Na confluência das águas as almas se encontram: migração haitiana, igrejas e configurações identitárias em Manaus (Brasil)

Abstract

This investigation aimed, as general objective, to understand how the actions and the churches’ presence in the migratory flows produce the Haitian category in the city of Manaus. I relied on two broader questions to construct the object and formulate the starting question: the migratory processes and the production of identities and cultural diversity. The main questioning of this thesis led me to conclude that, despite the number of Haitians who passed through Manaus and the North region, these places are not only temporary, but spaces for permanency and social reproduction. In this matter, the Catholic Church and the various evangelical strands acted and continue to act in migratory flows as material and spiritual welcome of Haitians, shaping new social processes in Manaus’ the context. I called the production or social construction the process by which individuals and groups are built out of webs of interdependence that they maintain with each other. It is a dynamic that involves acts of nomination and reflexivity, as those involved always take into account each other's moves. The prioritized theoretical framework was able to build a relational approach to the research object and, alongside the literature review on migratory processes, shed light on the data collected from documentary sources, direct/participant observation and semi structured interviews and informal conversations. As a main result, the Haitian that emerges from the actions and churches’ presence is a category that goes through the construction of an immigrant object of humanitarian action and also potential church member. The work is divided into two parts – theoretical framework and literature review and empirical research –, containing two chapters each. At the end, I wrote a post scriptum as a practical contribution from the experience of the churches in Haitian migratory flows.