’t care what people from the outside can say. These are good people, they are always willing to help you out.”

When he was living in Spain, David started to attend the MMM church in Madrid a few months before leaving the country. Although he admits that he started to attend these meetings with his family when he lost his job in Madrid, he claims to have had a strong faith in God since he was very young. In Spain he was introduced to the church community by an Ecuadorian friend. When he migrated to Lille, he asked the leaders of the community if he could join the organization there. So, he started to assist to the church in Antwerp, the closest congregation to Lille. He describes them as “a solidary community. They organize events to visit other Latin American ‘brothers’ in villages, they give food to poor people without receiving any money for it. I think that people that don’t know us can say that we are fanatics or something like that, but honestly these are ordinary and altruistic people. I only have good things to say about them, well, about us.”

2.4.2 Analysis of statements of the participants

The analysis of the information provided by the participants in the study offers some interesting insights into the diversity and complexity of the migration patterns of the Latin American community in Berchem. Firstly, the origins of this community are very diverse since, although most of the people are from the Dominican Republic, there are also community members from other Latin American countries. It is particularly noticeable that Dominican people were among the most ‘favoured’ ethnic groups during 2000 regularization campaign in Belgium (Kostova, 2006), which suggests that Dominicans are gaining visibility and presence in the country.

Among the participants, no one was initially attracted by the idea of migrating to Belgium or, in the case of David, to France. Therefore, Central and Northern European countries seem not to be the main priority destination among Latin American emigrants. Amongst the people who were asked, all of them acknowledged having other preferences, or they arrived in Belgium after first having lived in other European country. The latter statement should be taken together with another feature of Latin American migration in Belgium, namely the mobile character of this group.

“In Europe, the last stage of Latin American migration is characterized by a great mobility. It is made up of families that are distributed among many countries [...] immigrants in Spain, for example, arrive in Belgium when they think regularization conditions are better there; on the opposite, those who are in Belgium depart to Spain when they hear there is a regularization in that country.” (Saenz and Salazar, 2007: page 171)

In relation to the entry status of the participants, all the members of the Florentino family who came after Lala and Nelson also arrived in Europe with relatives. This is particularly significant because, as we have seen, emigrants from the Dominican Republic are gaining visibility in the country. Within this context, the previous creation of family networks is necessary since they help third-country migrants to enter and settle in the host country. According to Córdova (2015)family reunification is one of the most important reasons for migration within these groups. From 2008 to 2013, the visa category most in demand by Latin Americans emigrating to Europe was family reunification (37%), above remunerated activities (29%) or academic reasons (18%). For instance, the case of Jesus falls within this last category. Thanks to his highly skilled student status, he did not have any legal difficulties in bringing his family over. This is in contrast to the situation of Karen, who has been trying to bring her mother to Europe but is unable to afford it. Karen’s migration trajectory is governed by what are called ‘micro’ level factors, so the wish to migrate was due to personal reasons rather than socio-economic factors. In David’s case, his migration journey follows two basic trends in Latin American migration profiles to Europe and which are chronologically ordered. First, during the 1990s and 2000s, there was a massive emigration process from countries such as Ecuador, Colombia or Peru to Spain (Córdova, 2015). Second, due to the economic consequences of the global financial crisis, there has been a gradual decrease in migration flows from these countries to Spain, and meanwhile the presence of these groups in the rest of Europe has increased (Córdova, 2015). This suggests a progressive abandonment of Spain due to economic difficulties from which vulnerable groups, such as low skilled migrant workers, suffered the most. These groups are heading to Western Europe, where the consequences of the financial crisis were less pronounced, as explained by Yépez (2014). As we have already explained, the trajectory of David and his family, as well as the motivation for migration he describes, can be e seen in the context of these two interrelated migration flows.

The complexity of Latin American diaspora in Belgium is also visible through patterns of integration within one of Berchem’s Latin American Pentecostal organizations. In the case of Lala and indeed many of the rest of the Florentino family, the alienation which they felt in Belgium was an important driving factor in their need to have ‘access to God’. Within the host community in a context of loneliness and isolation was obviously there. As Chanel explains, her mother and other family members “found God” in Belgium, which means that it was not case she had joined the church as a result of transnational diasporic activities by which the migrant enter the church in the host country because of a previous involvement in a similar organization within his country of origin (Levitt, 2002). Furthermore, Lala and her sisters occupy an important position within the community structure, since they were the founders of the church. After several years of assisting of services to Brussels, Lala and her sisters, with the help of some previous members, opened the church in 2010 and have been the central family in the community since then. The organization has expanded around them and consequently so have the extended the informal solidarity networks that are established inside the church.

David and Karen entered the church because they needed some type of social help. For David, it was a community where he could be offered emotional and economic support and, in the case of Karen, where she could receive ‘sister’ Julia legal advice for the custody of her son. However, they have something else in common. They both describe themselves as being ‘faithful’ before coming to the Pentecostal church. This is possibly controversial, since Pentecostalism is characterized by a strong religious attachment that cannot be obtained just by merely ‘believing’ in Christ. In contrast to Lala, who “hadn’t found God” before she started to attend cults, this suggest that both members did not enter the church with profound problems of identity or to ‘redeem’ their sins in life. According to Plata (2010), this might result in these members occupying a weak position in the social structure of the community, since members that are more attracted to religion are, in the long term, more active and committed within the organization.

On the other hand, Chanel and Nelson have achieved a ‘permanent member’ status in the community through the progress they have made in their identification with the community, formally engaging in the “global communities of believers” (Van Dijk, 1997: page 138). This spiritual access to the church was facilitated by the desire to change some aspects of their life in the past and, in both cases, their relatives have been vital in guiding them through this process.

