Social Mobility, Migratory Vocations, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association

ABSTRACT: This paper explores how the confessional politics of Catholic identification has been mobilised into religious callings, from the village to the city and from China to Overseas Chinese communities. Building on fieldwork conducted in Hangzhou and New York City in 2018, I show how a Chinese Catholic migrant priest authenticates the spiritual purity of his vocation by using the legality and ease of transnational travel to legitimise his moral and economic upward mobility. KEYWORDS: mobility, migration, Catholicism, vocation, transnational China.