Paper short abstract:

The objective of this paper is to revisit the notion of diaspora and redraw the Cape Verdean diaspora in the light of one of the components of Cape Verdean diaspora largely ignored in studies of Cape Verdean emigration: the religious dimension of the Cape Verdean diaspora.

Paper long abstract:

The relevance of the Cape Verdean diaspora in shaping and building the Cape Verdean nation-state is unquestionable. In fact, the Cape Verdean diaspora has influenced profoundly the modus operandi of the people of this archipelago, and one of the components that reverberates this influence clearly is the religious dimension of Cape Verdean emigrants. We can demonstrate this fact with the case of Nazarene Protestantism which arrived to the islands in 1901, by hands of João José Dias, a Cape Verdean migrant, who resided in the U.S in the last decade of 19th century. During the 20th Century the Church of the Nazarene (CN), which emerge in U.S, was spread to all islands and became the best known Protestant church in Cape Verde. Many pastors of this traditional Protestant church were sent off as missionaries, became leaders of the CN or exercised their pastorate in Portugal, Senegal, Brazil, Sao Tome and Principe, France, Holland, Norway, U.S, Argentina, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. What kind of notion of Cape Verdean diaspora these mobilities build among Cape Verdean emigrants Nazarenes, along the Atlantic space? How these transnational missions influence the Nazarenes in the archipelago, nowadays? What kind of connections the Nazarenes in Cape Verde have with the Cape Verdean Nazarenes abroad? For answer these question, I will resort to the dynamic and mobility of Cape-Verdean Protestant pastors, missionaries and believers of the Church of the Nazarene, to Senegal, Brazil, Portugal and U.S during the twentieth-century up to this day.