Transformations of Old Colony Mennonites: the making of a trans-statal community

Abstract

Through an analysis that combines the historical development of the Old Colony Mennonites, which covers their migrations from sixteenth-century Europe to late twentieth-century Latin America, with ethnographic field work in Bolivia and Argentina, I examine the genesis and maintenance of a religiously based trans-statal community. I argue for the conceptual maintenance of a clear distinction between transnational and trans-statal processes in understanding the cross-border practices of Old Colony Mennonites. Mennonites do not move in and out of nations but between the territories over which different states claim sovereignty. I further show that the trans-statal practices of Old Colony Mennonites are a strategic means of outmanoeuvring states in their imposition of national identities within a context of nation-states being the dominant political formation. The case contributes to the call for a shift in emphasis from nations to faith communities in transnational and trans-statal studies