Identity(ies)and Transnationalization of Brazilian Evangelical Churches in Portugal:Case study of World Cathedral of Hope and Victory in Christ Churches

The presence of evangelicals in Brazil is a social and religious phenomenon that has aroused interest of many scholars due to its rapid and significant expansion in recent decades and its projection beyond national borders.Among evangelical denominations that stand out in this scenario are Pentecostal churches,which have developed intense missionary activity in several countries,including Europe.In this article,we intend to analyze features and challenges of Brazilian evangelical churches:World Cathedral of Hope(CIME)(Catedral Mundial da Esperança-ICME)and Assembly of God Victory in Christ(ADVEC)(Assembleia de Deus Vitória em Cristo-ADVEC)that operate in Portugal,seeking to understand issues of identity and belonging of these communities,their models of transnationalization,its evangelization strategies and its adaptations to Portuguese context,in the period from 2000 to 2020.

Familiar Ghosts: Imagining Lives, Re-imagining the Nation, Inventing the Future

This article focuses on novels that,located on the boundary between biography,autobiography and fiction,between detailed archival historical research and imagination,between the documentary and the speculative,seek to reconstruct the life of an ancestor of the writer-narrator to reflect on the traumas,exploitation,hopes,and desires of generations who,in their diasporas,also helped create their modern nations,or whose story challenges the exclusions on which the concept of the nation has been built.The texts discussed are Melania Mazzucco's Vita,Vona Groarke's Hereafter:The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara,Wu Ming 2 and Antar Mohamed's Timira:Romanzo Meticcio,and Maryse Conde's Victoire,les saveurs et les mots.At their center is the negotiation between the individual truth and the relational story across generations on the one hand,and,on the other hand,the tracing of collective histories such as those of nation,of colonization,of diaspora,of internal and external displacement,of rights and emancipation(the downtrodden,the poor,women,the migrant,the refugees),of the origins of dispossession and the permanence of its effects.At the core of the narratives is also the ghostliness of the erased(from history,from memory,from citizenship),the departed(in the sense of being dead and of having traveled away),and the in-between(generic:between the historical and documentary on the one hand,and the novelistic,the fable,fantasy on the other;geographical:between countries,between places,nationalities,national affiliations;historical:across generations;racial:the mestizo,the mulatto).It is,specifically,the biofictional imagination that enables these diasporic,transnational,transracial accounts to open up the possibility of a different,liberating future,by offering the space to imagine such a future,but also by recognizing,through its explicit acknowledgement of its recourse to fictionality,that it does not aim to construct a new myth to replace historical fact,but that it invites all of us to imagine,and strive to bring into existence,a different reality.

Longman and Norton:The Anthologies of World Literature and the Effects on the Literary Landscapes

By establishing a critical dialogue with the observations of David Damrosch in Comparing the Literatures:Literary Studies in a Global Age concerning the challenges posed to Comparatism by the current state of the discipline,the question that we will address in the present work is,above all,a position on what it means to make a comparative study in a scenario marked by the reemergence of the phenomenon of world literature in literary studies.After directing our attention to The Longman Anthology of World Literature and The Norton Anthology of World Literature,we were able to see how both still describe an unequal system of legitimation and aesthetic configuration based on a Eurocentric division between the"inside"and the"outside."And it is precisely in the ethical and political implications of this process of opening"'to the world that lies our proposal for approaching world literature.

Precarious Legal Status and‘Reactive Transnationalism’:The Case of Baloch in Qatar

Despite the long existence of Baloch in the Gulf region,and Qatar,in particular,scholarly works on their lives and migration experience is scarce.This study is based on long-term ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in Fall 2020 in Freej Al Baloush,the Baloch Neighborhood,a large residential area located in Abu Hamour,Doha,where a concentration of Baloch from low socioeconomic backgrounds reside since 1980s.Using data from these interviews and my own experience as a member of the community,as well as drawing on existing literature on different migrant communities in the Gulf and relevant studies on transnationalism,I address how the legal status of the Baloch in Qatar,as temporary residents,affects their transnational lives.Iran,and the province of Balochistan,have become a back-up plan for Baloch who always live with the worry of losing their residency rights and being deported from Qatar.This is a form of‘reactive transnationalism’,cross-border engagement as a result of negative integration.One of the most visible ways that they cope with temporariness,legal vulnerability,and precarious lives is through material investment,mainly building houses and buying property and land,which many of them lack in Qatar.While Qatar’s regulated ownership policies allow residents to purchase land in specific areas,the country’s high property costs and living expenses make buying property difficult for many long-term residents with low socioeconomic status,including the Baloch.Although the concept of reactive transnationalism has not been studied extensively and is loosely defined,the case of Baloch in Qatar offers important insights into the impact of socioeconomic status,gender,family networks,and legal integration on transnationalism.

The Unbreakable Link of Syrian State-Business Relationships: Its Impact on Turkey-based Expatriate Syrian Businesspeople

State-business relationships in pre-2011 Syria were strongly dominated by the Assad regime.Due to the conflict,millions of Syrians,including thousands of businesspeople,were forced to leave Syria.Home countries have been argued to play a crucial role in a diaspora’s development.Even though many Syrian businesspeople have emigrated to Turkey,long-term strict state-business relationships continue to affect the interactions of the Syrian businesspeople in Turkey.This paper examines how Syrian statebusiness ties shape the behaviors of the Turkey-based Syrian businesspeople.The paper argues that,although the activities of the business diaspora might need to be conducted cautiously due to their ties with the home government,and in order to improve economic activity in the host country,the businesspeople have developed specific ways to balance the impact of their home government.