Migrant chaplains: Mediators of catholic church transnationalism or guests in nationally shaped religious fields?

Migrant chaplains are key mediators in the Catholic Church’s ministry to its mobile flock. In this article we draw on field-work with migrant chaplains in Ireland, scholarship in transnationalism and Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital to examine the transnational and local relations by which this ministry is shaped. Three themes are addressed: first, how the dispositions or positions of migrant chaplains as visitors or guests are produced in the negotiation of nationally inflected religious capital; second, the ways in which migrant chaplains challenge the Catholic Church field as manifest in Ireland via calls for recognition of migrant church religious capital; and third, the ways in which the Catholic Church as a universal church reinstates the logic of the Catholic Church religious field across national differences.