Jesus’s case is special and therefore the inferences we can make are significantly different. Unlike his fellow members, he did not embrace Christianity at the time of migrating to another country but as a result of his earlier life experiences. Nevertheless, it is symbolic that, during his childhood, his faith was strengthened by having to leave his family in order to study elsewhere. When he arrived in Belgium, the congregation and the community of people around it provided him with both moral and social support.

Chapter 3: Antwerp, superdiverse Berchem and the Latin American Pentecostal community.

3.1 Antwerp

3.1.1 Basic information

Antwerp is the second largest city in Belgium and is located in the north of the country. With a population of over the 500.000 inhabitants, it is also the largest city in Flanders, the Flemish-speaking region of Belgium (University of Antwerp, n.d.). The municipality of Antwerp is divided in nine different towns or city districts: Antwerp, the largest and central district of the city, Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo in the north, the eastern districts of Ekeren and Merksem and the southern districts Borgerhout, Deurne, Hoboken,Wilrijk and Berchem.

The city has been traditionally seen as being rich and prosperous. Antwerp’s citizens are commonly known as sinjoren (lords), in reference to the Spanish noblemen that used to live in the city during the 17th century. Furthermore, the diamond trade industry, which is largely dominated by the orthodox Jewish community in Antwerp (Saeys, et al., 2014) and the international harbour, which is the second largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world, are both engines of Antwerp’s economy and reinforce the perception that Antwerp is a wealthy town. The city is also known because of its majestic buildings, such as the cathedral or the Antwerpen-Centraal train station, for being the ‘city of Rubens’, the famous painter, and for its fashion industry.

3.1.2 Antwerp diversity

Despite its economic potential, it can be argued that Antwerp it is not a city where wealth is evenly distributed among its population. In that regard, Blommaert (2013: page 24) stated that “the average income in the districts of Antwerp is lower than the Flemish average [...] Unemployment is higher than the national average, and the harbor and access to other arteries of mobility have made Antwerp into a highly diverse city for centuries”. Indeed, Antwerp has been steadily growing in diversity over the last five years, it being estimated that 45,8% of its population are foreigners or of foreign descents (Antwerpen.be, n.d.), which makes Antwerp a highly ethnically diverse city. As a result, Antwerp is often raised as being of particular concern during diversity debates in Belgium (Saeys, et al., 2014).

In addition to this increasing diversity, Antwerp is facing growing socioeconomic differences among its population that are more apparent in some districts than in others:

“Antwerp has always counted a very large working class population employed in the harbor and adjacent industries, trade and commerce. It has consequently always counted large working class neighbourhoods, and Oud-Berchem is one of those.” (Blommaert, 2013: page 25)

Because of its features, the southern district of Berchem is considered as one of those ‘superdiverse environments’ that the globalization process has created in developed societies. In the following chapter, I will identify the peculiarities of the neighbourhood which underlie this classification.

3.2 Superdiverse Berchem

When entering the neighbourhood for the first time, one thing that immediately catches the attention is the many different modes of transport which access Berchem. You can access this area from everywhere and in every type of vehicle. The Berchem train station connects the neighbourhood to almost all destinations in the Netherlands and Belgium (Blommaert, 2013). The Antwerp ring road, which joins Berchem to the major European highways, means that the neighbourhood is in the privileged position of being connected to interregional corridors leading to France, Germany or the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, public transport services connect Berchem to the rest of the city of Antwerp (Blommaert, 2013).

Since the 1970s, the neighbourhood has attracted large numbers of immigrant workers. Befores this period, the first and most substantial migration waves were those made up of Turkish immigrants, who were settled in properties previously owned by old Flemish workers (Blommaert, 2013). Nowadays, Turkish migrants still maintain their status within the community; Berchem is still regarded as the Turkish town of Antwerp, but from the 1990s onwards the district has progressively received immigrants from all over the world, which has reinforced Berchem’s superdiverse nature (Blommaert, 2013).

Along with this diversity, unemployment levels in the neighbourhood, which was always considered to be as ‘working class’, are above average, especially among young male immigrants. Meanwhile “average income is lower than the Antwerp average as well” (Blommaert, 2013: page 26). Nevertheless, Berchem still attracts a wide variety of people, especially young families, from all different socioeconomic classes due to its transport facilities as well as its cheap housing (Blommaert, 2013).

Infraestructures of superdiversity

During the time I spent visiting the neighbourhood, one of the first things I noticed was that diversity in the Driekoningenstraat-Statiestraat was not only explained by the wide range of different ethnicities which can be seen while walking around. The different groups of people which might be encountered in the field were transient. One day they are there, but the next day they disappear. There were only few exceptions to this, namely the permanent ethnic groups in Berchem who have higher visibility. This is the case with Turkish and Belgians, as well as Polish people in a smaller degree. The patterns of visibility of the rest of ethnic communities frequenting the neighbourhood vary depending on the different activities that are going on in the area at the time. On the other hand, the infrastructure of the neighbourhood, such as hairdressers, ‘do it yourself’ shops or night grocery stores, sometimes offer more valuable information about the organization of the area than the people present. If not permanent, these infraestructures change at a slower pace than the visibility of ethnic minorities and usually they leave traces of activity when they leave in form of old signs. This infrastructure is assumed to provide with a way of imposing same order onto all this coming and going of people, since they appear as a result of different demands made by the diverse variety of inhabitants living in the neighbourhood (Blommaert, 2013). In particular, one type of these ‘infraestructures of superdiversity’ has become especially notorious in Berchem.

