“God is in control”: middle-class Pentecostalism and international student migration

In this article I explore the role of Pentecostalism in the lives of middle-class Brazilian students-turned-migrants in Australia. Brazilian students lead precarious lives in Australia. They are transitioning into adulthood, living away from the homeland and without their families for the first time and they experience downward mobility. In addition, they are at the mercy of constant changes in Australian migration policy. Drawing on three years of multi-sited fieldwork in Australia and Brazil in three Pentecostal churches (the Australian megachurches Hillsong and C3 and a Brazilian church), I argue that Pentecostalism supports these students in their migration pathway. This is particularly the case because these are Seeker churches. By focusing on youth culture, entertainment, and informality and by addressing real-life situations, these churches cater to middle-class sensibilities. I also contend that their religious beliefs and practices are interwoven with the students’ narratives of migration to Australia. Thus the students pray for visas, jobs, and sponsorships for permanent residency and they see every obstacle and achievement as God’s work in their lives. For them, God determines whether they can stay or must return home. Importantly, citizenship in God’s kingdom gives them a more significant sense of belonging than that of the Australian state.     

The Roman Catholic Church of Norway and migration challenges

Ever since its re-establishment in Norway in 1843, the Roman Catholic Church has grown steadily. On 1 January 2017, the church had a total membership of approximately 150,000. The reason for the latest, and certainly largest, wave of Catholic migrants to settle in Norway is labour migration resulting from the eastward expansion of the EU in 2004, when Poland and Lithuania joined. About half the Catholic population of Norway originates from these two countries. This article focuses on the following research question: How does the Roman Catholic Church in Norway, represented by sisters in religious communities, priests and ecclesiastical employees, respond to the large influx of Catholic migrants to Norway? The study is based on a qualitative survey consisting of semi-structured interviews with 10 informants, all religious sisters, priests or ecclesiastical employees. Although some informants admit that the strong growth resulting from migration has posed problems, such as tendencies to form ‘parallel congregations’ based on ethnic origin, most expressed a positive view of this influx of migrants and of the future of the Catholic Church in Norway.     

Toward a Theology of Hospitality

This article considers the need for a repositioning from advocacy to the embodiment of a theology of hospitality in focusing on the issue of statelessness as an issue of gender discrimination. To address statelessness adequately, the churches should exercise the ministry of hospitality for “strangers” as the basis for their advocacy to protect stateless persons and defend their basic and fundamental rights with regard to nationality.     

Pan‐African Women's Voices across Borders

This article is structured from the epistemological vantage point of framing theological education within the context of Pan‐African women's experiences of migration, where theological education is defined in the widest sense of creating knowledge, ethos, and practices from within different versions of Christian tradition, as opposed to transmitting a static corpus of knowledge. It begins by examining the deconstructive potential of Pan‐African female migrants, particularly with regard to gendered patterns and projections of theological education. It then describes and analyzes the impact of Pan‐African female migrants on the project of contextual theological education as an act of birthing and bringing to life the dimensions of seeing and interpreting the one life‐giving story through the lenses of the lamenting, celebrating, and transforming stories of many. The article concludes by presenting Pan‐African female migration as an opportunity to revisit theological education as a creative, ecumenical, and intercultural enterprise, seeing the empirical location of Pan‐African female migrants as a paradigmatic lens for revisiting theological education as intercultural enterprise, and not (exclusively) as a contextual – and hence exceptional – historic experience.     

Emotions and migration in social media discourse: A new Greek migrant case study

Since the onset of the Greek economic crisis in 2010, thousands of highly educated and skilled Greeks have migrated abroad in search of better career prospects and living standards. This recent migratory wave has been termed ‛new’ Greek migration (Panagiotopoulou et al., 2019). The lives of new Greek migrants are characterised by a mélange of conflicting emotions: loss of belonging, irritation at Greek policies and mentalities, and suffering for the family who remains in Greece facing the crisis, on the one hand; hopes of new beginnings and potential for new opportunities and fulfilling one's goals in the host country, on the other. Drawing on insights from the constructionist approach to emotions, discourse analysis, and online ethnography, this paper looks at how a new Greek migrant in the UK conveys across social media his emotions towards specific events and people both in Greece and the UK. The findings showcase social media's vital role in allowing, mobilising and sharing affective expression. They also shed light on the broader discursive and emotional aspects of new Greek migration.     

