Religion in Spaces of Transit: African Christian Migrant Churches and Transnational Mobility in Morocco

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses how religious place-making contributes to the mobility and transnational connection of migrants during their periods of transit and fragmented journeys. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Pentecostal Charismatic Christian churches in Rabat and Casablanca, it describes how the establishment of religious places by West and Central African Christian migrants is an outcome of the blockades and ruptures that many of them experience in the buffer zone that Morocco has become. Moreover, this article demonstrates how the religious and social practices within these migrant spaces contribute to the development of mobility in terms of both the sending and receiving nations, as well as the believer’s integration into transnational Charismatic Christian territories. In this context of forced immobility and limited religious freedom, the transnational and decentralised dimensions of Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity have been particularly suitable for stranded Christian African migrants who aim to remain their agency and achieve in a better future, potentially through emigration to Europe.