“The arrival, success and continuous activity of evangelical churches is the single most remarkable change in the social space of my neighbourhood over the last five-six years. Indeed, churches have become one of the main infraestructures of superdiversity there.” (Blommaert, 2013: page 104)

During my stay in the neighbourhood, every Sunday morning I observed crowds of African, Brazilian and other Latin American people arriving in Berchem by bus or train and walking down to attend the places of worship in the Driekoningenstraat-Statiestraat. Sundays are when services take place in most evangelical churches in Berchem, usually from 10am until the late afternoon. After the services end, hundreds of people leave the neighbourhood to return to their homes. This phenomenon completely alters the appearance of the neighbourhood during this time of the week, suggesting that most of the people attending cult services are mostly not Berchem residents.

3.3. The Latin American community of ‘evangelist Berchem’

In order to understand how these places function and who are the people that congregate towards the church, I interacted with the Latin American diaspora community in Antwerp attending the evangelist church located at Statiestraat, 38. The church belongs to the Movimiento Misionero Mundial (MMM), a worldwide Pentecostal-Charismatic religious organization with headquarters in in Puerto Rico. The church is mainly composed of female members, and in total I counted nearly 35 different people excluding children. All together, I only observed a maximum of six men and only two of them attended the church without a female partner. Couples usually brought their children, who are taught the religious values of the church. All of them are Latin American-born people, although some of the children are second-generation migrants born in Belgium. During my study, I met people from the Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba and one Angolan-born man whose parents were Colombian. Although most of the members of the community have arrived in Berchem within the last ten years, my observations during fieldwork suggested that there are substantial differences among the nature of this diaspora. The characteristics of the people that compose the Latin American Pentecostal community of Berchem are described by a large number of variables relating to integration patterns of these people and not the diversity of origin or their socioeconomic status.

3.3.1 Diversity of the community’s spatial distribution

The geographical distribution patterns of the Latin American community meeting in Berchem are not homogeneous. Apart from Antwerp, many converts live in different parts of Belgium, such as Brussels, Ghent or Herentals or even Luxembourg and Lille. For these people, Berchem becomes the node where they meet together in order to spend the weekend with the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ of the community. At the same time, the Berchem residents will provide housing or any other facilities if needed by the converts that live come from outside.

One of the most noticeable aspects regarding this study of the community is housing patterns. For Latin American migrants, housing is inherently associated with the length of stay within the country and it is differentiated into visible stages of the settlement process. Consider some examples drawn from participants in the study as follows:

According to Chanel, since she arrived in Belgium she has always lived in Berchem. When her mother Lala arrived in Antwerp she was hosted by a Belgian friend, who rented her a room in an apartment of the neighbourhood where she stayed when she found a job. After bringing her daughter Chanel to Antwerp, Lala rented a cheap apartment with the money she earned from her job. They moved two more times, always renting studios until they could earn enough money to buy a house in one of the streets across the Statiestraat. Chanel explains that they are currently paying the mortgage on the house. The case of Julia and Mireia, Lala’s sisters, was similar in that they arrived accompanied by their children. At first, they both stayed in Lala’s house (for a few months, they lived ten people in a same house). After finding a job, they were able to afford one of the cheap studios in Berchem, although they still gather together to have lunch and go to church on weekends. Currently, Julia lives in Antwerp centrum with her daughters Mariel (19) and Sarah (15) and her Belgian husband, Dirk and they run a small law firm together. Mireia lives in Merksem renting a house with her three children.

The ‘brother’ Jesús spent his first three months renting a studio room in Berchem. After that, he started to think about bringing his family to Belgium, so he looked for a house to rent. Given his salary as researcher, which meant that he was comfortably off financially, Jesus could take this decision after only a very short period of time and soon after he brought his family to Antwerp. He found a house in Edegem, a municipality at the south of Antwerp city, where he and his family were living up to a few months ago. At this moment, he was appointed the pastor of the MMM Luxembourg congregation and therefore they have had left the house. As they waited for the legal issues preventing them from definitely settle in Luxembourg to be resolved, they were hosted for some days in Lala and Chanel’s house. Currently, they are still living inside the church until their legal situation is resolved.

When he arrived in Belgium, Nelson couldn’t afford a house, so he stayed with his aunt in Herentals, a little town in the north of Belgium. When he joined the church and found a job, he moved to Berchem to an studio while he looked for something else. During that time, at the church, he met ‘sister’ Santa, the woman to whom is currently married. Nowadays, he is living with his wife in a rented apartment in Merksem. When asked why he didn’t look in Berchem, his answer is that “flats in the neighbourhood are too small and old. We were looking for something more fancy”.

On his analysis of the local housing market in Berchem, Blommaert (2013: page 99) describes this situation as follows:

“(...) the local housing market, which is typically segmented into different categorical strata. On the one end, we would have the cheap and basic studios and flats rented out to newcomers; on the other end we would have sometimes ostentatious middle-class houses with gardens, typically sold to and stylishly transformed by native, young middle-class couples. Cross-overs are very rare (...)”

This give us an indication of how patterns of spatial organization emerged within the Latin American community in Berchem. When newcomers arrived in Berchem, they usually rent a cheap flat or studio and Berchem becomes a node for Latin American diaspora members. Nevertheless, as the situation of some members become more socialy and economically stable, they are more likely to seek better housing in other areas since they cannot afford the more up-market dwellings in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, it is very uncommon that they can afford to pay a mortgage on a house and hence renting remains the main option. These are the main features of the Latin American presence in Antwerp, namely a community with a high degree of spatial mobility, resulting in a scattered distribution as a result of the different social and economic factors shaping each member’s or family’s diasporic experience. In this context, Berchem emerges as the ‘meeting point’ for the Latin American community, a place where they find a vast amount of material and emotional resources that makes their integration easier.

3.3.2 Labour market integration

The composition of the Belgian labour system is highly complex for migrants who come from non-EU countries. During the past years, legislators within the different Belgian regions have fostered the hiring of migrant workers in order to tackle labour shortages in certain niches. However, these ‘bottleneck’ jobs are reserved for EU citizens and highly skilled workers coming from third countries in which there are bilateral agreements signed with Belgium (Mussche et al, 2010). In fact, their difficult situation is felt by Latin American migrants in Berchem, as they made clear in their responses.