Migration and Cultural Orientation: An Empirical Test of the Psychoanalytic Theory in Chinese Americans

The psychoanalytic literature suggests migration entails an intra-psychic challenge of separation–individuation that necessitates the assistance of internal and external objects. While this has been illustrated by anecdotal data and clinical case material, it has not been previously tested in the general migrant community. This study examined three Chinese-American groups who varied in the availability of external objects (i.e., primary caretakers) and stability and solidity of internal object and self representations due to varying developmental stages at the time of migration, and assessed whether, as predicted by some psychoanalytic writers, they would have differential need to embrace their native culture to support their transition. Results showed that unaccompanied minors who migrated without their parents during adolescence evidenced a stronger Chinese cultural orientation than both accompanied minors who migrated with their parents during childhood (perhaps due to less access to external objects) and unaccompanied adults who migrated without their parents during adulthood (perhaps due to less well internalized objects), lending empirical support for the psychoanalytic postulation. Implications of the findings for future research and intervention are discussed.     

三峡外迁移民社会心理应激的实证分析

通过对三峡外迁移民与当地居民心理应激状况进行现场调查,与当地居民相比较发现,三峡外迁移民具有更多消极情绪,更多采取消极应对方式,应激总分远远大于当地居民。三峡移民的社会支持低于当地居民。为了减轻对移民心身健康造成的应激,应从社会管理、技术服务、心理咨询等方面帮助移民,以适应环境,保持心身健康。     

一种改进的分层并行演化算法(英文)

提出了一种改进的分层并行演化算法。针对传统算法中"同构子种群"和"同步通信"所引发的问题,新算法构建了异构模型,并将各子种群充分连接。子种群一旦满足迁移条件,便可按照预设的迁移模式实施异步迁移。仿真实验结果表明,本文提出的新算法有效地解决了"征服问题"和"无效问题",避免了算法的过早收敛,提高了算法的效率。     

Switching Sides: Exploring Violent Extremist Intergroup Migration Across Hostile Ideologies

Violent extremists and terrorists often abandon their associates to join like-minded groups (i.e., with the same ideology or cause) or leave violent activism altogether (i.e., disengage or deradicalize). Sometimes, however, militants might switch between groups with mutually exclusive and hostile ideologies (e.g., from left-wing to right-wing extremism or from right-wing extremism to Salafi-jihadism). To explain intergroup migration, social identity theory (SIT) stipulates individual mobility as a strategy for status enhancement. However, SIT's applicability to this highly specific scenario of intergroup migration across hostile ideologies has not previously been explored. Several theoretical caveats could limit SIT's explanatory value here, such as potential group impermeability, lack of realistic status enhancement, and high social identity salience with the original ingroup. To assess SIT's applicability, this article uses four well-documented individual case studies of violent extremist intergroup migration across hostile ideologies in Germany. The article shows that SIT's individual mobility strategy largely applies to this scenario, at least in the presented case studies.     

Young People's Deliberations on Geographic Mobility: Identity and Cross-Border Relocation

This paper considers how social identities may shape group members' spatial behaviour. Specifically, it reports a small-scale interview study (n  =  30) conducted with young people (17 years of age) living in a Scottish town close to a national border (with England). This border has very little physical presence. However, the psychological significance of a Scottish identification remains strong, and we investigate the ways in which national identities are implicated in young people's deliberations about their future geographic mobility throughout the United Kingdom. Our data suggest that national identity-related considerations are not always salient in our participants' deliberations. Yet, when national identity is salient and mobility is framed in national terms, we find our participants are often cautious about relocating to England. However, our data also suggest that the ways in which a national framing of self and mobility may be consequential is itself diverse.