Religión y exclusión/marginación*. Pentecostalismo globalizado entre los hispanos en Newark, Nueva Jersey.

The recent, growing literature on Pentecostalism – as well as an ongoing research on Hispanic churches in which I am involved in Newark, the largest city in New Jersey – suggest, among other things, that a fertile encounter is taking place between, on the one hand, Latin Americans pushed into migration by their exclusion and/or marginalization from the ongoing processes of economic globalization, and, on the other hand, the global expansion of Pentecostalism. New immigrants seem to find in Pentecostalism a set of extremely useful socio-religious "tools" to creatively face and overcome the hurdles inherent in the migrant experience. This seems especially true in the case of isolated individuals and small groups moving into milieus where they find themselves in a particularly challenging or disadvantageous situation, be it economic, cultural, linguistic, legal and/or educational. In this brief essay, I will attempt to contextualize and describe some of the dynamics unchained through such encounters between Latin American immigrants and Pentecostal churches, especially as they occur in Newark (NJ), but which seem to recur in similar ways in different places, repeatedly contributing both to expand the probabilities of creative survival for Latin American immigrants under the dire straits of economic globalization, while furthering the worldwide growth of Pentecostalism.