Nelson

Nelson describes the situation he found when he arrived as very complicated because of the lack of opportunities offered by the Belgian labour market at that time.

“When I came to Antwerp, the labour situation was highly sensitive in Belgium and, therefore, it was very difficult to find work.”

Here, the perception of Nelson is that a structural factor, specifically the tight economic situation of the country, determined the possibility of finding job. Nevertheless, he adds:

“In general, here is way more difficult to find job vacants for somebody that comes from outside or who hasn’t been living in Antwerp for a long time. Furthermore, knowing Dutch is basic. I know cases of many people who have been plenty of time unemployed because of his lack of Dutch proficiency”

When he was living in the Netherlands, Nelson worked repairing computers or waitering, but in Antwerp he has been working in a school cafeteria since he arrived. According to him, being stable in his job for nearly one year and a half, something very unusual among Latin Americans in Antwerp, is a consequence of his ‘competitive advantage’ of being Dutch literate in the Flanders region. Due to that, he considers himself as an exceptional case within his social environment.

“Most of the jobs offered here are temporary. I was very lucky of getting an stable job while the ‘99%’ of the people in my situation are living off those temporary low paid jobs. In this category, best jobs are offered in the industrial sector. The ‘brother’ Rolando works as a welder in the port industry and most of the Latin American males occupy this sector due to the good remuneration offered in comparison with other jobs”

Karen

After breaking up with her husband, Karen attended the VDAB, the public employment service of the region of Flanders, in order to find a job. Thanks to them, she found job as a cleaning lady for a Belgian family. Nonetheless, she is very critical about how the labour allocation system is structured and, especially, with the role of the VDAB.

“Here, in Belgium, I know that they help migrants a lot during their integration process and so on. But for me, the whole system is not correctly organized. For example, when looking for a job they don’t take into account any of your personal circumstances. They don’t say things like: ‘Look, lady. You are almost 50 and you don’t know the language, so perhaps you are too old to take specific jobs.’ Honestly, I am too old to work every day cleaning houses, but they don’t offer me any alternative.”

As a result of her negative experience of the system, she believes that migrants need to rely on alternative channels in order to obtain better labour conditions.

“Having contacts is truly important in order to get a good job. In general, conditions here are good, better than in my country. If you work, you can access to some unemployment benefits. Other services such as social security or the education system are also really good. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us, Latin American migrants, to become legal citizens with the same rights as Belgians.

The situation is especially extreme amongst elderly Latin American migrants, which are less likely to be offered a job.

“Elderly people have less options to access the labour market that youngsters, since they are not as strong and generally less qualified.”

The statements of both these participants provides us with information about how this group is accessing the labour market in Belgium and the perception that Latin American migrants have regarding their integration. It seems that, according to the participants, male and females labour market integration is characterized by a low mobility across labour sectors. In general, Latin American men are more often employed at the port and adjacent industries, while Latin American women are mostly employed in domestic work. This is the case with Karen, but also of the ‘sister’ Lala, who works in a residence for elderly people; or Deidris, a Cuban woman that works in ‘Clean Lease Fortex’, an organization specialized in cleaning services.

The employment situation of Latin American low skilled migrants is also very insecure, as is the case for male workers employed in temporary jobs within the industrial sector. In this regard, language skills seem to be a distinctive feature in terms of being successful in the labour market. During my interaction with many community members, their first complaint about the system was that knowing Dutch was compulsory and that it is difficult to learn.

It is also noticeable that Latin American people are employed exclusively by the Belgian community of Antwerp. There are a wide range of employers such as particular families requiring specific services, public institutions or private enterprises in the zone. Nonetheless, Latin Americans did not seem to be in contact with other established ethnic groups such as the Turkish or Jewish communities of Antwerp.

On the other hand, it is also relevant to consider how second-generation migrants are managing to enter the labour market. The young people that are in that position are Chanel, Yanny, Sarah and Mariel, all of them being members of the Florentino family. Yanny and Mariel are both studying and working. They are studying social work while and at the same time they are both working at a Carrefour supermarket close to the Berchem district. Chanel is also studying social work at Sint Norbertus school, while Sarah has recently finished her studies in Creative Design (Creatie en vormgeving) at Sint Godelieve school. It is important to note that all of them are completely fluent in Dutch, which together with their qualification will facilitate their access to the labour system. In comparison with first generation migrants, who generally come to work in low skilled workforce, their descendants are likely to make a qualitative leap forward in Latin American integration to the Belgian labour market.

3.3.3. The foundations of the community

The different degrees to which members belong to the community depend on the multiple circumstances that shape their identification and attachment towards this group. In particular, the family ‘networks’ that emerge as a result of the different adaptation periods of migrants to the new community, as has been shown in the study to be a fundamental aspect of the Latin American diaspora in Europe (Saenz and Salazar, 2007) as well as of the subject community. All these features lead to the perception that these migrants have about the community and about themselves. During the study, different participants provided information about their perception on the Latin American diaspora in Belgium and the position it holds within their social environment.

Nelson

The ‘brother’ Nelson thinks that, in general, Belgian society’s perception towards migration coming from Latin America is bad. He states that although cultural differences are ‘officially’ protected, they are not always guaranteed. This poor perception towards Latin Americans and particularly Dominicans is, according to Nelson, a product of the profiles of the first migration waves profile to the United States since the 1970s.

“The first migrants were associated with the importing cocaine, which resulted in the settlement of many drug trafficking organizations inside the United States. Since then, many people see Latin Americans as criminals or lawbreakers because all these kind of stereotypes. Unfortunately, people who had to abandon our countries due to any reason inherited that reputation. In some way, this perception is still alive.”

