Keywords
Migration
Community organization
Dynamics of settlement
How to Cite
Abstract
This article focuses on the role religion plays for Brazilian immigrants, as they seek to negotiate everyday life in a geographically de-centered exurb in Broward County, Florida – USA, which lacks established immigrant organizations. In this context, churches offer resources to help Brazilian immigrants create spaces of sociability, collective identity, and mutual aid. More importantly, beyond the institutional support, religion serves to render the process of migration meaningful, linking it with the deeply affective experience of the sacred in a hostile environment. While these religious resources are conflict-laden, they provide crucial resources for an incipient community. The article begins with a brief profile of the Brazilian community based on fieldwork conducted from 2001 to 2004 in South Florida. Then, it analyzes some of the ways in which religious resources are deployed by Brazilians in Broward County. It concludes with some preliminary reflections about the dynamics of settlement in non-conventional sites of immigration from Latin America.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2020 Manuel Vásquez, Lúcia Ribeiro
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