Our paper analyzes the social and religious changes of a Pentecostal Roma community living in an ethnically mixed village from the eastern part of Romania (Moldavia), as well as connections between migratory processes and conversion to Pentecostalism. In the first part of this paper the author presents the Roma community also showing the changes in the Roma’s subsistence strategies after the major turning points of the recent past. The second part of the paper focuses on the presentation of the two types of migration characteristic to the Roma community: 1. migration of beggars’ networks, which is mainly concentrated in Northern European countries; 2. migration to Western European countries with the intention of long term settlement/long term stay. Finally, the study points to the importance of incomes resulting from begging abroad and from other migration-related sources in changing the situation of the Roma community from this village, as well as to the role of conversion to Pentecostalism in the social and economic processes that take place within the Roma community.
Keywords: Roma minority, Moldova, Pentecostals, migration