“Broadly speaking, I think that Belgian people have a bad image of Latin Americans who come to the country. I believe there are many things that influence this: the skin colour, the way we pronounce Dutch, etc. In some cases, they’ve had bad experiences in the past with other migrants, which makes them to extend those beliefs to the rest of Latin Americans.”

Although he has spent nearly three years in Belgium, Nelson’s social life revolves around the church, where he gathers with the rest of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. In fact, he is (along with the Florentino family, Jesus and the pastor Alfredo’s family) one of the community members who arrived first in Europe. Due to that, his wife Santa and himself are very involved in the organization’s activities and in offering help to other migrants regarding aspects of integration. He also knows other Latin American people through some family members, but he only meet with his wife, the ‘sister’ Santa, and the rest of the church members during his leisure time. As a result, he only socializes with the church ‘brothers and sisters’, which means that he does not interact socially with Belgian people.

‘My life in Belgium is devoted to work and the church, because they are my family here and that is the most important thing in life. We support each other and if somebody have a problem, we are there to help.”

Jesus

The feeling of ‘being a stranger’ within the host country fits exactly within Jesus experience during his early months in Belgium. He felt terribly alone and isolated at first, which was made worse by some of this experiences which made it difficult for him to integrate.

“More than once, I’ve been detained when ‘checking in’ at the airport because, of course, I was coming from Colombia and my aspect looked suspicious. I am used to this, but for my children this is not the best. It concerns me, because I don’t want them to have that mark of being an stranger when they have to engage with other people. Sometimes, my skin colour or other things related to my physical appearance could raise suspicion among people at work or in other places.”

Nonetheless, Jesus did not feel himself to be a victim of racial prejudices in Belgium. According to his experience, such isolated events in which he was discriminated against do not occur on a regular basis and cannot be extended to the whole Belgian society, which he thinks is very tolerant. However, he describes other issues that made his integration difficult.

“In my case, integrating in Belgium was not complicated, I mean, I didn’t have to worry about how to earn a salary because I already arrived here with a job contract. But, for instance, it took a long time for me to get used to the fact that people here are very cold. In Colombia, your neighbours are very close to you; here, you barely say ‘Hello’ if you see them. Furthermore, as I didn’t speak Dutch and my English was poor, I had a lot of problems interacting with people from here.”

Despite the cultural differences he found and his loneliness, he appreciates the greater opportunities that Belgium provides for personal development than Colombia or other Latin American countries. Therefore, he believes that migrants must make an effort to obtain skills to achieve a good socioeconomic status. As these people mostly come from Spanish-speaking countries, having to learn Dutch, the official language of the Flanders region, can be tough, but he considers it essential in order to succeed in the country.

“We come here demanding a certain degree of respect for our identity, for our culture and the diversity it represents. That is however difficult to understand for some of us; we don’t understand that knowing the language is vital if we want to be accepted in the country. But thanks to my PhD student status, Dutch was not that important for me as it is for someone who comes here to work. Anyway, I am really aware of how important the language is, not just as a sign of respect to the host country, but also in order to engage in labour and the social life of Antwerp.”

The problems of communicating with Dutch speakers, which caused Jesus difficulties when he arrived in 2010, were also a result of of his shy personality and his close attachment to his family. In fact, his ‘social circle’ is limited to them and some of the church members. When he was working as a researcher, he made contact with his work colleagues although nowadays he doesn’t keep those relationships. Currently, his social life revolves around his family and the church.

“My family and I are a little bit more ‘narrowed to ourselves’ than other people might be. We are used to socialize between our little social circle and us, so we can be more open to the ‘church brothers’ than to anybody else. Due to that, my social relationships with people from outside the church are almost non-existent.”

Even though he does not keep regular contact with other Latin American migrants other than church members, he claims that networks of Latin American people inside Belgium do exist and the Latin American identity is maintained through friendly informal activities.

“I can agree with the argument that the Latin American community is less visible than other communities. However, that’s not because the Latin American community doesn’t exist in any way, but it is organized differently. We usually engage in less formal ways: we do not own groceries and other type of businesses in the way that Turkish, Belgians or others do. Instead of that, we gather together for having lunch, to talk, pray or other activities and there are plenty of people doing that. If you go there, you can see us all together having a good time. But people may think that we do not form a community because they don’t see specialized shops or other more formalized activities.”

Chanel

According to Chanel, this informal character of the Latin American diaspora is the result of not having a rooted community in Belgium and remaining ‘invisible’ against other more noticeable ethnic groups in the city.

“It is very weird to see a big group of Latin Americans together in the street. It is common to see, for example, one or two Dominicans in the bus, but I never had a conversation with them. Here, we are always in small circles but in the Dominican Republic it is totally the opposite: people is always in the street and you are friend of everybody.”

Chanel’s social life is based around her family network in Belgium, although she keeps an active online engagement with her relatives living in the Dominican Republic. In Belgium, her cousins are also her best and only friends, with whom she spends most of her leisure time. When they meet, they usually go to the cinema to see films, they go to parks or cafés, but they never go out at night because church rules forbid that.

“When I go out, I usually meet with my cousins (Mariel, Yanni and Sarah) and we go to the cinema, we have lunch or similar activities. I only have relationships with them outside the church, and also with other ‘brothers’. I don’t know other Latin Americans apart from those who come to the cult services.”

Nonetheless, Chanel admits that a few years ago, before her daughter was born, she used to go to nightclubs, also engaging with other people who did not attend church. The decision to get more deeply involved in the church, influenced by the birth of her daughter Naomi, transformed Chanel’s social conduct by obliging her to change her social relations and the way she spends her spare time.

“There is an area in the city in which a lot of Latin Americans go to discos and they organize Latin parties in which they play this kind of music. But, of course, I do not go to these places anymore.”

