Historicising the Transnational Expansion of a Social Movement through Key Events and Texts

Chapter 2 will provide a historicising account of the turning points and texts in the expansion of Emmaus as a social movement of solidarity, resulting in different trends as exemplified by the two local communities in this ethnography. Drawing on the Emmaus International Archives, the first section will trace the history (1947–1992) of this originally Francophone movement through key events and the movement’s fundamental texts, including their translations and their uptake. These have shaped, and have been shaped by, the transnational expansion of Emmaus and the main ideological trends – centripetal and centrifugal – that emerged in the movement. The second section will locate the genesis, evolution and positioning of the two focal communities in this ethnography, Emmaus Barcelona (1980) and Emmaus London (2007), in the larger history of the movement mainly through interviews, documents and observations. These two communities interpret the common solidarity mission through the lens of different faith traditions, namely Protestant work ethics in London and Progressive Catholicism in Barcelona, in ways that map onto centripetal and centrifugal trends in the movement respectively.