Christiane Falge

I am a research fellow at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies. I am currently working on a project as part of a research initiative called MIGREMUS (Migration, Residential Mobility and Urban Structures). This project develops an aspect of my PhD theses further by dealing with migration in the context of transnational church congregations and urban structures.

In the planned project I study the effects of social capital in specific religious networks in congregations of globally dispersed and expanding Pentecostalism toward processes of migration. Different city types will be analyzed and compared based on specific push and pull factors for migration. In which way do different Pentecostal networks and different political-economic orders of cities affect decisions to migrate? As socio-economically successful cities are globally more integrated than cities struggling with unemployment and economic downscaling these cities are specifically attractive to migrants. Migration is therefore also structured by cities. Transnational migrant initiated pentecostal churches basically form the entry point to study the ways different networks and regional variations structure migrants’ movements.