Nowadays, she only meets people outside the church when she goes to a Latin bar located in Van Stralen, close to the Franklin Rooseveltplaats area. Although it is in a very good place, there is no public sign that tells you that it is a café when you pass by it. It can be perfectly unnoticed if you don’t know why is there. This place, Chanel says, it is only frequented by Latin Americans, so they would be uncomfortable with some ‘outsider’ going there. Chanel also likes reggaeton, a Latin music genre very popular among Latin young people. Nevertheless, the constant references to sensuality and partying in reggaeton is not to church members taste.

“Reggaeton is not well regarded among church people. They believe the lyrics are disgusting and do not help you to live a life in harmony with God. However, I used to listen to it all the time and I like the music, so I cannot just stop listening because I like how it sounds.”

Of course, these pleasures are traces of Chanel’s past, when she was not heavily involved in church life. Chanel’s cousins, namely Yanny, Sarah and Mariel, do not share such interests, which give us a hint of rebellious Chanel’s character might have seemed as an adolescent. Once in the church, ‘sister’ Julia referred to Chanel as a “very difficult child”.

“My cousins are not like me in that sense, they don’t like going to these places.”

Karen

The case of Karen is significantly different from that of the from previous interviewees, since she is the only person in her family who emigrated to Belgium. She talks passionately when asked about her migration and when she recalls how she felt when she was about to come to Europe.

“I came to Belgium really excited about what I could find here. Besides, I was going to get married and having a blue-eyed child, something I always wanted to. Sadly, things didn’t go as I had planned.”

After splitting up with her husband, Karen found herself in a very difficult situation. She admits that she currently feels insecure due to her past experiences in Antwerp: in 2015, she was drugged and robbed during a night out, a traumatic experience that was worsened by her problems in the church.

“This is a very dangerous city. I’ve seen robbery, violence and many ‘trafficking’ activities since I have been here. When I arrived, I expected this continent to be peaceful and secure, but it is just the opposite.”

In this environment Karen prioritizes preserving good friendships, which she thinks it is vital in order to achieve a good social position in Belgium. She boasts about being friends of people that work in the Panamanian embassy who invites her to cocktails and similar events.

“I always like to have good friendships in my life. For instance, I live in a residential area so my son can go to a good school, and I always try to be surrounded by well-educated and respectful persons.”

However, according to her, she did not find this kind of people during the time when she was going to church.

“Normally, what you can find it there are low-income people with very few resources. Therefore, they do not like if you go around with other people that don’t go to church or which have a different lifestyle from them. Then, they will show their disapproval and, after that, when you are not in front of them, they will criticize you.”

Currently she has stopped attending the church and she is very critical about the people who gather there, especially the Florentino family and the pastor Alfredo, since she believes that they take advantage of people who attend the church.

“In practice, the church works like a club. A club has members, rules, and you cannot enter unless you pay a fee. In my case, I decided that I wouldn’t be a member of that club anymore because I felt ripped off.”

The perceptions and stories of each of the interviewees correspond to their personal circumstances and the trajectories of integration within the host society; however, we can see some common patterns in their perception of the Latin American community and Belgian society. First, all of them described several obstacles at the time of integration, namely the feeling of being the object of racial discrimination, their lack of essential language skills or the strong cultural differences between their country of origin and Belgium. Due to these difficulties, the participants barely interact with people outside of their social circle, which in the case of many of the interviewees consisted of the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ of the congregation. The lack of language skills of this community in Berchem could raise questions about their position in ‘superdiverse’ environments compared to other groups whose presence is more visible in the area such as the Turkish, Belgian or Polish communities. Nevertheless, this misleading ‘invisibility’ does not imply the inexistence of a Latin American community in the neighbourhood, as Jesus pointed out. In that respect, the church brings together people with different trajectories by developing a role of community builder in which several members of the same family can be found. In particular, members who enter the church without relevant family or emotional links to the place, as Karen did, seem to be more vulnerable within the social structure that has arisen inside the community and therefore are less attached to and identified less with this group.

Chapter 4. The Latin American Pentecostal church

4.1 The ‘Movimiento Misionero Mundial’

From a theological perspective, the Movimiento Misionero Mundial (MMM) can be identified with Neo-Pentecostalism or Charismatic movements which arose in the 1960s in the United States. Such organizations are considered by some theologists to have developed strong authoritarian profiles by providing absolute leaderships of an ‘spiritual guide’ to religious communities and homes (Saranyana and Aeljos-Grau, 1999).

The Movimiento Misionero Mundial (Worldwide Missionary Movement) describes itself as a Christian-Pentecostal church whose aim is the promotion and extension of its missionary work as well as evangelization and the saving of souls (MMM, n.d.). This organization, which is today present in more than 50 different countries, was created in 1963 on the North American island of Puerto Rico by the minister Luis M. Ortiz. During the 1960s and the 1970s, the MMM spreads through Latin America by establishing small churches across this continent. During the following decades, the expansion of the movement reaches Africa, Asia and the majority of European countries, arriving to Brussels in 2005 (Bethel Television, 2013).

One of the distinguishing features of these Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches is their use of traditional and digital media technologies in order to broadcast their messages (Saranyana and Alejos-Grau, 1999; Meyer, 2006). The Movimiento Misionero Mundial is no exception and has a presence across a wide variety of different mediums, including TV and radio stations as well as to printed magazines. The most established media that belongs to the MMM is Impacto Evangelístico, a monthly magazine launched in 1961 by Luis Ortiz, the founder of the MMM (Impacto Evangelístico, n.d.). The MMM is also affiliated to Bethel TV, a Peruvian TV station which broadcasts across America, Europe, Oceania and North Africa. This channel also offers live television services through the Internet, where different activities and information about the organization are transmitted worldwide. From this channel, the most important congregations of the MMM and the sermons of their well-known pastors are broadcasted. Furthermore, the MMM have a large decentralized network of Facebook groups, owned by the local organizations of the movement in each country. The Facebook page of the MMM in Belgium posts information about their activities and events, but also charismatic sentences and Bible’s verses or videos about how well one of their ‘leaders’ have been received in one of the movement foreign churches. The MMM is also linked to a theological college called the Instituto Bíblico Elim. This institute, located in the United States, provides intellectual training for the leaders of the movement.

