The soul is the stranger: Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the diasporic contestation of ‘flow’ and ‘individuality’

Abstract

Pentecostal groups have become a prominent part of the process of migration of Ghanaians to the West. In popular conceptions, migration is above all a spiritual problem. Operating from Accra and Kumasi, charismatic Pentecostal churches have been established in the Ghanaian migrant communities of the larger cities in the Netherlands. This article analyses the position these churches take in diasporic communities by asking why it is that Pentecostalism par excellence appears to offer the kind of symbolic discourse and praxis that fosters the constitution of a transcultural and transnational domain. Moving away from bipolar approaches to migration and diasporic communities, this contribution argues that Pentecostal transnationality and transculturality negotiate taxonomic state developments that tend to circumscribe and petrify individual identities. All‐too‐easy notions about ‘global flows’ of people, ideas and practices, and of ‘global individuality’, are critically examined.