Migration and Mission. A View from Aparecida

Abstract

Considering the concern of Latin American and Caribbean bishops, at the V General Conference of Aparecida, about migrants as new social actors to be evangelized and as future missionaries, an interdisciplinary reflection is made between theology and the social sciences, on the migrant worker as a theological place. Taking the categories of exodus and migration as equivalent, it tries to show the efforts of the migrant worker, in times of globalization, to see work as a means of upward mobility, from poverty to the dignity of being a paid worker, a creature of God. As an example of solidarity –of workers being missioners to workers– it presents the case of the trade union regional integration network and its ways of breaking into the world of determination.