4.2 The function of the church

The principle of the role of the church is to receive people who have just arrived to the city. In the church, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ initiate conversations with the newcomer, who will then be introduced to the rest of converts by the pastor Alfredo from the pulpit. He will introduce himself by stating his name, where he comes from and the reason why he joined inside the church. The length of an individual’s stay within the community will then depend on the success of the integration process. Throughout my research, I have met people who have successfully integrated into the community and others who stopped attending the church after some time. Usually, newcomers are invited to have lunch with the rest of converts on Sunday, when typical Latin American dishes are prepared and all the ‘brothers’ gather together in the upstair room after the morning service has ended.

A Dominican couple and their two children entered the church while I was attending. I saw them many times later in the church, which suggested that the family were becoming permanent member of the church. In particular, the woman was very active in helping other ‘sisters’ to organize events, such as the Sunday school for youngsters, or food after the service. On the other hand, an Angolan male who attended a service once then never returned. Karen, who also began attending church during the summer, stopped going before Christmas because of problems that she had with some church members. In order to discern the reasons that drive the people both stay or leave church, I had examined some of the responses given by the participants:

Chanel

“I started to attend church with my mom and, later on, with my aunts and cousins. At the beginning I was not very enthusiastic because I hadn’t got to know Christ yet, but now I do.”

Jesus

“For me it was something natural since I’ve always tried to be close to God. When I came here, I had even more reasons because I felt alone and I knew that in the church I would find people like me.”

Nelson

“I started with my mother in the Netherlands. After some time, I was transformed in a totally different person; I felt happy, eager to learn things and work and everything thanks to Jesus Christ.”

Karen

“I started to go to church because that woman (‘sister’ Julia) was going to offer me legal assistance, but she cheated on me”

David

“I come because I find all the support I need. When I come here, I feel better and it gives me the strength to face all the problems in life.”

The success or failure of integrating within the Latin American religious community is closely related to the motivations that drive a person to enter this community. According to the different paths of the respondents, these include strong religious beliefs, family ties or looking for emotional support in the church to help migrants to engage more effectively within the community. However, accessing the church in order to benefit from informal services offered by the community means occupying a weaker position within the community structure. Taking into account these observations, it can be suggested that, in line with previous observations of Pentecostal churches by Plata (2010), ‘religious’ members of the community are those who are best integrated in the community.

4.3 Activities within the church

Our viewing the church as a community is supported by the persisting social relations that many of the church attendants develop between them, which are manifested in their everyday life. As a result, the oldest members of the church organize events and activities in order to foster the participation and integration within the community.

The activities within the church, apart from having lunch together, are strictly reserved for religious purposes. Each week, there are services on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Wednesday, pastor Alfredo prayers and Bible study, during which the whole congregation join in by shouting out words of praise. On Friday, there are also Bible readings and, at the same time, inspirational speeches given by the pastor. On Saturday, depending on the week, church services are offered for women or youngsters. Finally, on Sundays morning and after services are offered on Sunday, which lasts from 10 am until the early evening. Sunday worships are also accompanied by singings and giving words of praise. At the end of the morning service, youngsters relate to their parents the lessons they have been taught during the evangelist seminars given by the church ‘sisters’. Following this, they have lunch before the afternoon cult, which also lasts from 2pm to 5pm.

The converts also organize activities abroad, either with other Latin Americans in Belgium or with converts from other churches of the Movimiento Misionero Mundial, normally from Belgium or the Netherlands. Every Monday, they visit different families belonging to the community to carry out ‘home prayers’ in their houses, an activity which is organized by Julia. Occasionally, they arrange weekend retreats in small towns. The reason of these retreats are to spend a day with other Latin American people invited by the church members. For instance, they organized a solidarity market in Herentals in order to raise funds for the church. At this event, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ of the church had to bring at least one guest with them. There, the believers prepared food for the guests and they sold books, clothes and similar items in this ‘bazar’. In order to assist to congregations of the Movimiento Misionero Mundial, the church organized trips to cities such as Geneva, Jerusalem or Rotterdam. However, the oldest ‘sisters’ of the church (Saira, the pastor’s wide, Julia, Lala or Santa) are the ones who decided who can go or cannot go to these special visits. In August 2016 some of the oldest members of the community are planning to travel to Madrid in order to attend the 2nd European Congress of the MMM.

4.4 Solidarity networks

The diversity of people inside the church implies a multiplicity of skills for solving everyday problems in the host country that are offered as services to the community members, who are likely to need such facilities at some point. This kind of assistance between community members is known as ‘informal solidarity networks’ and helps to understand the reasons of the surge of this type of infraestructures. In view of this, I will now try to discern how these networks are structured within the Latin American community in Antwerp. First, I will describe some situations in which these systems were operating.

During one of the first services I attended, I heard the minister Alfredo talking with Nelson and other converts about helping some community members who were in the process of moving to a new house. In order to help them, all the converts that were willing to participate would donate some money to rent a van. After that, they would go to their house and help the family to pack and move all their things to their new house.

Another day, when the Sunday morning service finished, I saw ‘brother’ Nelson carrying a bag with a laptop. Later, I discovered that the laptop belonged to another church member and she had asked Nelson to repair it due to his background of working in a computer repair store.

