From Pentecoscentrism to Transpentecostalism

Abstract

Abstract This article proposes an analysis of the relationships between Pentecostalism and crossborder migrations through a constellation of concepts that seek to overcome static and essentialist ideas about Pentecostal identity and the supposed centrality that said identity could have in the consideration of transnational migratory processes (Pentecoscentrism and migracentrism). We analyze the case of migratory processes in the Tarapacá Region of Chile, critically defining three topics of interest: Transpentecostalism as a condition of the subject that migrates and moves without the need to negate or erase his or her identities; the transpentecostal identity as the reality of plural identities of said subjects; and the transpentecostal community as a community that incorporates the national within the metanational (citizens of heaven). All of this is considered as a complex, contradictory, and conflictive process in which the variables of ethnicity, gender, religiosity, and work are articulated.