top of page
Screenshot 2025-01-13 at 11.02_edited.jp

My first book, In the Hands of God (Princeton, 2022), asks: why do migrants become more deeply evangelical in the United States and how does this religious identity alter their self-understanding? Drawing from extensive fieldwork among Brazilian migrants in the Washington, DC, area, I show that affective experience is key to comprehending migrants’ turn toward intense religiosity, and their resulting evangelical commitment.The conditions of migrant life—family separation, geographic isolation, legal precariousness, workplace vulnerability, and deep uncertainty about the future—shape specific affective maladies, including loneliness, despair, and feeling stuck. These feelings in turn trigger novel religious yearnings. Evangelical churches deliberately and deftly articulate, manage, and reinterpret migrant distress through affective therapeutics, the strategic “healing” of migrants’ psychological pain. The book offers insights into the affective dimensions of migration, the strategies pursued by evangelical churches to attract migrants, and the ways in which evangelical belonging enables migrants to feel better, emboldening them to improve their lives. Looking at the ways evangelical churches help migrants navigate negative emotions, In the Hands of God sheds light on the versatility and durability of evangelical Christianity.

bottom of page