On one ocassion, I also took part in an informal conversation with some of the male community members over lunch. A forty-years old Dominican brother recently arrived from Spain was complaining about the difficulties of learning the language and finding job. Immediately after this, pastor Alfredo told him that they would talk with Rolando, who is working in the construction sector, to help him to find a job.

All of these examples took place while I was carrying out my observations of the community. These were not isolate incidents and there were many similar cases which I was unable to record. This illustrates some of the problems that affect migrants in their process of adaptation to their new life; including lack of economic resources and language skills or difficulties in finding a position in the labour market. Although such networks operate in many ways, the main pattern is that of more vulnerable individuals (newcomers, unemployed, irregular migrants, etc.) seeking help from people with more comfortable positions (permanent community members, employed and legal residents in the country) who are able to offer resources needed. This material support, paradoxically, reinforces the emotional affiliation of the community members to the church. For instance, when a person needs a job, to recover from an illness or to travel safely back to his country, church ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ will pray for him. If a person who is looking for a job finds it, this will be understood as something which has occurred ‘by God’s grace’, and they will thank God. In this sense, the informal solidarity network within the church also produces new religious identities, s a result of benefits derived from this network to more vulnerable members of the community. This dynamic helps to consolidate such systems, assigning those resources to ‘faithful’ members who cannot otherwise access them (Blommaert, 2013).

Nonetheless, such systems can fail when people’s expectations are not satisfied, and which can consequently lead to them abandoning the church. Such hypothesis is supported by Karen’s experience within the church. Karen entered the church because she was told that they could help her with the legal issues affecting her child’s custody. Once in the church, ‘sister Julia’, whose husband owns a law firm, offered her assistance to Karen if she paid a fee for her services. According to Karen’s version, after having paid the money she did not receive any help from Julia, so she decided to cut ties with the community and especially with the Florentino family. In addition, she believes that Luigi, the brother of Julia, Lala and Mireia is involved in drug trafficking activities, claiming that he was jailed having been caught at the Spanish border with cocaine. She alleged that they funded the church activities with money obtained in this way. In any case, it remains clear that, within this systems, several distortions in the functioning of the network occur when people misuse their power over the weakest members of the community from their own benefit.

5. Discussion

Recent studies analysing migration issues after globalization need to adapt their methodology to the increasingly ‘superdiverse’ nature of this phenomenon (Vertovec, 2007). In order to tackle this contemporary reality, the ethnographic engagement with the subject of study is shown to be a useful tool when attempting to unravel the complexity that defines modern migration processes (Blommaert, 2013). Using this method, we can obtain a more coherent picture of the diversity that surrounds those groups which could otherwise be disregarded or perceived as static or homogeneous. The Latin American community of Antwerp is therefore seen to be a miscellaneous group in which are gathered together people with different countries of origins, economic situation, literacy skills and degrees of belonging and identification to the same community. Nevertheless, they share ethnic and cultural backgrounds as well as the distinctive features of this community. All of them attend a Pentecostal-Charismatic church in Berchem, Antwerp. Taking this into account, the main research questions to answer are who are these people and why do they meet together in this place.

During my research, I discovered that this community is, in the main, composed of Dominican people and the majority of its members are women. Although Dominicans are not one of the biggest migration groups in Belgium (Pew Research Center, 2016), the latter aspect is consistent with previous literature on Latin American migration in Europe, which is considered as a ‘feminized’ migration (Córdova, 2015; Plata, 2010). The fact that the church was founded by a Dominican family could help to explain the large presence of people from this country in the community. Nonetheless, within the community we can find people from other countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru or Cuba.

Many of the community members claimed to have difficult financial situations at the time of migrating, which contrasts with the political reasons that motivated the Latin American diaspora during the 1970s, and which defines the basic motivation behind the current migration flows from this region to Europe. The process of migrating usually starts with one family member arriving in the new country and, when they are legally established and their economic situation allows it, the closer family members will migrate then, consolidating and extending their social networks within the host country. As a result of family reunification is the basic channel by which the Latin American community legally enters Belgium. However, the difficulties of becoming legal residents that third-country nationals progressively find in EU countries lead to clandestine migration, which means that migrants cannot access basic services that are guaranteed for people with ‘full citizenship’.

In this scenario, the Latin American evangelist church plays a vital role in expanding the social networks that help migrants to deal with problems resulting from difficulties of adapting and integrating in the host country. Throughout my investigation, I have documented the many ways in which these churches operate as follows: socially, thanks to the interaction of people inside the church which brings them together; emotionally, offering the newcomer a group of people that share his fears, his problems, and can help him in order to become ‘a man of Jesus’ and therefore ‘redeem’ himself; or economically, thanks to the function of the informal solidarity networks which have arisen inside the community. As a consequence, Berchem becomes the node where such ‘infrastructures of superdiversity’, as defined by Blommaert (2013), emerge due to the affordable rents and the accessibility of the neighbourhood, which reinforces the perception that Berchem is a ‘superdiverse’ environment.

Limitations of the study and discussions for further research

The limited time span, added to the difficulties found throughout my study, prevented me from investigating other important aspects that could give insights into the Latin American community of Antwerp. Although it has been briefly mentioned within this study, further investigation is needed into how transnational networks of religious organizations result in the migrant’s transformation from an ‘ethnic’ to a ‘religious’ identity and the conflicts of identity which arise due to this metamorphosis, as documented by Van Dijk (1997) or Menjívar (1999). Furthermore, my ‘gender was an obstacle to my research into the nature of the migration of female members of the community. Understanding this is vital in order to fully comprehend their adaptation process to the new society since this collective is of the utmost importance for the organization of the community. In time, a follow-up study of the next generation of the Latin American evangelist community could be relevant in order to see to what extent they reproduce the labour integration or social conduct patterns showed by their elders.

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